From teaching children how to be strong writers to ensuring their minds are trained to be constructive thinkers, the model of classical education is one that’s capturing the attention of a lot of parents. Many parents are looking for alternatives to the traditional model of education, and the classical approach is one such alternative. If it’s something you’re thinking about or want to learn more about, the following are seven things to know.
1. The General Approach
Classical education includes an emphasis on the liberal arts and literature. The liberal arts include grammar, rhetoric, logic, and eventually, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The concept of classical education goes back not only to ancient Greece and Rome but even further to Egypt and Mesopotamia.
There are three learning phases or stages that are used in this model. They are grammar, and then the logic or dialectic stage, and finally, rhetoric. It’s known as the trivium.
It was around 1900, with the advent of modern education, that classical education started to decline, but it’s been resurging once again over the past 30 years.
There are hundreds of classical schools that have been launched in the past few decades, and tens of thousands of homeschool families use this approach.
2. The Three Phases
Based on the trivium, during the grammar stage of learning, which would traditionally be grades K-4, students are taught how to learn. They gain knowledge, accumulate facts, and they go through repetition, songs, and chants. Language skills like reading and writing mechanics are taught.
One of the goals of the grammar phase is to gain as many words and manage as many concepts as possible.
During the logic phase, the process focuses on reasoning. The logic or dialectic stage would be a student who’s middle school-aged and who is starting to question authority and ideas. During this phase of classical education, a student might start to examine arguments critically and analyze their own. It’s important during this part of the education process to analyze the connections between facts and ideas that are seemingly different, to come to a conclusion of whether something is true or false.
The rhetoric stage is for high school-aged students. Students in this phase should be able to go criticize their work and persuade other people. Students focus on how to defend their own ideas against rebuttals, using what they learned in the logic phase and applying those skills to rhetoric.
3. Secondary Education
In the classical model, secondary education is known as the quadrivium, which means four ways. This includes arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Sometimes architecture is taught, and history is integrated as a way to show context and political development.
4. Classical vs. Modern Education
In modern education, a big part of the focus is on teaching students lists of facts and information. There is an underlying assumption in the approach that all students are the same, and all students perform the same way. In modern education, there’s trust in people and their ideals. Students verify what they learn with standardized tests.
In classical education, by contrast, students learn the tools they need for self-education.
Traditionally, classical education models have an element of religion. There’s an assumption that all students are created in the image of God, with their own strengths and weaknesses. Not all people who use classical education for their children integrate elements of religion, nor do all schools and educational institutions.
5. The Pros and Cons of Classical Education
There are a lot of upsides to a classical education model. First, there is a big focus on reading and especially classical literature. This can help young people learn language skills. The downside of that is that as students get older, reading classical literature may seem too difficult or outdated, so there may be a loss of interest.
An upside is that when children have a classical education background, it gives them a strong basis for going on to pursue higher education. Classical education tends to produce students who are logical and literate. They question the world around them in a way that helps them be a problem-solver.
The classical education method also follows the natural stages of development for children.
Another downside, aside from the difficulty of connecting with classical literature, is that there is still an emphasis on memorization. Students are taught to memorize facts and theories. It’s a rigid system of education, and there are not a lot of opportunities for students or teachers to explore different topics outside of the curriculum.
There’s also not a lot of focus on science and exploration since it is a rigid approach to education, especially early on.
6. The Purpose
If you haven’t already gleaned this, the purpose of classical education is to help students go beyond the what of an idea and think about the why, the how, and the who. This helps to develop analytical thinking skills. It can also be a way to help students develop a moral framework that they live their lives based on.
7. Other Models
If you’re considering the classical model because you want to homeschool your children, there are some other models to compare to as well.
One of these is the Charlotte Mason Method. This is based on a 19th-century homeschool pioneer, Charlotte Mason. This is a Christian method of homeschooling that uses short periods of study paired with things like walking in nature. There’s a big role for reading in this model, especially classics and biographies. The core philosophy is one that’s student-directed and observational.
The Charlotte Mason method borrows elements from the classical method.
There’s also the Montessori method, which was created by an early 20th-century Italian doctor and educator. Her method came from her psychology work with children who had special needs. The Montessori method is humanistic and student-based, using free movement and unstructured blocks of time. Teachers indirectly instruct and use what are called manipulatives like tools and toys, giving students lots of options in how they learn.
Hey welcome to my blog . I am a modern women who love to share any tips on lifestyle, health, travel. Hope you join me in this journey!
Speak Your Mind