The Classical Education

We've decided to teach Asher using the methods of Classical Education, starting when he's in first grade (age 6). So what exactly does that mean? To explain, here are some excerpts from The Well-Trained Mind, the book that ultimately convinced me to homeschool:

What is classical education?
It is language-intensive -- not image-focused. It demands that students use and understand words, not video images.
It is history-intensive, providing students with a comprehensive view of human endeavor from the beginning until now.
It trains the mind to analyze and draw conclusions.
It demands self-discipline.
It produces literate, curious, intelligent students who have a wide range of interests and the ability to follow up on them.

The classical pattern of the trivium is the three-part process of training the mind.
The first years of schooling are called the grammar stage -- not because you spend four years doing English, but because these are the years in which the building blocks for all other learning are laid, just as grammar is the foundation for language. 
The second phase of the classical education, the logic stage, is a time when the child begins to pay attention to cause and effect, to the relationships among different fields of knowledge, to the way facts fit together into a logical framework.
The final phase of a classical education, the rhetoric stage, builds on the first two. At this point, the high-school student learns to write and speak with force and originality.

A classical education is more than just a pattern of learning, though. First, it is language-focused: learning is accomplished through words, written and spoken, rather than through images (pictures, videos, and television). Why? Language requires the mind to work harder; in reading, brain is forced to translate a symbol (words on the page) into a concept. Images, such as those on videos and television, allow the mind to be passive.
Second, a classical education follows a specific three-part pattern: the mind must be first supplied with facts and images, then given the logical tools for organization of those facts and images, and finally equipped to express conclusions.
Third, to the classical mind, all knowledge is interrelated. Astronomy, for example, isn't studied in isolation; it's learned along with the history of scientific discovery, which leads into the church's relationship to science and from there to the intricacies of medieval church history. The reading of the Odyssey allows the student to consider Greek history, the nature of heroism, the development of the epic, and humankind's understanding of the divine.

A classical education takes history as its organizing outline, beginning with the ancients and progressing forward to the moderns in history, science, literature, art, and music.

The 12 years of education consists of three repetitions of the same four-year pattern: 

1. The ancients (5000 BC - AD 400)
2. The medieval period through the early Renaissance (400-1600)
3. The late Renaissance through the early modern times (1600-1850)
4. Modern times (1850-present)

The child studies these four time periods at various levels -- simple for grades 1 through 4, more difficult in grades 5 through 8 (when the student begins to read original sources), and taking an even more complex approach in grades 9 through 12, when the student works through these time periods using original sources (from Homer to Hitler) and also has the opportunity to pursue a particular interest (music, dance, technology, medicine, biology, creative writing) in depth.


Classical education is, above all, systematic -- in direct contrast to the scattered, unorganized nature of so much secondary education. Rigorous, systematic study has two purposes. Rigorous study develops virtue in the student: the ability to act in accordance to what one knows to be right. Virtuous men or women can force themselves to do what they know is right, even when it runs against their inclinations. Classical education continually asks a student to work against her baser tendencies (laziness or the desire to watch another half hour of TV) in order to reach a goal - mastery of a subject.