Recently, I was asked to serve on a discussion panel for the local homeschool support group, BCHE. Representing the Classical Christian Method I sat beside 4 other mothers each representing their chosen method of home centered education. I over prepared. We were asked by email to give an overview of our style, talk about the vendors who sell it, show some of the specific materials we use, and tell us why this works for our family. It seemed the other ladies simply shared but of course I had notes to follow to the letter. For several days afterwards I kicked myself around mentally because I should have put down my research and spoke from my heart!
As I listened to moms that use Sonlight, Charlotte Mason, Delight Directed, and Unit Studies I realized Classical Christian Methodology fits with every single one of these styles. Yes, your eyes did not play tricks just now, you read that correctly. How in the world? Classical is rigid and academically strenuous not fun and certainly not directed by the student! Classical has a bad rap in my opinion, but it's really not its fault. We as products of our education look at teaching from our own reference point, and although we want better for our own children and do our best to be innovative and fresh in our approach, we still focus on subjects. Take unit studies for instance, even though everything revolves around a particular theme, we as parents still must make sure we have included math, science, English, writing, reading, etc…. These subjects we teach through the theme.
Classical Christian Home Centered education is not based on subjects, but on teaching the three basic skills of the trivium. The trivium is a Latin word which simply means the three ways or roads. Of course the trivium was completely foreign to me in the beginning as my personal public education and university training was focused on attaining a certain outcome known only to the political forces that drive our public school systems. I was a model robot, programmed to teach students to be model robots but never to think for themselves. That is because we were taught subjects and if you continued into the profession of teaching you were taught how to teach those subjects to your students. I remember taking upper level classes called Teaching Math and Teaching Social Studies in the Classroom. Did these subjects ever cross over? Never, and in fact I remember being frustrated because when subjects did cross the boundary lines I didn't know where to place them in the teacher's lesson plan book. Furthermore, when I finished with my degree, I could teach every subject from kindergarten through eighth grade and somehow managed to do this without ever taking a college level math course! And I was licensed to teach your child!
Teaching the Trivium opens the doors of learning like nothing else can. Dorothy Sayers, a colleague of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien wrote a famous essay in which she states:
For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command. To learn six subjects without remembering how they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh; to have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open door.
Because I understand that teaching the skills of learning enables them to learn any subject to full understanding, I want to teach them not the subject but the skills necessary for them to master that subject. These skills begin with teaching grammar. Not the isolated grammar of my education but the skill of grammar. The grammar of a subject is in fact the unique vocabulary of that subject. It blends beautifully with the elementary years and where children are developmentally. At this stage I am filling their little heads with KNOWLEDGE. I am teaching them facts. I am hanging little knowledge pegs all over their brains.
Teaching students the skill "Dialectic" is to teach them to use logic, think critically, and analyze the pegs of knowledge through the lens of a Biblical worldview. The students have been given the "who, which, and what" of the chosen knowledge and now with this skill are answering the questions "how and why." They are coming into the stage of UNDERSTANDING.
Building on the skill of grammar and dialectic, the skill of rhetoric takes their knowledge and understanding of the subject and teaches them to present and publically defend their understanding with WISDOM. Can you see the correspondence of the historical skills of the trivium to the Biblical prescription for education? Over and over again the scriptures show us the way to teach our children. Successful organizations such as AWANA understand this concept as they focus on Bible memorization through the elementary years. Proverbs 24:3-4 says, "Through wisdom is a house built; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches." This is a true picture of how God enables us as parents to teach our children to know Him and make Him known, which is the true reason for education in the first place.
Often the verses in Deuteronomy 6 are used for parenting. Here God lays out His plan for us to teach our children.
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Aren't these verses a great illustration of the purest form of education? Imagine parents who are able to talk about the commandments of the Lord, to their children because they have the knowledge, the understanding and the rhetorical skills necessary to accomplish this within their families. They KNOW, they UNDERSTAND, and they use WISDOM to make sure their children Love the Lord with all their heart, mind, soul and strength.
This is the big picture for educating my children. This is why in our home we homeschool with Classical Christian methodology. We want to show our children how everything they study ultimately points them to God. That subjects aren't divided into neat little compartments taught separate from each other, but they are to be integrated so as to point back to the God of the Universe.
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