What's a Liberal Art and Where Can I Buy One? The Trivum

In a case of potentially confusing terminology, classical education is sometimes called a liberal arts education. This is confusing for a couple of reasons. Reason 1. all classical education is technically a liberal arts education, but not all programs that describe themselves as liberal arts programs are classical. This stems from Reason 2. A lot of people don't actually know what the liberal arts are. There are seven liberal arts, but in this post, I will only go over the basic definition of liberal art as a term, and I'll only go over the first three (the linguistic arts of the Trivium). We'll hit the last four next time.

The Liberal Arts

In one sense the answer to the question 'what is a liberal art?' is a relatively simple one. Liberal stems from a Latin word that means 'Free,' and Art stems from a Latin word that means something closer to the English word for 'skill' or 'skilled work.' So, a liberal art is literally a skill needed by a person to function as a free man in society. Remember from a previous post that formal education used to be reserved for society's elite. So a liberal arts education was one designed for men who were not only not slaves, but who were meant to lead their people. Over time the word 'liberal' began to be interpreted in a less literal sense, and now when people talk about the liberal arts they speak of them as the skills that a human being needs to BE truly free. So, the liberal arts over time have shifted from the skills that it was proper for freemen to learn because they were in the class of freemen, and now they are understood as disciplines that create a spiritual and mental freedom in those who study them.

So, that's what the term liberal art means and how it's generally interpreted. There's a little more to it than that, however. According to a tradition that's been handed down since the Middle Ages there are seven liberal arts divided into two categories. There are the three arts of the Trivium (tri - three, vium - way, path, road) and the four arts of the Quadrivium (quad - four, vium - way, path, road). This is kind of my take on them, but the Trivium and the Quadrivium both represent the two different kinds of language that humans use to understand reality.

The Trivium

The three arts of the Trivium are the skills that have to do with human language and our ability to communicate with one another. These arts are Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. 

Grammar

Grammar is the art of understanding how language works on a basic level. What are the parts of human language? How do we combine words to make sentences? What are the different kinds of sentences? How does word choice affect meaning? Can we put words in any order we want or is there a point where certain combinations of words destroy coherent meaning? Vocabulary. As anyone who has attempted to learn a new language knows, in order to communicate effectively a person not only needs to have a sufficient number of words from the different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, etc.), but needs to know how to put those words together in ways that make sense. The sentence "The black dog ate the delicious meal" does not mean the same thing as "The delicious meal ate the black dog." Grammar tells us why. Grammar also tells us why the sentence "Jack gave me a cake." does mean the same thing as "Me Jack a cake gave." Grammar, then, is the ability to understand what language truly is, its ins and outs, the way it works.

Logic

The next art of the Trivium is Logic. Logic takes language and seeks to make it say things that make

sense. Logic is where language tends to look a lot like math. Logic tells us why statements like "A tiger is a cat, but a tiger is not a cat." are nonsense. Grammatically there's nothing wrong with a sentence like that, but it breaks the logical rule of non-contradiction, which says that a statement cannot be true and false at the same time. Logic is a very rigid art. It has a lot of rules and even formulas where variables show the validity and invalidity of certain statements. For example, a classic logical argument is a modus ponens (method of affirming) which says:

p q

p 

 q

 Or in language, If 'P' is true then 'Q' is also true. 'P' is in fact true, therefore 'Q' is also true. P and Q are variables. I told you it was just like math. So, we could substitute actual phrases in for the variables. For example, "If I see a cat then I will eat ice cream. I see a cat! Therefore, I will eat ice cream." Logic is incredibly dry and if it's possible even less interesting to people than grammar is, so it gets skipped a lot. I don't think it should be skipped, but I'll make an apology for logic another time.  For our purposes here, Logic is the art of right thinking, its the art of sense as opposed to nonsense. 

Rhetoric

On to the final member of the Trivium, the sexy one - Rhetoric! Rhetoric gets a bad rap. I mean, honestly, all of the Trivium does. grammar and logic are considered boring, and rhetoric is associated with politicians and therefore has come to be associated with lies and emptiness. That's not really what rhetoric is meant to be. rhetoric is the art of persuasion, it is the art of using language to convince

people to do, or say, or believe something. It seems obvious that rhetoric can easily be abused. However, some of the oldest defenders of rhetoric (i.e. Aristotle) made sure to insert the caveat that REAL rhetoric was concerned with persuading people to do something good or to believe something true. 

Rhetoric is often considered a sort of capstone art because it is meant to combine everything one has mastered from the art of grammar and logic and use them toward the end of persuasion. The best rhetoricians are the ones who know what they want to say, who know how to say it, can say it in a way that makes good sense, and finally can say it in a way that's interesting and moving. It's the last part, interesting and moving, that's unique to rhetoric and that gives rhetoric its unique power.

Conclusion

The Trivium, then, are the human arts. They originate in our humanity, they are unique to us, and they belong to us. There is nothing in nature that can replicate these. If you want to take a theological view they stem from our participation in the image of God. God is a God of language. He gave us reason, which is unique in the natural world (reason being here identified with the ability to think about things beyond our immediate physical needs and desires, the ability to dive into the mysteries of our existence and purpose), and He gave us the ability to take what's inside our heads in all of its complexity and to place it into the heads of other people. Human language is incredible and our ability to use it is an incredible power. The story of Babel illustrates this. Human beings, using language, made themselves so powerful that God, for the sake of their salvation so that they would not orchestrate their own destruction through their hubris, had to confuse and break human language. 

God speaks to us using grammar, logic, and rhetoric. By placing the story of human salvation into a human language He made it possible, through translation, for anyone to understand deep spiritual mysteries. He made His mind and heart known to us. Likewise, in His image, we use language to bear ourselves to one another. Men cannot be truly free unless they can escape from their own minds and connect with other members of their race. We do this with language, with the three arts of the Trivium. There's no denying that language as a human power is incredibly dangerous and easy to abuse, but when language is oriented toward truth, beauty, and goodness it truly shows the best of us. 

Find Part Two here

Sources

If you're interested in reading more on the Liberal Arts or on the Trivium specifically I recommend the following sources (most of these can be found for free online): 

• Institutes of Oratory by Quintillian. If you want to know not only what these arts are in a lot more detail, at least how they were traditionally considered, but also how they were taught you must read Qunitillian. Quintillian is still used as a model in Neo-Classical schools.
• The Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Capella. This is a fun resource because Capella explains what the arts are in an allegory. The character Philology, or the human intellectual life, marries the god Mercury. The seven Liberal Arts visit her on her wedding day to explain their gifts and to offer themselves to her as her handmaidens.
• Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning and On The Soul by Cassiodorus. This one is nice because he provides pretty small descriptions that are easy to understand.
• Etymologies by Isidore of Seville. This one is longer and more complex for those really interested in diving in. 

Back to Basics - Classical Education Isn't Ancient Education. A Hot Take.

Today is the first of the Back to Basics series where I attempt to share the knowledge and insights I've gained from nearly a decade of asking over and over again 'what is classical education actually?' And I've decided to start with A Hot Take. 

One of the very first pithy descriptions I heard about the modern classical education movement was that it was the way everyone was taught until a hundred years ago. This definition has some very clear benefits: It's intriguing, it brings the weight of tradition and historicity to bear on the mind, and best of all, it's short. Another one I heard recently along the same lines was that classical education was not a new trend. Even shorter! Unfortunately, both of these definitions fall short, mostly because they're not super-duper true. They're a little bit true, but the direct ties they claim to have between the ancient past and the present are... overstated. 

I think that this might be one of the more controversial takes I have within the classical community. The idea that classical education is not just participating or continuing an ancient idea of education, but actually is that idea of education reborn is pretty ingrained in some parts of the community (you didn't know that there was a classical community, but boy is there. Remind me to do a series one day on all the different kinds of classical education and how they fight each other.). I don't think, however, that there's really an honest way to truly claim that classical education is anything other than a uniquely modern educational movement that began truly in the 1950s. 

I tried to write up the history of western education and realized that there's no real way to do that in a single blog post. If I'm devoted to one thing it's not getting too long or academical. So, I'm going to cheat a bit. I think that understanding how education and our understanding of education have evolved over the past two millennia has been incredibly helpful for me as a classical educator. It helped me understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. So I think diving into what education was in those eras is really important. However, I think that a summary of the goals of education in those eras will be enough to show for now that classical education is a fundamentally different enterprise than education was in the distant past.  

I think that looking at who education was for in the past is almost enough to support my claim. For example, in the ancient Greek and Roman world education was almost solely the purview of wealthy freemen. In medieval Europe, it was almost solely reserved for the clergy class in the early middle ages, the aristocrats, and the clergy as the centuries rolled on, and finally, by the time you inch toward the Renaissance education has certainly expanded its scope but is still reserved for the clergy, aristocrats, and nuvo riche middle-class professionals. The Enlightenment era stayed pretty much the same, offering education mainly to those who could afford it, however, the increased availability of books allowed many men from lower classes to start sneaking into the educated elite. They had to really want it though. It's not until the late eighteenth century and really the nineteenth century that people felt like the lowest classes should maybe have the opportunity to learn anything in a formal educational setting, and it's not until the twentieth century that some countries, including the United States, made education compulsory for everyone regardless of class. 

History shows us that there was a trend over time toward making educational opportunities increasingly available to all men regardless of class, station, income, etc. However, it's impossible to overstate how radical compulsory education is in the grand scheme of history. This is not the idea that educational opportunities should be available to everyone, which was the historical trend, but that everyone must receive the same basic education without reference to desire or necessity. 

There's a point to all of this, though. Who education is for reveals a lot about what the goal of education is. The ancient world, ancient Greece and Rome, reserved education for the social elite because education was meant to create statesmen. A peasant farmer didn't need to know how to read or write. He didn't need to know any mathematics beyond the basics that are evident to reason and sense. He didn't need to know how to speak well in front of a crowd. He needed to know how to plow, how to sow and reap. (It is true that the Roman Republic prized itself on having a ruling class who were down-to-earth, think of the gentleman farmer Cincinnatus, but it's important to note that Cincinnatus was not a peasant farmer who became a politician, he was a wealthy elite who preferred farming to politicking.) Education to craft the small class of ruling elite does not sound like any educational goal one would hear today, even in a classical school.

Look then at the Middle Ages. Which class was the most educated? The clergy class. In the early Middle Ages, it would not have been at all unusual to find members of the nobility who were illiterate.  As time went on, the noble classes would begin to educate their children, but if one looks at the conversations surrounding the purpose of education in the Middle Ages they have a decidedly religious flavor. Theology became the queen of all academic disciplines, all other areas of learning were her handmaidens. The purpose of education then? To better contemplate God and to better understand the Christian religion. This will probably strike a chord with those who work at Christian classical schools, but again it's important to remember that this view of education still very much existed within a class system. It was not for everyone, especially as the clergy became inundated with the second and third sons of noble families in an effort avoid inheritance issues. 

The later Middle Ages and the Renaissance took a bit more of a utilitarian approach. Machiavelli might be the best person to look at here. The clergy were educated, the nobles were educated, but an increasing number of former peasants (really skilled artisans and merchants) were becoming incredibly wealthy. This new 'middle class' latched onto education, forming the majority of lawyers and doctors. What was education for now? Power. Education served to divide those with means from those without. This is admitedly a necessary oversimplification of a complicated era, but the general point still holds - who education is for on a practical level tells us a lot about what many people thought it was for. Again, I don't think many classical educators would agree with the principle that the point of education is to maintain or gain social and political clout. Even if we look at the humanist movement, which would have claimed that education served to unlock human potential, it is important to remember that human potential is reserved for those who have the monetary means to attain it. There was not a lot of educational philanthropy going on before the 19th century.

As we move into the Enlightenment, education was meant to produce a gentleman. Class divides were just beginning to erode. A gentleman in this era could be self-made, and you have men like Jefferson writing about schools that would be populated by those with the most merit, regardless of class. These schools are still not for everyone. The idea of class based on historical title or wealth was becoming unpopular, but men like Jefferson weren't advocating for the abolition of class or even radical equality. They were pushing for a class-based society based on merit. A meritocracy. This is closer to what classical schools do, but it's still not really what the goal of most classical schools is. Most classical educators would push back at the idea that the best education should be reserved for the best. 

That brings us almost to where we are now. More democratic minds prevailed. Education has become compulsory from ages five to sixteen. Why? What are we attempting to do? We're not attempting to craft a ruling class. Compulsory education makes that impossible. Ruling classes are small, and even in a country where even the children of former slaves can now and do sit in the highest courts of power, an educational system that serves all men cannot focus on creating political leaders. In the same vein, a public education system in a pluralistic society cannot focus on creating Christian clergy. Even if all students were practitioners of Christianity, education specifically designed to create a priest class would serve only the needs of the few for whom that is a calling. 

In our society, you do see thinkers who view the educational system as a tool to wield power - political and social power. The proper educational training allows one to join an inner circle of our intellectual and political betters. Education itself is a tool to be wielded in the pursuit of this power. You see this in the progressive movement in the nineteenth century, with the communist takeover of the teacher schools in the 1960s, and in the leftist movements of the present day. Classical education usually unequivocably sets itself against this view of education.

So, where does this leave us? What is classical education? It's not the way everyone was taught until a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago everyone was not taught. It is new. It has to be. Classical education is not a useful enterprise in the way people typically mean useful. It certainly can and does provide an excellent education for those who will rule us, both politically and religiously, but the production of ruling classes is not its goal. It is a powerful education because it is centered on the pursuit of truth, but the seeking of power for its own sake is not its goal. Classical education is not old, but it is traditional. Because classical education exists in a world where education is compulsory its goal must be universal. At bottom, I think, if you speak to most classical educators and most people who think about what classical education is for, it comes to this: Classical education seeks to create rational and moral persons. Almost every person has the capacity to be rational to one degree or another. Almost every person has the capacity to be moral to one degree or another. A universal education's goal must be universal.

In some ways, modern classical education is superior to the historical kinds of education from which it stems. The idea that all persons are worthy of the opportunity of developing all aspects of their humanity is an excellent one. The recognition of the fact that all students are not just minds but also souls is not one that is unique to classical education, but classical education's synthesis of modern democratic notions with traditional morality is laudable. It's a kind of education created in a modern world to be used in modern schools which are fundamentally different from their ancient counterparts. Its form and its goals are modern (and we must be careful not to automatically equate modern with bad in a sort of reverse chronological snobbery), but it does retain a connection to the past through its understanding of what a good man is. 

Classical education is, in a sense, the product of evolution. It is not ancient education but it is descended from historical impulses that have been working themselves out for over two thousand years. It retains vestiges from the older models that preceded it, but it has adapted itself for the world in which it finds itself. 

So, what is classical education? It is the product of two thousand years of educational practice working itself out in the minds of educators long dead and in the policies of societies that have come and gone. It is an animal whose ancestors we can trace back in the fossil record, related to the dead, but better for living.

Back to Basics - What is Classical Education?

 I recently attended a professional development conference for educators who have experience teaching at classical schools. Despite the collective experience in the room, the first two sessions, totaling over three hours, were devoted to an attempt to define classical education. I won't dwell on the eye-rolls and mild agitation of the more seasoned classical teachers, but will instead offer an explanation as to why basically everywhere people go in the classical education world people feel the need over and over to try to explain what classical education is. The answer is very simple - no one, including the people giving their definitions, knows. 

Thank you for your time, you've been a wonderful audience. 

Ok, in all seriousness though, in all my time as a classical educator I have never heard two people give the same explanation or definition of classical education. I've heard it described as, "the way everyone was educated until one hundred years ago," "a distinctive education based on the Greek and Roman tradition," "An education that produces good men who speak well," "an education that shapes the thoughts and pleasures of its students toward the Good, the True, and the Beautiful,"  "An education that produces joy and wonder and creates students who are a light to those around them," or "an education that leads students toward Truth, Goodness, and Beauty and seeks to pass on the soul of a society from one generation to the next." I actually heard all of those different definitions last week. There were twice as many as which were floated, but honestly, I got bored and stopped writing them down. You feel like you know what it is yet? I know my struggle has always been that these so-called definitions that people frequently float have no shortage of jargon but are somewhat lacking in actual substance. 

So, how, then, are schools able to describe themselves as classical, to claim that they're providing a classical education if there's not a clear sense of what a classical education actually is? I've sort of discovered that when most people talk about classical education, they're not really talking about a real pedagogical thing. They're more talking about a sort of pedagogical zeitgeist, a feeling, a movement.

 

Over the next few weeks, I'd like to explore some of the ideas, methods, and courses that tend to be shared by schools that call themselves classical. It should be noted, however, that because there's not an actual clear-cut definition of classical education, there's not an actual set of rules or pedagogical prescriptives that can be produced and pointed to, that the list I'll be exploring is built on generalizations and tendencies within the so-called classical community. Not every school or co-op will do everything listed, and that's ok. 

So, what makes a school 'classical?'

According to my observations, a classical school tends to, in broad strokes: 

• Connect itself to a perception of a more moral and more academically rigorous past
• Describe itself as a liberal arts institution
• Require its students to learn Latin
• Use older books and use primary texts as its main teaching tools
• Focus on producing students who can use language well

Over the next five weeks, we'll look at each one of these:

1.  Is classical education really the way everyone was educated until a hundred years ago? Here
2. What is a liberal art, and where can I buy one? Part One, Part Two
3. What is the point of learning a dead language (no, really, what is the point)? 
4. Should we only read things by dead people?  
5. And finally, Who is the 'good man speaking well?'

I Can Classical... And You Can Too

I’m a classical educator, I guess. I never set out to be one. I was originally going to study and teach philosophy at the university level. Or if that didn't work out, I was going to get married and volunteer at a zoo. However, my senior year of undergrad I realized that the plan I had crafted for my future had become intolerable to me. I was a philosophy major, and while philosophy texts were fun to read when you could understand them, philosophers were no fun to talk to (you all know what I mean). I could no longer imagine spending the rest of my life trapped in conversations about the place that quantum mechanics held in the debate about the B theory of time. Also, it turned out that zoos wouldn't let you volunteer to just hang out with the animals without some kind of useful degree in biology or exotic veterinary science So, what was I to do?

A friend conveniently mentioned to me that fateful December that it was possible to teach in a classical charter school without an educational degree. I figured that could do that for a year while I reevaluated. And here I am, seven years later, still reevaluating. I fell into the world of classical education, despite never having received one myself. I’ve even been ‘converted’ to its methods and ideologies so far as I or anyone really understands them. I like teaching, and if test scores mean anything (which is debatable), I’m pretty good at it. I still feel a lot of times, however, that I’m just kind of floating aimlessly down a path I sort of fell into.

I know that classical ed. has no shortage of defenders, most of whom are far more eloquent than I am, and honestly, I’m not really interested in defending the style. For one thing, it’s hard to defend something that barely has a definition. For another thing, classical education has become something of a fad in recent years. The amount of metaphorical ink that has been spilled describing, and defining, and defending the style is literally astronomical.

So I’m left with a problem: I’m a child of the internet age and I fit the type well. I have no real skills or interesting hobbies – I’ve finished one cross-stitch project, I’ve knitted half of a scarf, and I draw badly, so I can’t really call myself a crafter. I say that my hobby is reading when asked, but by that I mean that I liked to read when I was younger and now I binge-watch Netflix, listen to podcasts while I drive, and listen to one audiobook a month on audible. I’m overeducated and have a masters in classical education, so I guess that in the world of credentialism, I’m qualified to talk about something. I don’t have Facebook, Instagram, or even TikTok - I got rid of all my social media accounts - and I’ve never been very good or consistent about journaling. So, now I’m stuck with the only philosophical question that really matters – if I don’t post my thoughts on the internet for strangers to read, does my life have any real meaning or value at all?

This post was meant to act as a sort of ethos for myself, as well as to provide a sort of vision or mission for this blog. So far I hope that I have shown that I am not really the most qualified person in the world to talk about anything with any sort of authority. I fell into this life by accident. I’ve been trying to figure out what everything is as I go, and I’d like to invite you on this journey with me as I attempt to discover answers to the perennial questions surrounding classical education.

What is a liberal art? Where can you find a quadrivium? Did Dorothy Sayers ever find her tools of learning?  Does anyone actually know what classical education is anyways? I’ve been a classical educator for a laughable seven years, but if these past years of exercising copious amounts of unearned confidence have taught me one thing, it’s that with a little bit of humility and a lot a bit of patience (and some research) I can classical… and you can too. 

The Quadrivium As Linguistic Arts

My third-grade teacher had to bribe us in order to get us to memorize the multiplication tables. For every table you mastered, you won one part of an ice cream party. The ones got you a bowl, the twos a spoon. If you proved proficient in the threes you won a scoop of cheap vanilla ice cream, the fours got you two, and so on until, once you had demonstrated perfect proficiency of the twelve times, you had amassed a topping laden sundae that was the stuff ten year old's dreams were made of. I coveted that sundae. Unfortunately, my sugar-coated fever dreams were dashed. I believe I earned up to chocolate syrup but was unable to progress satisfactorily past the sixes. If I am being perfectly honest, I still can not. 

As I progressed in my mathematical education, I found myself becoming increasingly bored and frustrated in turns. Long division was difficult, algebra, with its insidious introduction of abstract alphabetical symbols and values on either side of the equal sign, frequently reduced me to tears. I discovered my spatial reasoning issues in geometry, and I can boast that I never passed a single calculus test. 

My father, a nuclear engineer who crafted new equations for his doctoral thesis, would attempt to help me. These tutoring sessions would nearly always end, not in new understanding, but in shouting and tears. The best I could expect from my teachers was enough help to get me to pass classes with a B. It was perhaps inevitable that I would come to the conclusion that I was 'not a math person,' and that 'math was stupid anyway."

Far from being an isolated incident, I find as an educator that many of my students are undergoing similar mathematical experiences. I teach an honors section of eighth-grade students. They're bright children. They are incredibly gifted in nearly every single class, taking to new subjects, information, and skills with relative ease. And yet, mathematically they struggle. One girl came to class with a literal spring in her step. As she flounced through the door she greeted her peers and gaily announced that she and her father had engaged in a shouting match the previous evening as he attempted to help her with her mathematics. The others laughed. Far from being horrified or confused at her struggle, they revealed that they were also part of the culture of mathematical ineptitude. 

Not every student struggles to grasp mathematics, but those who show a natural talent for the subject have become increasingly rare. It's tempting to look at these academic unicorns as opposed to the rest of the unwashed masses and conclude that there are some people who are simply 'mathematically minded.' The best that the rest of us can hope for is to learn our basic sums and rely on calculators to do anything more complicated than single-digit multiplication for us. 

However, if one looks beyond the borders of the U.S. it becomes clear that the issue is not necessarily that there are only a very few men and women who are capable of mastering the mathematical discipline with any sort of competence. Students who live in countries that are not nearly as prosperous as the United States routinely outperform our students in mathematics by an alarming margin. A 2018 PISA study showed that United States (37/78) children test well below children from countries such as China (1/78), Canada (12/78), and even Hungary (34/78) ¹. Perhaps the issue is not that there are 'math people' and everyone else. Perhaps the issue is that American educators have forgotten what math is and other cultures haven't.

I identify myself as part of the American classical education movement. In classical education circles there's a lot of talk about returning to a 'liberal arts' education. What people usually mean when they say this is that children should read old books that comprise a made-up entity called the Western Canon and learn Latin. It is almost entirely centered on a medieval concept called the Trivium. 

Because the pedagogical tools modern classical educators use are unfamiliar to the vast majority of the citizenry, I'll attempt to offer some basic definitions of the relevant terms. When classical educators reference a liberal arts education they are referring to the traditional seven liberal arts classed into two groups - the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The Trivium refers to the three arts Grammar (the art of symbol creation and combination), Logic (the art of reason), and Rhetoric (the art of expressing oneself persuasively). The Quadrivium refers to the four arts of Arithmetic (the art of number theory), Music (the art of number theory applied to time), Geometry (the art of spatial theory), and Astronomy (the art of spatial theory practically applied). These are not definitions that are set in stone. There is a messy and dizzying debate within the classical community about the precise nature of each of these arts, their importance, how they should be understood and taught, if they should be taught, etc. 

The point I'm attempting to make, however, is that classical schools tend to focus on the Trivium - Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, placing a larger emphasis on the subjects that seem to apply to these easily - namely Literature, History, Art, and Latin. The Quadrivial arts tend to be underemphasized with mathematics and the sciences treated like embarrassing bastard children. Many classical schools simply seem not to know what to do with them. 

Classical schools may produce better test scores in mathematics than other public educational models, I am not sure. If they do, however, I would not be convinced that this was not a happy accident - that by teaching certain subjects well, the mental acumen needed to have some success in the quadrivial arts bleeds over. 

I have recently experienced a kind of revelation that has made me reevaluate my juvenile attitude toward mathematics. I have long suspected that the mathematical arts are not a waste of time, and may, perhaps, even have some value inherent in themselves. I have also come to believe that the liberal arts, all of the liberal arts, are necessary in order to create men and women who have free minds. I have struggled, however, to understand how math fits into the creation of a free and happy man. The arts of the Trivium seem obvious. Understanding how to speak well and think well can obviously help a person to avoid being taken in by jargon and propaganda. Written and verbal language can also be used to persuade one of the truth, to debate and explore the subjects that define our civilization and to some extent out humanity. They can be used to communicate deep and meaningful truths about the nature of reality and our experience of it. My understanding of the Quadrivium, on the other hand, has been hampered, not only by my deep ignorance of the subjects themselves, but by my inability to understand what they truly are.

I cannot, therefore, credit myself with this insight, if indeed it is any sort of insight at all. If there is any truth in it, it did not come from me. The Biblical picture of reality, given in the creation account, then Genesis 1:3 is the most profound statement in the whole of human history as regards our understanding of the nature of reality: "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." Creation was accomplished through Language. 

Now, no one should suppose that the language God used in the act of creation was anything like the verbal language we use to speak with one another, to express our thoughts, ideas, and feelings. How did God communicate Being? I do not think that we will ever truly know what exactly constitutes divine language. However, God in His graciousness allows us to understand something of what it must have been like through mathematics.  I do not think that this is a new idea. I am well aware that as far back as Pythagoras number was associated with the divine. Men like Kepler and Newton knew that God spoke about His universe through the language of mathematics.

What I want to offer is this: The classical movement, in its attempts to reunify knowledge, has struggled to articulate a philosophy of education that truly unites learning into a cohesive unit. Their issue is that, for many, they still see the arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium as functionally different rather than facets of one Master Art. 

The Trivium and Quadrivium are both one half of the way human beings are able to understand and interact with Truth. Reality can only be understood by human beings through language, because creation was, at bottom, a linguistic act. It is our view of what language is that is far too narrow. The Trivium and Quadrivium cannot be divided into the linguistic arts and the mathematical arts. Written expression, verbal expression, and mathematical expression are all aspects of one divine Language. Our troubles understanding this stem from our finite natures. We are not God. We are contrained by the fall, by sin, by the inherently limited nature of our own being. Even still, we are inherently linguistic creatures. We can only understand reality through language.

All of the Liberal Arts represent ways in which human beings can master language. The Trivium contains the arts that give humans mastery over moral and relational reason and by extension human speech. Although it seems limited now, it is possible that human speech once had godlike power. In the wake of Babel and the intervening linguistic corruptions of thousands of years, we will never know for certain. However, there is still great power in human speech for good. God used human speech when he sent his prophets to declare His kingdom and to call men to repentance. He demonstrated this power in His own person through the incarnation of Christ. There is also, however, power in the spoken language for great evil. The devil used speech to tempt Eve to sin. History is littered with tyrants and demagogues who seduced whole countries to great evil using spoken language. The arts of the Trivium are truly human arts. They belong to us. They are limited in the ways that we are limited and they are corruptible in the ways that we are corruptible.

The language of the Quadrivium, however, is of a different kind. This mathematical language seems less corrupted and more universal than the linguistic arts of the Trivium. Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric give us mastery of the language of man. Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy allow us to speak the language of the universe. 

I do not know to what extent this language, in the hands of man, is corrupted and corruptible, but it seems to me mathematical language is not inherent to man. Instead, man must learn to discern and understand mathematical language as if it were a language one had known as a child but had forgotten through years of disuse. 

If, then, this is the case, let the student master the spoken, human word, but do not allow him to neglect the language of the stars. Mathematics is not a mere series of numbers and equations and theorems but is a linguistic expression of the mind of God- a reverberating echo from the beginning of time. The Word crying "Let there be Light."

¹https://factsmaps.com/pisa-2018-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-mathematics-science-reading/

Classical Education - Ancient Answers for Modern Problems

          If you do a quick Google search for the term ‘Classical Education’ you will be flooded with links to various forums, curriculum companies, and blogs giving advice on how to best practice the system. The modern classical education movement, an educational method rooted in the traditions of the medieval university system, is enjoying a resurgence of popularity today. It bills itself as an answer to the crisis in which the public education system finds itself.

I am something of a unicorn in the public education system. I am a state certified teacher who teaches classically. I don’t teach to our state test (I don’t even mention it until the day before they take it, and they still do amazing). My students read great works of literature, we have Socratic seminars, memorize and recite poetry, engage in debate and public forums, and learn about things like logical syllogisms and ancient rhetoric. What’s more, I even teach in a public classical school! And yet, in my own sphere, the majority of my colleagues, administrators, superintendents, and board members are ignorant of or hostile to the aims of classical education (for those wondering how this can be, I work in a public charter school owned by a parent company. The CEO of our company has a classical vision, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in the company shares this, and in fact, many don’t).

 In professional teaching circles there is a doubling down against methods of teaching or ideas about education that go against whatever passes for the professional consensus, and there is a reluctance to admit that education needs to change at a fundamental level. If you ask most public school professional educators today what classical education is you'll most likely get blank stares. If you do get a reaction, it is likely to be hostile, ill-informed, or both. In the minds of many state certified teachers, classical education is associated with rote-memorization (a Bad thing), teaching out of textbooks, and learning that is derived primarily from the works and ideas of white, European, Christian men (another Bad thing).   

However, many normal people (read, not professional teachers) have lost confidence in this ‘Traditional’ model of education (educational methods developed in the 1970’s).  According to a Gallup poll, in 1973 nearly 60% of the American people had a great deal of confidence in the American education system, while less than 10% had little confidence. As the years have gone on there has been a dramatic shift in people’s perception of American education. The percentage of people who have high confidence in our education system has suffered steady decline, while the number of people who have low confidence in our system has continued to rise.

(Gallup poll) (Jack Schneider/Gallup)

Because of this loss of confidence, many educational alternatives have been developed and sought. This can be seen in the rise of the charter school movement, the increase in private schools, and the boom of the home school community. In recent years the alternative education movement has tended to turn more and more to the past – seeking better teaching methods and increased educational quality in the Classical Education movement.

          The world of education is in crisis – even if it is only a crisis in confidence. This blog is my letter to the professional educational community. It’s time to start teaching students how to think logically and critically, and not how to test. It’s time to stop focusing so much on what is relevant or useful and focus on what is timeless and valuable. It’s time to stop trying to create good citizens and start working together with families and communities to create good individuals. Modern public education is philosophically opposed in its methods and curriculum to these goals, and yet many individual teachers understand that the goal of education is to help immature people become good and decent human beings. Traditional education can’t do that. It’s time to give classical a try.