“…and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge; and in your knowledge self-control; and in your self-control patience; and in your patience godliness; and in your godliness brotherly kindness; and in your brotherly kindness love.”
(Peter 2, 1:5-7)
We educate our students using the Trivium method, a method that was succesfully used for centuries. We have very small classes (6 to 12 students) and 90-minutes long lessons. These lessons start at 8.00 every day (with a 45-minutes long Class Teacher Time and/or Worship Time), and the final lesson of the day ends either at 14.15 or 16.00. Using this system enables students to have a less varied but thus more focused and in-depth academic day; enables teachers to individually mentor each and every student, help them developing skills; and not least: enables both class teachers and subject teachers to not only teach students but educate them in how to lead a Christian life.
The history of Trivium
The method has a long history. Trivium, together with the later Quadrivium, was the educational method used in Western societies, which gave the world quite a few world-famous scientists. It was first used in ancient Greece several hundred years before the birth of Christ. The method was used in the United States until the early 20th century, but unfortunately, as the “reforms” promoted by John Dewey and Horace Mann became increasingly popular in the 19th century, the Trivium was abandoned.
Due to the general dissatisfaction and discontent surrounding educational systems, it was only a matter of time before someone returned to this well-proven method. In the early 1980s, Pastor Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho, wanted to start a Christian school to provide the best education for his children. As he studied different approaches to teaching, he came across an essay by Dorothy Sayers (C. S. Lewis’s contemporary), entitled “The Lost Tools of Education.” This article outlines the educational situation in the 1940s and highlights the Trivium as an educational reform. Nevertheless, Sayers was pessimistic about change because she feared that no one would be brave enough to revive the method. Wilson knew he had found the educational system he wanted for his children. Together with a few colleagues, he opened Logos School in Idaho, which became the starting point for the modern classical Christian school movement.
The movement quickly outgrew itself and spread beyond Logos School. Today, the Association of Classical Christian Schools has more than 100 member schools (Veritas Collegiate Academy is also a member of the association), many of which use the classical Trivium method in order to help the Christian West rediscover its own path in education.
The methods of Trivium
The Trivium method consists of three parts.
Level of Grammar: The grammar level lasts from preschool to approximately sixth grade. During this stage, children learn the basics, which form the framework of their knowledge. They are introduced to reading and writing, basic linguistic and grammatical concepts, and many other fundamental facts, and from the second grade onwards, they focus on Latin. Students sing and recite rhymes and verbs in class, which they really enjoy at this age, so the lexical material is memorized in a playful way with the help of mnemonics. At this stage, the focus is on the questions: who, what, where, and when.
Level of Dialectic (or Logic): This level lasts from 6th to 9th grade and focuses primarily on systematizing the knowledge acquired so far. As students complete the Grammar level, they enjoy repetition-based learning less and less and become more and more curious. At this age, the basic attitude towards the world and learning is that students question the facts they have learned, so we teach them how to ask questions, how to seek objective truth and their own truth. The leading discipline at this level is logic. While at the Grammar level, students encounter a wealth of facts without recognizing their logical connections, at the Dialectic level, students learn to recognize the logical connections between each element of knowledge learned in the previous stage. At this stage, they seek answers to the questions of: why and how.
Level of Rhetoric: Children reach the Rhetoric level at the end of secondary school (grades 10–12). At this level, they learn how to express themselves in writing and in speech, how to represent their position authentically, using classical rhetorical tools supported by arguments, so that not only their thoughts but also their expression is logical, consistent, convincing, and refined. By the end of the Rhetoric level, students will have become versatile, open-minded young people with a clear set of values and opinions, who are able to communicate their beliefs and knowledge in a clear and convincing manner.
Summary
Level of Grammar: students learn basic facts and acquire fundamental knowledge.
Level of Logic: students learn the logical connections between these facts.
Level of Rhetoric: students learn to express these logical connection in a sound and convincing manner.
