how to find the right classical education curriculum

What is the Trivium? This is the classical education curriculum, which is divided up into three distinct phases. The first phase, also known as the grammar stage, is the equivalent of grades 1 through 6.

Children at this stage in life haven’t fully matured in terms of brain development and cognitive thinking abilities, so the focus is on teaching them concrete facts. The important thing is just making sure they learn facts.

Although some kids this young like to know the whys and hows of everything, their minds are really just equipped to absorb the whats. You can of course explains whys and hows to your child, but the focus is elsewhere in the grammar stage.

The whats are important for creating a foundation for the higher-leveled thinking and philosophical questions of the hows and whys later. Children in the grammar stage simply don’t have the ability to process reason.

This is largely due to their own lack of experience and background knowledge: They don’t yet have the tools to process reason.

This is what makes the first stage in the classical education curriculum so convenient. Although the grammar stage is grounded only in the facts, it creates a foundation for all other forms of learning to take place in the following stages.

All the work in the other two phases requires this firm foundation.

The dialect stage is the second phase in the classical education curriculum. Children are usually ready for this phase between grades 5 and 7.

A noticeable change takes place for a child in this stage as his/her brain development and cognitive skills mature from the concrete to analytical.

When a child moves from stage to stage, the previous methods are not abandoned. The classical education curriculum is cumulative. Analytical though is simply added and developed side by side with concrete learning.

Concrete information learned in the grammar stage focuses on the facts, whereas the facts learned in the dialectic stage focus on the whys and hows. In the dialectic stage, the “why things are the way they are” become important.

The dialect phase sets the stage for the child to apply the facts he or she has already learned, testing to see whether they are actually true. Encouraging this exploration and self-examination is an important step in developing the child’s thinking skills.

In this stage of classical education curriculum, children are introduced to the importance and the need to ask questions, analyze, judge, and examine in a respectful way. There is no need to be disrespectful when asking questions.

When children in this phase start asking questions, teachers and parents can instill positive attitudes by not getting defensive. Setting a positive example helps children understand that you can indeed disagree and still be respectful about it.

The rhetoric stage, or last phase in classical education curriculum, usually begins somewhere around 9th grade and ends with 12th.

Language, literature, math, history, music, philosophy, oratory, writing, and science are subjects that are all commonly taught. This is the arena where all the phases join as one, putting everything into practice.

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