What is a Classical Education? by Susan Wise Bauer

What is a Classical Education?
by Susan Wise Bauer (January 29, 2001)

Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations forWhat is a Classical Education?
by Susan Wise Bauer (January 29, 2001)

Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

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. In the elementary school years -- what we commonly think of as grades one through four -- the mind is ready to absorb information. Children at this age actually find memorization fun. So during this period, education involves not self-expression and self-discovery, but rather the learning of facts. Rules of phonics and spelling, rules of grammar, poems, the vocabulary of foreign languages, the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics -- the list goes on. This information makes up the "grammar," or the basic building blocks, for the second stage of education.

By fifth grade, a child's mind begins to think more analytically.

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