What is Classical Education?
We sense there are questions about how classical education differs from traditional public schools. For context, first consider a charter school focused instead on science and technology. Surely traditional schools also teach science, so what is the difference? Likewise with charter schools focused on sports or the arts. Kids enjoy sports and arts in traditional schools as well. So does reading The Little Red Hen or To Kill A Mockingbird in a traditional school make it “classical”? No more than dissecting a starfish makes a school a science academy. The difference is how pervasively a specific focus influences the pedagogy, curriculum and school culture.
Now let's be specific about the classical approach. Classical education is language-focused learning accomplished through words - read, written and spoken - significantly more than other methods, and significantly more than a traditional approach.
Why is this important? Language-learning and image-learning require very different habits of thought. Language requires the mind to work harder. In reading, the brain is forced to translate a symbol (words on the page) into a concept. Images, such as those on videos and television, allow the mind to be passive with the image already delivered. The goal is to teach scholars how to think.
Thus, classical education is reading and writing heavy, but there is actually more structure than that. Classical education applies the “Trivium” in sequencing studies, which consists of the following three stages.
The “Grammar Stage” (roughly TK-5) takes advantage of the young mind’s propensity for absorbing information. During this period, education involves less 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 (Latin), the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics, etc. 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. Middle-school scholars are less interested in finding out facts than in asking “Why?” The second phase of the classical education, the “Logic Stage,” is a time when the child begins to pay attention to cause and effect, to the relationships between different fields of knowledge, to the way facts fit together into a logical framework.
A scholar is ready for the Logic Stage when the capacity for abstract thought begins to mature. During these years, the scholar begins algebra and the study of logic, and begins to apply logic to all academic subjects. The logic of writing, for example, includes paragraph construction and learning to support a thesis; the logic of reading involves the criticism and analysis of texts, not simple absorption of information; the logic of history demands that the scholar find out why the War of 1812 was fought, rather than simply reading its story; the logic of science requires that the child learn the scientific method. Deeper thought is drawn out of scholars using the Socratic Method - or probing, open-ended questions soliciting thoughtful responses from individuals. The whole group benefits and grows in confidence in expression.
The final phase of a classical education, the “Rhetoric Stage,” builds on the first two. At this point, the high school scholar learns to write and speak with force and originality. The scholar of rhetoric applies the rules of logic learned in middle school to the foundational information learned in the early grades and expresses conclusions in clear, forceful, elegant language.
Classical education guides scholars to love that which is true, good, and beautiful. This is done through the extensive study of the liberal arts and the great books - exposing scholars to great ideas and great minds.
The classical education lends itself to a leadership academy beautifully because it is precisely this kind of education that has produced countless great leaders, inventors, scientists, writers, philosophers, theologians, physicians, lawyers, artists, and musicians over the centuries, not the least of which are America’s founding fathers. Add in the lessons of leadership from a global leader in personal and organizational leadership (i.e. Franklin Covey’s Leader In Me program), and our scholars are very likely to have the tools to be successful adults, contributing to our society as competent servant leaders.
(Credit is due to welltrainedmind.com for the great breakdown of the classical education adopted above)