The
Aim of a Classical Liberal Arts Education
Classical
Education attempts to recover and to make available for todays
students the wisdom of traditional educational models reaching back
to the Trivium of the Middle Ages. The medieval TriviumGrammar,
Logic, and Rhetoricdescribes the course by which a child acquires
mastery of a subject. In the Grammar stage (elementary school),
a child focuses on learning factsvocabulary, spelling,
multiplication tables, historical dates, etc.and exercising
the memory by learning poetry by heart. In the Logic stage (the
middle school years), a child explores the relations between factsfor
example, the causes of historical eventsand masters the rules
of logical reasoning. In the Rhetoric stage (the high school years),
the focus is on excellence in both written and spoken expression.
The goal of classical schooling is a graduate who knows a great
deal, who understands what he knows, and who can communicate persuasively
with others.
The
pursuit of excellence in education has long had the goal of producing
men and women intellectually and emotionally able to enter into,
and affect, the world around them.The classical term to refer to
the skills necessary to produce such well-formed individuals is
"liberal arts" - arts that, when mastered, make one free.
"In
every subject
the aim of liberal arts education is to give
the student the principles of the subject studied in such a way
that he will be able to make right judgments about that area of
reality. That is why this kind of education is called 'liberal'
education. Liberal means 'free'; a liberally educated man is a free
man because he is able to direct his own life and is not dependent
upon the judgments or understanding of others."
Laura M. Berquist, Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum