Classical education was banished from our public schools years ago, but some private schools and homeschools continue to tenaciously hang onto it because it is a time-proven method of bringing up a well-educated child. The classical model revolves around the natural growth of children, honoring the stages of understanding and ability through which children progress.
Dorothy Sayers, a British author who died in 1957 and is famous for her mystery novels and lectures, wrote an essay called “The Lost Tools of Learning.” You can find the text and audio of her essay in various places online. I found a good reference here: https://ridgelightranch.com/lost_tools_of_learning_sayers/
In the essay, Sayers advocates classical education above more modern approaches. “The modern boy and girl are certainly taught more subjects,” she noted, “but does that always mean that they actually know more?” She lamented how debaters of her time often proved themselves incapable of properly reasoning through issues. In short, critical thinking is fast becoming scarce. People cannot properly define terms. They speak past one another while remaining confused as to why the cannot communicate effectively.
Sayers saw that “young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected) but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves.” In other words, modern education does not turn out young men and women who know how to learn for themselves.
Is it any wonder that so many today just accept what “the professionals” or “the scientists” conclude? They have been taught that they should listen to the elites, but they have not been taught how to critically evaluate what the elites have to say. This is how we have a populace who have lived three years now in fear of a virus that is not extremely more dangerous than influenza. Who evaluated the CDC’s statistics on the number of COVID deaths by age group? How many calculated their own personal risks and made decisions based on their own studies? According to Sayers, “they are prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.”
Even more important, we must think critically about spiritual and religious matters. We should evaluate what religious leaders direct, what the instructors push, what the teachers encourage. The Jews of Jesus’ day had choices to make in regard to their spiritual leaders. The Pharisees pushed the people hard, insisting they follow a large body of laws in addition to the Law of Moses, and many, to their own detriment, submitted to the harsh standards. Jesus would not submit, and he taught his disciples also to not submit to the rules and standards of men with no real spiritual authority. We must be able to distinguish between “thus saith the Lord” and the traditions of men.
How do we teach our children to think?
As I began, the classical model of education is an excellent tool to teach our kids (and everyone else) critical thinking—it teaches us not only facts but also how to learn what we need to know. It comprises three basic stages, and classical educators summarize them as the Trivium and categorize them as Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric.
Grammar Stage
Children pass through the Grammar Stage most naturally in their earliest years of life, roughly up until about age 9 or 10, so it would coincide with our modern idea of grades 1–4. In this stage, the child soaks in facts about the world around him, memorization comes easily, and he enjoys repetition and retelling his newly-found knowledge. This is the time to fill our children with thousands of facts they will later find useful. Have them memorize math facts: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Teach them to recognize and name the continents, countries, oceans, and rivers. Have them memorize the list of Presidents and major historical anchors.
Kids in the Grammar Stage need to hear all the Bible stories, Old and New Testaments. They should memorize names and events. They should commit Bible verses to memory. Often, songs and rhymes help them trap the information solidly in their amazing brains. And don’t think of Theology as one of several subjects your child should study, but as the Master Discipline. Sayers says, “theology is the mistress-science, without which the whole educational structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis.”
Dialectic Stage
As they grow older, kids naturally begin to ask more questions to know why things are the way they are. We can roughly parallel this learning stage with grades 5–8. They become more argumentative—but that is not always bad. We just need to guide them in how to argue properly and respectfully. They have arrived at the Dialectic Stage. As the name suggests, they want to dialogue, debate, and question. They have plenty of knowledge in their heads, but they need to be taught how to think about and reason with the facts on the ground. This is the time to teach them formal logic, how to properly construct propositions, and how to evaluate arguments. They should learn to properly organize and present their thoughts in writing and speaking.
Kids in the Dialectic Stage need to start putting the Bible stories together, understanding the Bible as one cohesive story. They should relate the history and geography of God’s people with other world events, realizing it’s all part of God’s master timeline. They should understand more about truth statements in Scripture and reason through them, wrestling with questions about sin, holiness, integrity, faith, authority, etc.
Rhetoric Stage
They become more and more adept at reasoning, understanding at deeper levels, and at some point they discover a desire to do things, to be heard, to build or write something which will move people. They have entered the Rhetoric Stage, which we might parallel with high school years. They want to contribute to society in solid and helpful ways. This is not mere hubris; God built it into us, and a well-educated person is ready to serve effectively in many areas. At this stage, we should encourage our kids to focus more on their specific interests, perhaps in music, mathematics, a specific science, writing, business, etc. We should still help guide their studies, but we allow them to pursue what burns in their hearts. God has gifted them in specific areas, and we want them to honor God with those gifts.
Biblically, this is when our kids should be able to effectively teach the Bible to others. They might lead devotionals, singing, prayer, Bible study. They might prepare food, make gifts, help neighbors with needs, and prepare to lead families of their own.
In Review
Dorothy Sayers calls these three stages the Poll-Parrot (Grammar), Pert (Dialectic), and Poetic (Rhetoric).
To learn any subject, you must first learn the language of that subject, for every field of study has its own terminology. Thus, you learn the grammar of that subject in the Poll-Parrot stage.
Second, you must practice with your newly-acquired grammar, putting pieces together, learning the best and worst ways of doing things. You discuss with others who are studying or have advanced ahead of you in the discipline, and you dialogue with the subject itself, arguing, poking, experimenting. Thus you pass through the Pert stage.
Third, after much practice and playing, you become proficient and able to produce masterful, quality workmanship. You have become rhetorical in your chosen field and have entered the Poetic stage.
Let us then bring our children up through these natural stages of learning, give them the best tools to encourage critical thinking, and all for the glory of God!
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Colossians 2.8
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…
2 Corinthians 10.4–5
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Ephesians 4.11–14