THE STAGES OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION

The Grammar stage, during which children enjoy memorizing and soaking up large amounts of information even if they’re not sure what to do with that information. The speaker at this most recent practicum put it this way: “You can teach them eenie, meenie, miny, mo or amo, amas, amat — both are fun to them and they don’t care which rhyme you teach them.” I’m not in any way implying that we shouldn’t teach our kids classic nursery rhymes and games, but their brains are amazingly supple, and we’ve found that our kids can learn eenie, meenie, miny, mo and amo, amas, amat (an example of Latin verb conjugation) without any trouble. If that information continues to be drilled during the elementary school years rather than just introduced once during a unit study and then forgotten, they will then be able to recall it without any trouble once they get to the next stage, which is…

The Dialectic stage, where adolescents begin to think more analytically and ask “Why?” and “How?” rather than just believing the information that’s laid before them. Instead of fighting this natural stage, the classical model embraces their need to push back against information and encourages them to really dig deeper into understanding why and to use the information they’ve memorized in the earlier years to begin discovering more about the world on their own. The idea is that because they have all of the information (commonly referred to in classical education circles as “pegs”) memorized, they’re more easily able to manipulate and question it.

And finally, the Rhetoric stage is the point where students can begin really applying what they’ve learned to form their own thoughts and opinions, to teach others and to actually put it into practice.

Picture and text obtained from lifeyourway.net