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What is classical education?
“Classical education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness and beauty so that, in Christ, a student is better able to know, glorify and enjoy God.” ~Andrew Kern, The Circe Institute
Classical Education Part 1
Classical Education Part 1
Classical Education Part 2
Classical Education Part 2
Who was Charlotte Mason?
Charlotte Mason was a British educator and educational reformer in the early 20th century. She believed education should be more than just vocational training and that all children, regardless of socioeconomic status, should be offered a wide and generous curriculum. In a time when a classical education was a privilege reserved for the elite, Charlotte Mason made it accessible to the common family.
The following links provide helpful information for understanding and applying Charlotte Mason's principles:
While none of our families adhere completely to Charlotte Mason’s beliefs or methods, Grace Heritage Cooperative was established out of a desire for community with like-minded families whose homeschooling decisions have been largely influenced by her philosophy.
What about the Trivium?
One variation within classical pedagogy is the interpretation of the Trivium (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric). Historically, the Trivium has been defined as the three language arts, which combine with the Quadrivium (the four mathematical arts) to make up the tools of learning known as the seven liberal arts. In their book The Liberal Arts Tradition, Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain explain the Trivium as follows: "In its most basic sense, grammar has to do with understanding language, dialectic with dialogic reasoning, and rhetoric with the artful composition of texts, written and spoken."
Within the last century, many classical educators have connected the Trivium to developmental stages of childhood. You may know of a classical school or co-op that separates instruction into a grammar stage, dialectic stage, and rhetoric stage. Under this model, students focus on knowledge acquisition/memorization in the lower elementary grades, critical thinking and discussion in the middle years, and persuasion in high school. This method of linking each art of the Trivium to a developmental stage has its roots in an article written in 1948 by Dorothy Sayers titled "The Lost Tools of Learning".
At Grace Heritage Cooperative, we favor the historical interpretation of the Trivium. We value knowledge acquisition, reasoning, and composition at all stages and do not emphasize one over the other based on the age of the student, but instead pursue continued growth in each art over time.
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