Classical education perhaps has several connotations.  It is the form of education that was used in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in the middle ages, to educate the children of wealthier members of society.  In this way it is classical.  It is also the form of education that was used to train more well-to-do individuals in early American times, such as many of our founding fathers.  In this way it could be called classical as well.  But classical education really stands for the time-proven methods of teaching children to be the best thinkers they can be.  Classical education was actually utilized in American Public schools up until the early 1900s.

    In 1947 Dorothy Sayers lamented that modern schools were and are failing to teach students how to learn.  She advocated a return to "The Lost Tools of Learning," which involved using what she called the Trivium.

   The Trivium is comprised of three learning steps in a student’s life.  The first she calls the “Poll Parrot” stage.  It is in this phase that children learn facts the best.  The student at this age memorizes these facts quickly and easily, and rather enjoys doing it.  He will naturally develop little rhymes and recite just about anything given to him.  Students at this age, however, do not much care for reasoning and it is during this stage that the student learns many of the basic facts that he will use later.

    The second phase of learning Sayers called the “Pert” stage. It is during this time that the student becomes more argumentative and seeks to outsmart his elders.  As Sayers says, “Its nuisance value is very high;” however, this nuisance is used and capitalized upon.  For it is during this period that the student is trained in formal logic and taught how to reason correctly.  If he wants to argue, he must at least do so the right way.

    Last is the “Poetic” stage.  This is the period of self-centeredness, when the student desires to express himself, and as Sayers says, he “rather specializes in being misunderstood.”  The rhetoric aspect is introduced at this time. The student is taught to express himself coherently, and the other two learning steps are gathered up - that is the facts accumulated during the “Poll Parrot” stage and the logic of the “Pert” stage - and are synthesized into eloquent discourses upon subject matter.  In fact, many Classical schools require for completion of their program that students write a thesis and then defend this before a panel of professors.

    The Classical method is rigorous and trying, but it is good.  For when he is finished, the Classical student should know how to approach a subject, master the subject and discourse upon the subject, even when he has never seen it before. As Sayers pointed out many years ago, it is through a return to the time-proven, but lost, tools that students learn how to truly learn.