What is Classical Education?

Classical education is the method of learning that was practiced by the ancient Greeks and rediscovered in the middle ages. This rediscovery led to the Renaissance. Dr. Martin Luther regarded the Renaissance as the forerunner (the John Baptist) of the Lutheran Reformation. Between the Renaissance and Reformation western civilization began a new era in human history.

Up until the later half of the 20th century classical education was the primary method of institutional learning. The American philosopher and educational theorist, John Dewey changed that. He proposed a new approach to institutional learning called progressive learning. The progressive approach of education has had a devastating effect upon the American educational system and culture.

A classical approach to learning makes full use of theat natural learning process and is the system that produced the great thinkers of western history and learned men among ordinary people, thus producing one of the most literate cultures in all human history.

What Does Classical Education Teach?

Classical methodology is based on the trivium, the three foundational arts of learning.

• Grammar - Obtaining knowledge of the basics
• Logic - Understanding and piecing together through the dialectic (question & answers & discussion)
• Rhetoric Communicating and using knowledge and understanding in speaking, writing, and doing.

Classical education applies the trivium to the four conceptual arts called the quadrivium

• Aesthetic Arts - Training in beauty: Music, literature, and arts
• Empirical Sciences - Experimentation and observation: Astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, etc.
• Mathematics - Arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, statistics, calculus
• Geometry Spatial relationships: Geometry, design, drawing, architecture, engineering