Classical education Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Classical education as understood and taught in the middle ages of western civilization is roughly based on the ancient Greek concept of Paideia. China had a completely different tradition of classical education, based in large part on Confucian and Taoist traditions. This article concerns the western tradition.A classically-educated person is intensely skilled, highly disciplined, broadly educated, and if taught Socratically, an amazingly supple and accurate logician and rhetorician.
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Classical education developed many of the terms now used to describe modern education. Western classical education has three phases, each with a different purpose. The phases are roughly coordinated with human development, and should be exactly coordinated with each student's development.
"Primary education" teaches students how to learn.
"Secondary education" then teaches a conceptual framework that can hold all human knowledge (history), and then fills in basic facts and practices of the major fields of knowledge, and developes the skills (perhaps in a simplified form) of every major human activity.
"Tertiary education" then prepares a person to pursue an educated profession, such as law, theology, war, medicine or science.
Primary education was often called the trivium, and covered grammar, logic and rhetoric.
Ideally, logic and rhetoric should be taught in part by the Socratic method, in which the teacher raises questions, and the class discusses them.
Grammar consists of language skills such as reading, and the mechanics of writing. An important goal of grammar is to acquire as many words and concepts as possible. Very young students can learn these by rote. Classical education traditionally included study of Latin and Greek, so that students could read the Classics of Western Civilzation in the words of the authors.
Young adults can learn logic, the art of correct reasoning. Modern logical systems are remarkably easier to learn than classical logic. The traditional text for teaching logic was Aristotle's Logic.
Rhetoric, debate and composition (which is just written rhetoric) are taught to somewhat older students, who then have the concepts and logic to criticize their own work, and persuade others. Rhetoric is concerned with making communication clear, reasonable, and persuasive. Hopefully, a student has already learned to reason correctly by studying logic. Students would read and emulate classical poets such as Ovid.
Secondary education, classically the quadrivium or "four ways," classically taught astronomy, arithmetic, music and geometry, usually from Aristotle and Euclid. Sometimes architecture was taught, often from the works of Vitruvius.
History was always taught, to provide a context and show political and military development. The classic texts were from ancient authors, such as Cicero and Tacitus.
Biographies were often assigned, as well, the classic being Plutarch's "Lives." Biographies help show how persons behave in their context, and the wide ranges of professions and options that exist. As more modern texts became available, these were often added to the curriculum.
In the middle ages, these were the best available texts. In modern terms, these fields might be called history, natural science, accounting and business, fine arts (at least two, one to amuse companions, and another to decorate one's domicile), military strategy and tactics, engineering, agronomy, and architecture.
These are taught in a matrix of history, reviewing the natural development of each field for each phase of the trivium. That is, in a perfect classical education, the historical study is reviewed three times: first to learn the grammar (the concepts, terms and skills in the order developed), next time the logic (how these elements could be assembled), and finally the rhetoric, how to produce good, humanly useful and beautiful objects that satisfy the grammar and logic of the field.
History is the unifying conceptual framework, because history is the study of everything that has occurred before the present. A skillful teacher also uses the historical context to show how each stage of development naturally poses questions and then how advances answer them, helping to understand human motives and activity in each field. The question-answer approach is called the "dialectic method," and permits history to be taught Socratically as well.
The Socratic method is the only known technique to teach people to think correctly and critically for themselves. In-class discussion and critiques are essential in order for students to recognize and internalize critical thinking techniques.
By the time a student has completed a project in each major field of human effort, they often have an excellent idea of what type of profession they would like to pursue.
Teriary education was usually an apprenticeship to a person with the desired profession. Most often, the understudy was called a "secretary" and had the duty of carrying on all the normal business of the "master."
The early biographies of nobles probably show the ultimate form of classical education: A tutor. One early, much-emulated classic example was that Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle. Other forms of instruction seem to be attempts to achieve similar results for less expense.
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Accurate information about classical education is difficult to find. People took it for granted for generations, and then within one generation, Deweyism became the established method for public schooling in the U.S, and classical eduation became rare.
This is an Article on Classical education. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Classical education The overall organization
Primary Education
Grammar
Logic
Rhetoric
Secondary Education
Tertiary Education
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