What is the Trivium? (Extended Edition)
Dorothy Sayers was a British novelist and playwright through the late 1950s. She was a member of the famous Inklings literary circle that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and was known as the creator of a popular fictional detective, Peter Wimsey. She sold many books and gained national prominence for her witty writing style. While she was an excellent writer, Sayers was never a teacher. She was, however, a serious student of human behavior. As she interacted with people after World War 2, she began to notice that they seemed susceptible to government propaganda, seemed to have trouble thinking critically, and showed difficulty connecting different subjects together. She blamed the issue on schools that had begun teaching in compartmentalized subjects, with no connection between them. Her essay on the subject is called The Lost Tools of Learning.
In her mind, there were at least two things that needed to be done. The first was to utilize a different structure for school, to arrange learning into three distinct phases, together called the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric). Her idea was to emphasize English language learning in lower grades (the grammar phase), logical or orderly thinking in the middle grades (the logic phase), and effective communication (the rhetoric phase) in the upper grades. All three can be done at any level, but schools that emphasize the Trivium more or less follow this structure sequentially.
Along with the heavy focus on language learning, orderly thinking, and effective communication, Sayers argued that subjects should be intertwined and that children should see the connection between things.
At HOCA, we primarily use Core Knowledge as our curriculum, and we follow the Hillsdale College K-12 Program Guide. Both advise us to build our program around the study of history. We then address the literature, science, art, and music connected to those historical periods. We start with ancient world history and work our way up to American history. We do this three times from kindergarten through twelfth grade, each time deepening our understanding of all of our subjects.
We are grateful Sayers wrote her essay and made us think about how to structure education. By following it, we find our graduates to be knowledgeable, well-spoken, well-prepared young people ready for the opportunities and challenges of life.
Mike Terry
Natl. Dir. of Classical Education
Founders Classical Academies
Learn more:
The Lost Tools of Learning You can read her essay here.