Learning How to Think: A Reading List for Parents Considering a Classical Education

Parents who are considering the possibility of sending their children to a classical school can access several resources that will help them better understand the goals and methods of classical education. Whether you are considering a classical Christian school or a secular school that employs classical methods, these three works will add information to your arsenal.

An Introduction to Classical Education for Parents
by Christopher Perrin

This succinct, 45-page booklet is a good starting point. Although it leaves many questions unanswered, it will give you an overall sense of classical education. The pamphlet provides a definition and brief history of classical education and succinctly counters objections to the modern use of the classical method. It defines classical education primarily by contrasting it with the modern or progressive education methods that originated in the late 19th century and eventually became the dominant form of education.

Classical Education: Toward the Revival of American Schooling
by Gene Edward Vieth, Jr. and Andrew Kern

This concise overview of the modern classical education movement discusses classical education at the elementary, high school, and college levels in both its Christian and secular forms. It critiques modern and postmodern educational methods and argues for the success of classical education methods. It emphasizes the integrated, unified, and cumulative nature of the classical school curriculum.

The Lost Tools of Learning
by Dorothy Sayers

This paper had an enormous influence on the emergence of the classical education movement. Sayers argues that "education began to lose sight of its true object towards the end of the Middle Ages" and that in modern times we achieved an "artificial prolongation of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years of physical maturity." Where modern education fails most, says Sayers and subsequent classical educators, is in teaching students "how to think."

Sayers outlines the Trivium, or three part educational process, that has, at least in theory, become the cornerstone of modern classical education. The Trivium consists of a grammar stage (when observation and memory are called upon heavily), a dialectic stage (which uses formal logic and discursive reason), and a rhetoric stage. Sayers argues these three stages correspond with the three stages of natural child development:

(1) The "poll-parrot" stage, when it is "easy and, on the whole, pleasurable" to learn by rote but when logic is still somewhat out of reach.

(2) The "pert" stage, which is "characterized by contradicting, answering back -- and by the propounding of conundrums." Perhaps this rings a bell with some middle school parents.

(3) The "poetic" stage, when children yearn to express themselves. It is, Sayers says, an age that "rather specializes in being misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence." Parents of teenagers may relate.

Once you have tackled these three introductions to classical education, you may decide to delve deeper into the subject. If you do, there are a number of full length books about classical education, including Robert Littlejohn's Wisdom and Eloquence and Douglas Wilson's The Case for Classical Christian Education. Keep in mind that not all classical educators agree with all of the ideas put forth in these materials. As with any thoughtful group, there is diversity in the classical education movement. Yet these pamphlets, essays, and books on classical education should give you a deeper understanding of the motives and methods of classical educators.