seven liberal arts

“The liberal arts are divided into the trivium and quadrivium, since by these, as by certain paths [or viae], the lively mind enters in to the secrets of philosophy.” St. Thomas Aquinas

What is classical education based on?  Was is the sequence in which a student should accommodate the skills and knowledge, was it done before and can it be done now?

Homeschooling my kids I can see how exhausting the task seems to be. During the last year I started to reexamine the whole educational approach we’ve had. I realized that the path we are on might not take us to the goals that we were hoping to achieve at the end of our journey. And I am talking here about our human efforts, which we, as parents are responsible to provide. There is, of course, God’s grace and without it, we can’t progress in educating the whole person. Gaining knowledge, even the best and most desirable, without following God’s plan is worthless in a sense which the Scripture points  into:

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 1 Kor 8:1-2

My initial quest was simple: How can I teach another human being how to think? How can I provide a way for a child to be equipped with the tools in order for them to be able to search for the ultimate Truth? How can wisdom be imparted?

We are setting more so this year on a classical education approach, and my oldest dd is enrolled in The Classical Liberal Arts Academy this year, so far for two courses.

Looking for the basic, short and clear explanation of what classical liberal education consists of, I found few sites that used this beautiful Medevial illumination by a 12th century nun, Herad of Landsberg, which explains well the road of the ancient educational path taken by many Christians before us.

All of the info below was taken from The Seven Liberal Arts and Hortus Deliciarum (the original drawing).

Philosophy

She sits on the throne as a queen, wearing a crown with three heads: ethics, logic and physics which were, according to Plato, three parts of teaching of philosophy.  She holds a banner stating: All wisdom comes from God, only the wise can do whatever they want.

Socrates and Plato

At the foot of philosophy are sitting two great Greek thinkers, who although Gentiles, were regarded as precursors of Christian thought. The text surrounding the two philosophers suggests that they thought first ethics, then physics, then rhetoric as the ones which scrutinize the underlying nature of all things.

The Seven Liberal Arts

In the upper corner we read:

“Seven fountains of wisdom flow from Philosophy which are called the seven liberal arts.  The Holy Spirit is the inventor of the seven liberal arts, which are: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy.”

On the inner circle banner we read: I, Divine Philosophy, I govern all things with wisdom, I have seven arts which I govern.

The Liberal arts are portrayed as noble ladies dressed in robes. Three of them correspond to the rivers that flow to the right, they relate to language or letters, and they are Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic, forming Trivium.

The next four of them represent Quadrivium, arts of second degree, relating to harmony: music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy.  Each of bears a special emblem and is represented by an inscription on the arch surrounding it.

Grammar

She holds a book and a whip and says:

Per me quivis discit, vox, littera, syllaba quid est..

By me does anyone learn what is the voice, the letter and the syllable.

Rhetoric

She holds a tablet and stylus and says:

Causarum vires per me, rhetor alme, requires.

By me, kind Rhetorician, you will seek the force of motives/cases.

Dialectic

Dialectic holds a head of a dog barking and says:

Argumenta sino concurrere more canino.

I allow arguments to battle in the manner of a dog.

Music

Music holds a harp and two other instruments are near her. She says:

Musica sum late doctrix artis variatae.

I am Music far and wide the teacher of the arts of variation.

Arithmetic

Arithmetic has a cord with beads (abacus) and she says:

Ex numeris consto, quorum discrimina monstro.

From the numbers I exist, of which I teach the differences.

Geometry

Geometry holds compass and an unit of measurement and says:

Terrae mensuras per multas dirigo curas.

By many pains, I direct the measurements of the eart

Astronomy

Astronomy holds a magnifying glass or a mirror and says:

Ex astris nomen traho, per quae discitur omen.

I draw my name from the starts, by which the omen is learned.

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school has started

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climbing Parnassus

I have started to read “Climbing Parnassus” by Tracy Lee Simmons as many people who are actively pursuing classical (not neoclassical) education were referring to it as a very helpful and eye opening book as well as a apologia for real classical method of teaching.

Just few quotes from the Introduction should get your mind start wandering:

We spell Progress with a capital. Here the new is always better, the old worse; the new is always rich and relevant, the old threadbare and obsolete. (…) Yet having crossed the threshold of a millennium, we feel a few spiritual tremors. Impetuosity does not reflect. The super-annuated, ever-changing mind cannot speak to the whole of life. It cannot contemplate; it cannot assign value. (…) It can build rockets to Mars and beyond, but it cannot tell us  whether is wise to go there. It cannot answer questions it long ago lost the wisdom to ask.  (…) We appeal to the freakish in witless arts and entertainment – to serve the boring or the board is not always clear -leading inexorably to the shocking that melts into monotonous vulgarity in the public square.

But we have stood Socrates on his head: Whereas the only thing that sage Athenian knew was that he knew nothing, the only thing we don’t know – and with far thinner credentials, it would seem – is that we know so very little.

What we don;t know can hurt us. (…) And why do our schools’ and collages’ graduates, so smart and promising in so many ways, not seem to know, really know, anything of substance? They’re heavy on proudly held opinions – opinions are always in abundant supply – but light on knowledge.

Classical education did not set itself to installing knowledge alone; it also sought to polish and refine.

We apply “classic” or ‘classical” to anything we believe to be excellent and universal. (…) And now legions of well-intending home schoolers rush to put dibs on the term and bask in the light of the glory they believe it to exude. To many home schoolers, “classical education” simply means the opposite of whatever is going on in those dreaded public schools.

The hard, precipitous path of classical education ideally led not to knowledge alone, but to the cultivation of mind and spirit. (…) The climb was meant to transform one’s intellectual and aesthetic nature as well.

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sailed around the world

Home schooled teenager sailed around the world. He’s back.

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quest for a classical education

It all started about three months ago. I wanted to reanalyze our educational approach, because I did not think that I had the tools to teach my kids thinking skills (nothing to do with the “critical thinking” so popular lately among US homeschoolers; I am talking about the reasoning skills, logical thinking skills). I know that my kids are young but I felt the world’s pluralistic and relativistic breath sneaking from everywhere, even within church’s culture, and not being recognized as such, claiming slowly peoples minds while being veiled as altruistic kindness, tolerance and acceptance.

I got my WTM book out. I did not look at it for over 2 years, since then I decided that it gave not realistic expectations of homeschooling families. Too busy, too disconnected, I thought. I did think that history cycle based curriculum, with integrated literature and other subjects would be IT. That’s why I was wanted to start TOG for two years (4 year history based, literature, geography, government, arts, philosophy, writing – all nicely integrated and flowing together for kids of different ages in your family, so you can keep them all on the same theme). Finally I did it and … as much as I like it, I started to panic that it will not provide what I wanted. One of the main reasons I got it, was the philosophy component and well organized “Socratic discussion” guides. Everything else, although made so well by them, can be done by anybody (with a great effort) who has enough time, but these two parts would be so beneficial in the future, I thought, that it will be worthy.

Although I really like TOG, I still felt that I was missing an integral and basic part. Did I really think that some kind of discussion, after taking one year or two courses of Logic, will really change the mind of a student and provoke better thinking? If not, how would I teach thinking, analyzing, persuading, debating, argumentation, criticism that is not based on so called common sense but on well developed skills? I couldn’t call it different that THINKING. I just couldn’t see how these two elements of  TOG thrown in the middle of other will really teach reasoning skills. Common sense and discussion skills are ok, but is that really what it supposed to be like?

I started to look for the answer, what kind of education (with one ds having probably dyslexia and God knows what else) would develop thinking skills leading to God as the ultimatebeauty, what kind of progression and priorities should be implemented.

My premise is that there is only one truth, and a person can know it. There has to be a way to reach to this point of finding it, following it and living by it.

I thought that maybe I need to buy some Logic curriculum and go through it. Or maybe read something online. Everybody seemed to be advising Latin which I couldn’t get why, since we need more to concentrate on learning Polish, but I thought, hey…why not Latin?

I’ve signed up for one popular classical homeschooling board and started asking questions. I also dived into googling up all related topics. The info that I found shocks me and prompts me to change many things I thought before were “classical education”, but were not. I found out about Latin Centered Curriculum and Circe Institute.

And then I found the CLAA (fanfares). The world seemd a little brighter. My head seemd to spin a little faster. Then I started to discover what I did not know yet.

It started with looking into D. Seyers famous article on Westerners falling out of classical education wagon, which so many Protestant (and not only) classical curricula emphasizes as their guiding path. After reading an article undermining Seyer’s expertise on the subject of teaching, I digged deeper.

Soon I was asking questions on the homeschooling boards. Here are some excerpts:

Seeing in history that Christian classical curriculum brought such bright minds, scholars, teachers, saints, philosophers, writers etc. I would like to implement the same methods in our homeschooling journey. How do one goes about that? Trying to find out how they were educated, right? So…I am looking fo people who were the originators of the Christian classical method of teaching, right?

Well, in the most known circles of classical methods of education Sayers’ essay is quoted so many times as a base of the philosophy of teaching, that I can’t just overlook it. Looking at the facts about her own education (her accomplishments as woman scholar, translator, writer is unquestionable; she was not an expert on education though…) vs. experience in teaching (almost none), I am trying to examin how come her influence in this area is so enormous and followed as classcial education premise, where in reality she is not the person to follow in that area at all.

My question is: why are you following the particular author/book/methodology/curriculum (if they call themselves classical), and do you know if the theories given by the authors are well proven and by who?

I am interested in thoughts of people who think that Dorothy Sayer’s ideas were really the base of the modern classical education, and if so, why do they think so?

I am looking for the answer, which method is the one that produced the great Christian minds of the previous centuries (like Aquinas, Jerome, Augustine, Ignatius, John of the Cross, just to mention the few giants)? Surely they were talented, disciplined and focused but there had to be a teacher there. What this teacher was teaching, how and why?

I don’t want to waist my time on something that is not proven, but invented because of the needs or cultural relevancy, I guess, but I am willing to risk a lot to find the way that will lead to one and ultimate truth, God himself.

The question is about content and methodology and what is it based on.

I think that without ideology one can’t fulfill his destiny, because he will not know where, how and when to go. Without the absolutes we can’t have or see or strive for the best. God is ideal, we are sinners. That does not mean we shouldn’t think and contemplate about being pure, holy and perfect. God himself encourages us to be perfect because He is. Is that ideal? Is that practical? Reality is spiritual first, then visible. Our every day life (reality in common meaning) should evolve first around the highest things. That will provide the answers to the more visible (no lesser) things around.
Oh, gosh. I hope that I am being clear on that. I don’t want to sound way out there. Jesus came “here” from “there”, and in Him we see the best concoction of ideal and practical. But…how different priorities, time management, focus, behavior, handling of finances and wealth, debates, rhetoric etc than what we are concentrating our days around.

I think that to begin the evaluation of every important thing in our life and
doing it on the base of “what makes sense” is not the right way. For a radical fanatical Muslim in the Middle East putting bomb on himself makes sense and for many abortion makes sense (ok, this is NOT a post about abortion and Islam ).
That is extreme explanation just to get to the point that there is more to it than we think, i.e. we rally shouldn’t make choices, form opinions, form our destinies etc. just on “what makes sense”. The question would be: are there ultimate truths? The ones that we can build all of the less important, but so useful things in life. The lack of consequences in people’s choices, because they are not based on the true fundaments, are staggering, like all of the Christians should be anti-abortion, but they are clearly not (polls show that).

The think is that we wouldn’t have what we have without those dead guys in many areas of our lives. The whole Western culture was formed on these dead great guys. What would happen if some of them were not born? I don’t know. The possibilities are vast, but worth of imagining (as a homeschooling exercise, we may ask our kids: what would the world be like if Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great….put whoever here…were not born?

Since then I’ve asked many more questions on the CLAA Family Forum and I’ve learned a ton from their web site. I feel like the cloud of confusion and ignorance is lifting up slowly. I am reading Plato, Augustine and Aristotle, as well as Catholic Catechism. Go figure.

I would like to enroll our children into the CLAA courses this coming 09/10 school year.

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what’s happening in our garden

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Dramatic Truth

Dramatic Truth’s season 08/09 is over. The culmination was grandeur, two Spring performances: “Firsborn from the dead” and “Sleeping Beauty – the Bride of Christ”.

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football season is over

Here (USA) they call it soccer…great teams, great coaches, great games, not so great weather, great friends…Kevin came back after two years off  (he talked more then played then) and Sophie just started (she managed to understand which way to run and kick the ball).

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pani psycholog wie lepiej

Pewna pani psycholog wydała bardzo pozytywną opinię na temat rozwoju i osiągnięć edukacyjnych pewnego chłopca edukowanego w domu, lecz zaleciła posłanie go do szkoły publicznej mówiąc, „macie Państwo bardzo zdolne dzieci, szkoda byłoby je zmarnować”.

Zagadka: do której szkoły chodziła pani psycholog?

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does school kill creativity?

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curriculum choices for 09/10

Teah (11 y.o. 6th grade):

CLAA: Classical Grammar I (grammar, Latin, Greek) and hopefully Classical Grammar II sometime in 2010

Math: Singapore 6A & 6B

PE: ballet, modern (Dramatic Truth), swimming

Music: Suzuki violin

wishful thinking:

Classical Mathematics (starting probably  in January 2010)

Classic Catechism I

Classical Vocabulary

Kevin (9 y.o. 4th grade):

CLAA: Grammar I (grammar, Latin, Greek)

Spelling: All about Spelling (levels 1 & 2, maybe even 3)

Math: Singapore 4A & 4B

Italic Handwriting book F

PE: soccer (seasonal), swimming, hip-hop (Dramatic Truth)

wishful thinking:

Sophie (6 y.o. 1st grade):

Math: Singapore 1A & 1B; MEP (online for free!!!)

Italic handwriting C:

Reading: Starfall and Webster’s Spelling Book (both free online)

PE: tumbling (Dramatic Truth), swimming

all:

TOG Year 4 (history, geography, art, writing, literature)

Polish: Oneness City

Nature: Exploring Creation with Zoology ( this is “young earth” approach, but it will be tweaked) plus nature walks and journaling

Typing: BBC Dance Mat &  Mavis Beacon

Cost: about $960 plus about $310 monthly for activities

All of these might change…

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I think I’m gonna faint

I found something extraordinary. I am amazed, perplexed and thankful.

uczyć dzieci w domu

Frondowski artykuł na temat edukacji w domu, wywiad z Mateuszem Matyszkowiczem, przystępującym do nauczania córki w domu.

Mitem jest też przekonanie, że socjalizacja dziecka wymaga przebywania w grupie rówieśniczej. Grupa rówieśnicza to sztucznie wykreowana wspólnota – mówi Matyszkowicz, który uważa, że edukacja domowa jest dobra także dla rodziców, pragnących zwrócić szczególną uwagę na dziecko i zapewnić mu integralną ścieżkę rozwoju. Rodzice mogą potraktować edukację w domu zarówno jako inicjację wiedzy, inicjację kulturową, jak i religijną. To wszystko może się znakomicie odbywać w rodzinie. Szkoła tego nie zapewni, nawet religijna – zapewnia młody tata.

Szkoła sama w sobie jest dobra. Problemem jest system, jaki wokół niej stworzono. W pewnym momencie historii szkoła stała się narzędziem oświeconego państwa, które postanowiło przejąć od rodziców ich role wychowawcze. Ale pamiętajmy, że obowiązek szkolny wprowadził na początku XIX wieku w Prusach Fryderyk Wilhelm po to, by stworzyć karną armię żołdaków, którzy będą potrafili owszem czytać i pisać, ale przede wszystkim którzy będą karnie wykonywać polecenia.

Malachi prayer meeting

And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers. Mal 4:6

Malachi prayer meetings started about two years ago, I guess. As a prayer focused community (IHOP-KC) we want our kids not only to bw participants but also the creators of the activities that concentrate and point toward the reality where prayer and fasting are the fundamental disciplines of every day life.

These prayer meetings are called Family Prayer Meetings, because the whole families even with the small children are coming to assist our kids in creating their own prayer meeting.

Our vision is to establish a place for families to engage in prayer together, and for parents to partner with the CEC to raise up their children as intercessors, worshippers and musicians. Our prayer meetings will be structured around twenty minute prayer themes focused on the Church of Kansas City, our government, missionaries, local schools and many other topics. Intercession times will also include times of small group prayer, rapid fire prayer, and the laying on of hands to those who are sick.

Kids and teens are leading worship, playing instruments ans leading prayers, old people (parents) are making sure that the younger crowd (under 3 years old) are not leaving the building and assisting in making the meeting to go smoothly.

oregon trail lego