Cuppa Conversations: Trivium + Grammar Stage

Happy Thursday, Down Home friends! Dr. Kozinski is back with us this week to help continue deepen our understanding of what classically-educating our children means. These last couple of weeks we went back to revisit his previous Cuppa Conversations where he explained, in Parts 1 and 2, this idea of Making Learning Come Alive, and today, he’s here to explore with us the three-part process of training the mind called the trivium.

Let’s head over to Scout Coffee and connect back with Ana and Sophie…

Ana: Hi Sophie! Glad you could make it. I know how hard it is sometimes to get away from the daily “grid grind.” But today’s not a home day, so we can unwind a bit. Sometimes I wish I could be a public school mom and just drop off my kids, pick them up, and be done with it! I’m a pretty good mother I think, but a classical teacher? Not so much. Is it always so frustrating?

Sophie: I’ve had my bad days, Ana, but it gets better. Believe me, it’s all worth it. You’re just beginning at SLOCA, but you mentioned the changes you have already seen in Katie, right? More excited about school, more inquisitive, more settled and patient. I’ve been doing this for eight years with Elena, and she has become such a self-possessed and joyful young lady. The tedium and failures and frustration are all part of the process. And it gets easier.

Ana: Oh, I know. I’ve had good, very good, home teaching days where everything just falls into place. But not yesterday!

Sophie: Well, let’s get our minds off the daily routine for while. We were going to talk about the Trivium this morning.

Ana: Grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Yes. I’ve got Robbie in 4th grade, so, the grammar stage, and John at the rhetorical level, and they are both studying Don Quixote. That’s neat, the way they can study the same book but on different levels at different ages. I just wished they talked more to each other about it!

Sophie: Well, it’s hard, for they are at very different intellectual places. From what I understand from having gone through it, at the grammatical level they’re learning just the basic structure of a plot. What’s great to see is when they start to recognize the structure of all plots, that all stories have the same basic structure, and how each of our lives is itself a story with a “plot,” and hopefully it’s a comedy, not the other one . . .

Ana: Ha! Yes, I see that it’s mostly immersion in stories at this stage, in many stories, along with talking about the stories with the teacher and with each other, and just a little analysis and conversational use of logic (because, if, therefore, etc.) to prepare them for the logic stage where analysis is more primary. And of course, there’s the parts of speech! Got to have some grammar at the grammar stage!

Sophie: “Immersion” makes me think of a phrase I once came across, “poetic knowledge.” Poetic knowledge is not the kind gained by analysis or direct instruction or memorization, but it comes naturally and effortlessly through experience. As Charlotte Mason taught, children are pressured and trained to begin analyzing things abstractly at way too early an age. They bypass the poetic mode of knowing, where we allow an object, a person, a story, a poem–even a math problem!–just to be; we behold it, just as it is, and we learn so much just by resting in and then reflecting on the experience. Without these immersive, contemplative, poetic experiences of the true, the good, and the beautiful, experiences of the heart, children are seriously deprived in their education.

Ana: Very well put, Sophie! And don’t SLOCA teachers do a wonderful job creating a place where these experiences can easily happen! I wish I could do a bit better at this at home. You’re better than me, Sophie . . . I don’t even have a dedicated home classroom yet!

Sophie: It took me awhile to get my home ready, and some families like just doing school on the couch or kitchen table. Well, back to poetic knowledge: Yes, in today’s non-classical schools, students tend to skip right over the grammatical stage and go right to the logical stage. There’s something really off about that. It’s like putting the cart before the horse. Children need a storehouse of vivid experiences, beautiful stories, heartfelt poems, and fascinating facts on which their logically developing minds can “feed” later. Without these poetic experiences, children’s minds, when they are ready for logical analysis and Socratic inquiry, have nothing really to chew on!

Ana: I guess it’s better than keeping them stuck at the grammatical stage, though. I remember that even in high-school I was constantly tested on how many facts and dates and theorems I could remember, but I don’t recall even being taught how to inquire and discover truth using logic, evidence, and my own reasoning. It was always parrot-back what the teacher told us. But then, knowing nothing of how to ask incisive questions or rationally justify my answers, I was required to write papers and give speeches, which are tasks that require both logical and rhetorical skills, skills I wasn’t taught!  

Sophie: Yep, my experience too. The grammatical stage was there, but because it lacked integration with story and narrative, the facts were all jumbled and meaningless to me. Yes, the grammatical part of the trivium has to be practiced in light of and directed toward the next two stages, else the memorization and fact-learning become an end in itself, instead of the necessary preparation for logic and rhetoric.

Ana: Well, I think we both should get back home now. Why don’t we continue our discussion next time, and focus on logic. I’m very interested in what logic actually is and how it helps us discover truth. See you next time Sophie!

Thanks again, Dr. Kozinski, for giving us an introduction to what the trivium is and what this classical pattern looks like in the grammar stage. We’re looking forward to hearing more about the logic stage next time!

For our readers, if you have other questions relating to classical education that you’d like Dr. Kozinski to address, please feel free to comment! He’s eager to answer any of your questions.

A couple of books that might be helpful for you are below. Check our school store first to see what other resource books we carry or you can also go online if we don’t have it in stock.