Monday, January 01, 2007

Wisdom and Eloquence

This is a review of the fine book, Wisdom and Eloquence.

In the last twenty five years, a new movement within primary and secondary education has swept across America—classical, Christian education. Churches and parents have founded new schools and realigned existing ones based on the model of the medieval trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Two national organizations have been created to advance the mission of classical, Christian education: the Association of Classical Christian Schools (http://www.accsedu.org) and the Society for Classical Learning (http://www.societyforclassicallearning.org/). Douglas Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991) provided the first comprehensive paradigm for classical, Christian education. Wilson’s insights were based on his experience helping to start one of the flagship schools of the movement, Logos School of Moscow, Idaho, and on his reading of Dorothy Sayers’s “The Lost Tools of Learning,” an essay that has been extremely important to the classical movement.

Littlejohn and Evans’s work continues the conversation by making a case for this type of education, refining what is meant by the term trivium, and offering seasoned insights into what makes a healthy, vibrant school. The authors are both experienced educators and administrators. Their collective wisdom and eloquence shine through, offering light to teachers, administrators, and boards who may have lost their way in the morass of educational theories, management conundrums, and curriculum offerings.

The authors argue that today’s schools should equip students with two qualities: wisdom and eloquence. “[S]ince education is more about cultural relevance than about attaining economic advantage,” we must train students “to make a profound difference in the world into which they emerge” (13). Wisdom is needed so that students can understand our culture in relationship to God’s Word; eloquence is needed so that students can communicate to our culture by applying God’s Word. To provide these two qualities, the authors propose the liberal arts tradition of the trivium and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy [which they define as science], and music). Liberal education matters because it creates people who have the intellectual skills, spiritual resources, and mental flexibility to compete in today’s environment and to change careers. They believe that the liberal arts are traditional not because they are old but because they work (14). The liberal arts have traditionally been the best education for the best and, as Robert Maynard Hutschins remarks, “[t]he best education for the best is the best education for all” (69).

The liberal arts work, and are the best, because a healthy course in the arts bequeaths fundamental skills. For instance, grammar teaches children how their own language works and, if taught systematically, teaches children to think systematically. Literature exposes students to great books, and only great books can make great readers (98). But, for the Christian educator, the liberal arts can never be enough. Teaching and learning must be grounded in a Christian worldview. Because positions and values flow from a worldview, educators must be aware of their own and of their students’. The authors suggest that the Christian school adopt the Scriptural paradigm of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation (46-49).

While making common cause with many within the classical, Christian arena, the authors also critique how some classical educators interpret the trivium, especially Dorothy Sayers. Sayers argued that the trivium was a set of subjects, but she also linked the trivium to three stages of cognitive development. In the grammar stage, students are like sponges which absorb all kinds of information. Hence, they should be taught the grammar (i.e., the basic facts) of each subject. In the logic stage, students become more argumentative. Therefore, the teachers should integrate logic into their courses, and a formal course in logic should be given. In the rhetoric stage, students are more concerned with how they appear to others. Educators should take this natural tendency, then, and focus on teaching proper forms of expression.

Littlejohn and Evans emphasize that the trivium is a set of subjects and disciplines, not a pedagogy or theory of cognitive development (33-42, 74, 89). They find no place in the history of the liberal arts for Sayers’s theory. They note that many are confused by the paradigm. Parents ask, “Do my children just learn facts in the grammar stage? Shouldn’t good speaking skills taught at their level be a part of the first grade experience?” They also critique her for making the trivium the foundation for the quadrivium (115). For them, all seven sciences should be part of the curriculum from day one of formal education. If followed rigidly, the Sayers model would leave math and science until the mid-teenage years, an absurd notion.

While theoretical in scope, the book is useful for its practical advice for creating a school of excellence. The authors cover such diverse subjects as dress code, class size, a suggested rhetoric curriculum, learning theory, and faculty development—and these are only a few of the subjects addressed. As an administrator of a classical, Christian school, I found many of their insights helpful. For instance, while Littlejohn and Evans are proponents of the liberal arts, they also recognize that each school will implement the liberal arts distinctly. To do so, they suggest that a school’s curriculum be built from the top down or from 12-K by asking, “What kind of graduates do I want to produce?” Once a core set of skills, values, and virtues have been decided upon, the school can proceed with implementing that throughout each grade. In choosing what great books to read, they offer as the core canon the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton (98). From these books, schools can branch out. In order to engage the world, however, Christian schools have to read books from the world. Evans and Littlejohn argue that the “key to approaching topics that are controversial (in science or any other discipline) is, to borrow an analogy from science, inoculation, not quarantine” (125). Rather than creating a fortress to protect students from all worldly ideas, the authors argue for a training ground so that students can go forth and conquer the world.

Educators will profit from this book, but some, especially those within the classical movement, may have a few nagging questions. Littlejohn and Evans critique the classical movement for making the trivium a model of cognitive development and for making logic and rhetoric methods of dealing with subjects. Even though I grant that the classical movement is most likely wrong to say that the trivium was always tied to a theory of cognitive development, it is not erroneous to say that students in lower grades memorize very well and should be given the basics (i.e., the grammar) for each of the subjects so that they can develop into seasoned thinkers (i.e., logic) and then into articulate speakers (i.e., rhetoric). Evans and Littlejohn take issue with classical educators who speak of a grammar of science, a logic of history, or a rhetoric of history because this confuses those who do not know the trivium, involves using the same terms in multiple ways, and has no basis in history. For them, grammar should mean the study of language and logic and rhetoric are distinct subjects (that must still be implemented throughout the curriculum). Despite not using the terms of the trivium in the way other classical educators have, Littlejohn and Evans end up in essentially the same place. They write that “for each discipline there are foundational elements that…must be committed to memory early in the students’ learning experience,” which seems similar to saying that young students must learn the grammar of each subject (79; emphasis mine). Words take on new meanings, and, borrowing from Sayers, many in the classical movement have used the term “grammar” in another of its senses: “the principles or rules of an art, science, or technique” (from Miriam Webster Online, http://www.webster.com/). The authors helpfully show that the term “trivium” has changed meaning in this modern reincarnation of classical education. This reviewer is not convinced that is a bad thing.

Overall, this book is a succinct and helpful apologia for classical, Christian education that advances the discussion about what this type of education is and offers useful instruction on how to implement it in the real world of primary and secondary schools. The authors are to be praised for writing a book so full of wisdom and eloquence.

(To be published in the Fall edition of Intégrité.)