Trinitas Blog

Classical education is built upon the Trivium - a three-stage process spanning the entirety of K-12 education with the purpose of nurturing and forming biblically-minded and well-educated students utilizing the great books of the Western world as a curriculum. The first stage of the classical progression - the grammar stage - begins in kindergarten and terminates roughly in 6th grade. Students in this stage are especially apt to memory and are encouraged to commit many facts and premises of literature, history, grammar, poetry, arithmetic, science, and the Bible to memory. The logic stage roughly spans grades 7-9 and (as students at this age seem by nature particularly apt to argument) has an emphasis upon linking the facts so committed in the grammar stage to practical utility through the use of formal argument. Finally, the poetic stage, roughly spanning the balance of high school, is a time in which most students feel a natural yearning for self-invention and self-expression, and are encouraged to draft and defend properly factual (grammar level) and properly reasoned (logic level) arguments in aesthetically appealing forms.

God has created the world to work in a very ordered way. He is a God of order. He brought order out of nothing—out of chaos if you prefer—to establish a peaceful habitation for humankind. Adam’s job was to maintain God’s order in the garden. When he failed at that, he was cast out of the garden, and the job got a lot harder; nonetheless, as his descendants we inherited the job. God’s people are to maintain order, a God-like order, of God’s creation. It is a hard job. Just look around at the mess we must bring to order. But we were made for it.

When children and God come up in the same conversation, few Bible verses get quoted more frequently than Proverbs 22:6, which reads, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Interpretations for this nugget of godly wisdom vary. If one considers the verse alongside the command to parents in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 to diligently teach the ways of God to children, and alongside the command to children in Exodus 20:12 (and repeated in Ephesians 6:1-3) to honor and obey parents, then Proverbs 22:6 becomes clearer. We can see that it fits into a larger context for the way God would have us approach child rearing: we are to intentionally, purposefully shape our children’s thoughts and actions toward God.

We should all be familiar with Jesus’ exhortation in Matthew chapter 6 to seek the kingdom of God rather than chase after the things we think we need. He doesn’t say we should forget about the things we think we need—food, clothes, the important stuff—but that those things will be added to us if we will seek first the kingdom of God. The idea seems to be that seeking after food and clothing (and fill in the blank) is something akin to getting so blinded by individual trees that we become unable to see the forest. Or worse: Jesus seems to be cautioning us against a form of idolatry, against letting our material needs (and wants) take the place of God as the focus of our worship and devotion.

Some time back I said something during Morning Meeting that must have caught some folks by surprise. It may not have been exactly this, but it was something like this: “We are image bearers. We are made in the image of God. We bear His likeness. And so everything we do is either telling the truth or telling a lie about who God is.”

One of the books that all new Trinitas parents are required to read in their first year at Trinitas is Teach Them Diligently. Through the years this book has informed the school’s policy and practice about correction and discipline in the classroom. It's a helpful guide that many veteran parents and even our classroom teachers turn to for help in discipling children. 

The classical school approach offers a fundamentally different vision of education that families fed up with a factory approach to learning find compelling.

As Trinitas begins its 25th year of providing classical and Christian education for like-minded families, it's a good time to remind each other that Trinitas serves parents in the mission God has given them for the education of their children without replacing them altogether. Yes, our experienced and gifted faculty do have the enormous responsibility and opportunity of taking the lead in students' education for the next 174 school days, but they are not replacing the role of the parents nor are parents mindlessly handing their children over to the school. Both are working together to be faithful instruments of grace in the education of the student.