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.

You may have noticed a recent addition to your Nuntium, our weekly communication between teachers and parents. We have begun including a section that begins with “What’s the deal with…?” that addresses a particular cultural distinctive of Trinitas. The first topic was “What’s the deal with Unity?” and the second was “What’s the deal with first-time obedience?”

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

Classical Christian educators often refer to a G. K. Chesterton quote about education really being “a transfer of a way life.” What we’re all working together to do at Trinitas is to create a Paideia of God, a culture in which the things of God are the things we think, say, and do. We want to, and want our children to, think God’s thoughts after Him, to speak and sing His word, and to do what His word commands. This is the transfer we’re hoping for.

G.K. Chesterton is responsible for one of my favorite quotes about education. He wrote,

“Education is not a subject and does not deal in subjects. It is instead a transfer of a way of life.” What we are trying to do at Trinitas is transfer a way of life to our students, a paideia, a way of being distinctly Christian in a world that seems increasingly hostile to that."

With very few exceptions parents of students in classical Christian schools are not classically educated. Many of us, probably most of us, attended and then graduated from government schools or traditional Christian schools. By God’s grace, though, we have found a better path for our children.

One of the best things about classical education is the idea that parents can be educated alongside their children.

Classical Christian schools like Trinitas frequently refer to "the Great Conversation." At its root, the Great Conversation is simply an ongoing exchange of great ideas across time and space.  It first requires each successive generation to listen and comprehend the ideas and wisdom of its forebearers and then to contribute constructively to the discussion. Given the lamentable state of public discourse in our world today, it seems that our present generation may be ill-equipped to contribute to the Great Conversation.

The president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, David Goodwin, places the blame on the shoulders of modern education stating "We are bringing up children who do not have the skills to engage in intellectual discourse, who believe only in themselves, and whose deepest theological thought originates in their own mind.”

Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in the Classical School Teacher Fair at Hillsdale College. Over a two-day period, I had the privilege of interacting with many high-caliber college students who are receiving a top-notch liberal arts education including two of our own recent graduates. This experience reminded me that our students work hard in a rigorous academic setting and often attain the goals they are aiming at, college being one of them. Even though our teachers encourage students to do their best rather than focusing on grades, the grades often come to students who work hard and have some academic talent, and getting into a good college is one reward for that. But the story doesn’t end there.