What is the Trivium?
Classical education is fundamentally rooted in the artes liberales or liberal arts (from the Latin artes – “skills” or “arts” and liberal from the Latin liber, meaning “free” or independent). Historically, these were the arts that would develop free thinking minds in those who studied them.
The medieval framework of the seven artes liberales consisted of the trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) and were considered essential to a complete education. Latin for “where three roads meet,” the trivium arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric were the tools of learning that Aristotle originally described in his Organon; considered in classical Greece and Rome to be the pillars of critical thought. Grammar, the nature of a subject; dialectic, that of thought and reason; and rhetoric, that of artful persuasion. Every academic discipline has a grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Mastering the tools of learning equips one with the linguistic, thinking, and rhetorical skills necessary to become a better person and a better citizen.
The “Lost Tools of Learning” that Dorothy Sayers refers to in her 1947 essay are the trivium arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. However, the trivium and quadrivium are not "subjects", nor are they limited to discrete stages of a child’s development: they are methods of dealing with subjects. Likewise, the order in which each of the three sub-arts of the trivium is learned is not rigid, and often overlap.
The trivium arts are also cumulative; each building on the other to achieve full potential. One must master the language of a subject in order to think, and one must be able to think in order to persuade. As students mature, they progress from gaining knowledge primarily through memorization and imitation, to learning logic and reason, to creating their own informed judgements and expressing their ideas and conclusions in persuasive, elegant language.
Contemporary education (in most public schools and many private schools) too often skips the first two steps in the trivium and tries to progress directly to the third. Schools that encourage young students to “share their feelings,” “be creative,” “form their own opinions,” and “draw on their own experiences” or come to judgements about history and literature or social questions and current events are asking a student to do something before they have properly had a chance to learn about a subject. Lacking grammar and logic, students often share ignorance. Poorly taught children become poorly taught adults who go straight to opinion-making without understanding and evaluation.
Grammar
In a classical school, the emphasis in the lower grades is on learning basic facts and rules in each subject; the basic building blocks of knowledge that systematically lay a foundation for advanced study.
Dialectic
As a student’s capacity for abstract thought matures, they become naturally more examining and argumentative. They want to know how and why. Building on what they have learned through grammar, students are introduced to dialectic – the art of investigation and disciplined thought. At this point students are given formal instruction in logic, so that they learn to base their judgements on reason rather than emotion.
Rhetoric
As students mature to the upper school, they yearn to be independent, are concerned about self-expression, and are discovering their unique identity. At this point they will be given formal instruction in rhetoric – the art of effective and eloquent persuasion. The student of rhetoric applies the foundational language of each subject (grammar) with their understanding of each subject (logic) to synthesize information and express their own informed conclusions and creative ideas. Rhetoric is the crown jewel of a classical education because it fulfills the arts of grammar and logic, and is the culmination of everything a student has worked towards.
“Is not the great defect of our education today— that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils “subjects,” we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything except the art of learning.” ”