Why Classical Education?
In a Christian classical school, education is about equipping students with the timeless skill of learning how to learn, rather than merely focusing on acquiring specific knowledge for high-stakes testing. This approach fosters a deep love for wisdom and truth, preparing students to think critically, reason well, and engage the world thoughtfully.
These are the 3 stages of a classical education:
Grammar
Kindergarten – 5th grade
Kindergarten – 5th grade
In this stage, children are “like sponges” and their brains are especially geared toward memorization, so a foundational knowledge of subject material is often built through songs, chants, and poems, among other ways.
Logic
6th – 8th grade
Students begin to think independently and have the propensity to become more argumentative. Classical education teaches children in the Logic stage to think and analyze critically and to argue well by arranging facts (much of which was learned in grammar school) into organized statements and arguments.
Each subject area has its own logic.
Examples:
Sciences uses the development and testing of hypotheses. Math develops a student’s ability to logically orient numbers through the more abstract concepts of algebra and geometry.
Rhetoric
9th – 12th grade
Once a student has obtained knowledge of the facts (grammar) and developed the skills necessary to arrange those facts into organized arguments (logic), the student then develops the skill of effectively communicating those arguments to others (rhetoric).
Each subject has its own rhetoric, and
writing papers, researching, and orating are skills required in all subjects.