Education and the Seven Liberal Arts

Many people wonder why we homeschool our kids. We recognize the public schools would benefit from our Christian presence; we recognize there are valuable lessons to be learned in a Christian school setting that we cannot duplicate at home. After much prayer, however, we have decided that homeschooling is the best plan for us right now. In addition to the "Top Ten" reasons I listed in my February posting, we are onto something I haven’t seen anywhere else: the seven liberal arts.

Douglas Wilson, with his book, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, has popularized a return to classical education. Elementary school students are in the grammar stage (the first liberal art). Middle schoolers are mainly concerned with logic (the second liberal art). High school is the time to put it all together and focus on rhetoric (number three). TM helped start a classical Christian school and taught in two others. He decided to do a little more research to see if indeed the great minds of yesteryear were educated in this way. He found some conflicting information. These first three liberal arts (the Trivium) are not psychological or developmental stages, but subjects. The other four, known as the Quadrivium, are arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

These seven are our master syllabus. Each one is broad, encompassing many areas of study. Arithmetic is the algebraic branch of math; geometry is the analytic branch, extending into architecture and engineering, and even art. By music is meant mathematics applied in sound (music theory). Astronomy is math applied to the empirical universe (science proper)--broader than what we would call astronomy today. The Bible is woven throughout as we look at the world through a Christian worldview. Of course we do not teach our kindergartener all of these subjects. She is doing phonics, math, writing, music (taught by me), Bible (taught by Dad), and swim team. We have added formal grammar for our first grader. Our fourth grader is done with penmanship and phonics; she has replaced them with Latin, humanities, and spelling. Our sixth grader is doing a grammar-intensive Latin (Wheelock’s), humanities (the Bible, other Great Books, and history), and math, in addition to the music and swimming. She is becoming a very good writer because of the Latin. It also boosts her vocabulary and teaches her logic. She will start logic as a formal subject next year. None of the girls are using a science textbook. We much prefer the Charlotte Mason approach of experiencing nature first hand at this age. Formal science will begin in high school.

C.S. Lewis lamented that schools were teaching far too many subjects at a time. We do not want their education to be a mile wide and an inch deep; we are trying to limit the number of subjects in order to teach our kids to do a few things well (like the three Rs) before bogging them down with so many other things. So there you have it. I can’t say we invented these ideas: we just looked back a little farther in history. And why does it matter? Christians need to be able to engage the culture and participate in the Great Conversation if we are to have an impact.