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Bring Back the Trivium!
The world is a complicated place; it’s hard to trace all the world’s problems back to their few root causes. But surely a lack of education is one of them–and, sad to say, a presence of miseducation. To be precise: A lack of good education is one of the root problems.
So what makes a good education? I was raised with the idea that Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic were fundamentals in education, and I don’t disagree with that now. The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers was a wonderful discovery in college. It turns out that there are some other fundamentals, the lost tools of the Trivium: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric–or language, logic, and rhetoric. This is the old way of doing education. One of its surviving relics is the term “grammar school.” (Also, alongside the old and broken, yet newfangled, education system, a renewed, yet ancient and time-tested, education system has sprung up on this model–largely because of the influence of Sayers’ essay [examples here and here].)
The Trivium system relies largely on patterns. The patterns of Latin: sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt; o, as, at, amus, atis, ant; and others (so many others!). The patterns of Logic: All M are P; all S are M; therefore all S are P; and others.
Patterns matter. There are instincts we humans are naturally born with (or have been born with ever since the primal sin first corrupted human nature): Thinking we have a right to our own way no matter how it affects others, thinking we have a right to what we want now no matter the consequences later–as if our desires could impose themselves on reality and bend it to our arrogant, tiny human wills.
A nice remark by Thomas Sowell captures the uncivilized nature of these human instincts. And this is why patterns matter: Good patterns–patterns that help us remember facts, patterns of rational thought, patterns of ordered speech, patterns of virtuous life–are civilizing and edifying things.
The student who is trained in the Trivium is trained to think, from his youngest years, that some answers are simply correct and some simply are not. Sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt is right. Something like Sum, est, et, simy, ehee, dant is wrong.
The student is trained to think that some patterns of thought are correct. All M are P; All S are M; therefore all S are P is correct. You disagree with the fashionable views of younger and more powerful people; therefore shut up! is incorrect.
The student becomes accustomed to using the correct patterns of thought. And, in the rhetoric stage of his education, he learns to apply the correct patterns in public speech, in public debate, or in writing.
And these are good things: edifying, educating, and civilizing things. These are things it would be good to have more of in ourselves, our families, our communities, our country.
I’m not saying that we should go back to being medievals (though that would be much better than proceeding onward into full-blown postmodern moral relativism), or that we shouldn’t teach science, or that we shouldn’t teach students to think for themselves (quite the contrary!) or to employ “critical thinking” (which, if it’s a good thing, must surely be about 90% the same as logical thinking anyway).
I am saying that I think a healthy infusion of Trivium education would help improve education in America.
How to do it I can hardly guess, and maybe it’s better that way. (I can’t exactly plan an educational system for an entire country.) But here are a few ideas that a few of us might be able to employ, making things a little better in little ways, building from the ground up. If I’m right about the value of the Trivium, then some of you Ricocheters can try these and add your own ideas.
- We could learn to see the benefit of learning a dead language precisely because you won’t ever speak it; because you are learning it instead in order to see how language works and in order to learn some good patterns.
- We could try teaching Latin to our own kids at home (1 or 2 hours a week, starting with some basic patterns).
- People who make decisions about what courses are counted towards a degree might opt to include an optional, or a required, logic component.
My six year old can chant along with us. “Amo, amas, amat. Amamus, amatis, amant. Vocabo, vocabis, vocabit. Vocabimus, vocabitis, vocabunt. A, ae, ae, am, a. Ae, arum, is, as, is…”
“Rident stolidi verba Latina”
Semper ubi sub ubi.
Isn’t that a little redundant? Like pizza pie? An Uzi is a sub-machine gun, no?
Semper Uzi sub ubi?
Because I can’t “like” it twice!
“Mama Toad
Semper Uzi sub ubi?”
Uzi for you to say.
“My six year old can chant along with us. “Amo, amas, amat. Amamus, amatis, amant.”
See if you can do the verb “to know” without getting a giggle.
Or counting. “Unus, duo, tres, quattuor, quinque… giggle giggle… sex.. giggle giggle, septem…”
“Isn’t that a little redundant? Like pizza pie? An Uzi is a sub-machine gun, no?”
Uzi, or not uzi. That is the question.
Is my memory really that bad? Thank you, Claire Berlinski.
I can solve a little problem like the error in the opening post. A problem like my unreliable memory, or my own relative weakness in Latin, is harder to solve.
(I have a vague memory that in my Latin studies in grad school I may have made the same error. But we’ve already seen that my memory is fallible.)
Indeed.
But I’m wary of overdoing it. There are many things we should teach students to think.
Indeed, the rudiments of categorical logic are accessible to children.
Well done. (Your six year old is way ahead of mine!)
Jolly good. There’s a curriculum called My Father’s World that incorporates at least some Trivium.
I was raised on Calvert homeschool, which I think quite highly of. But I remember no Trivium in it.
Well, si quid est in me ingeni, iudices, quod sentio quam sit exiguum, aut si qua exercitatio dicendi, in qua me non infitior mediocriter esse versatum, aut, but let me tell you, it does not seem an impractical thing to study at all (or even a dead language) when you hit adulthood and realize that with a bit of rejiggering, it can be used to figure out–more or less–how to make a dentist appointment and how the bank machine works.
What Barkha said – and/or vouchers.
I would not necessarily recommend that your little ones read Ovid’s The Art of Love in the original Latin yet.
Very good! I can agree with the conclusions here, assuming the right definition of “dead.”
But I’m not sure I fully understand your intent. Is some disagreement with me intended on the impracticality of Latin? I’m sure I never said it was impractical: just dead, on the right (or, if you are right, on the wrong) definition of “dead.”
Yes, but no child wants to study Latin.
Some students are children.
Therefore some students do not want to study Latin.
(So you’ve probably got to force your kids or trick them. But some students really want to. I can’t believe I didn’t want to study it when I was a kid. If I had the chance to do it now? Man, if I ever get a raise–well, I’m not totally nuts, so I’ve promised myself that if I ever see money again, I’ll put a sensible amount of it into some sort of diversified-portfolio investment vehicle–but right after that, I’m heading straight to Vatican City, taking their intensive language program, and figuring out how to read Virgil properly.)
Latin is cool and should be taught. I would also recommend that Spanish should be part of every American kids curriculum and the younger they start the better.
Quite. You are correct. The suppressed premise is that a dead language is one you won’t ever speak. I am arguing with that suppressed premise. If you know some Latin, you will find yourself speaking it (albeit in an odd dialect, with all sorts of grotesque new-fangled grammatical constructions, and what I assume is a terrible accent) in many parts of the world.
Speaking live languages is practical. If anyone tells you otherwise, I assume he’s not going to get far: We’ll probably guess he’s grunting at that banana because he’s hungry, not that he’s making a good argument against the impracticality of language. So he’ll get a banana, because it’s our best guess about what he wants, but from his point of view, it would be much more practical to have the ability just to say, “I want a banana,” or “I don’t think languages are practical, that is Mister Koko to you, and for God’s sake, I don’t want another banana. I just want you to let me go home and stop torturing me with this ‘language’ stuff.”
Therefore, Latin is practical in many parts of the world.
Well, I won’t object to your definition of a dead language. It’s a good definition.
(However, I didn’t exactly suppress any premises. I only commented on the usefulness of learning a language even if it is “dead” by the usual definition of a dead language. No argument using that definition of a dead language as a premise was made, and no such argument was intended.)
But if you want them to learn Latin, forbid it because it’s porn. That’ll get them reading Latin, fast.
On the limits of teaching kids how to think, rather than what:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3659
Indeed. The impenetrable barriers between at least some categories is certainly something to teach our kids. I like to think the Trivium would help here. No cows are automobiles, and no human beings are helicopters.
That movie Turbo is troubling to me in this regard. Is its message simply that you should defy low expectations and be all you can be? I like that. Or is the message that snails can be automobiles? I don’t like that.
She hears her older siblings doing Latin with me, so it’s background noise, but she knows the chants. She can’t tell you what declension this noun is, or identify its case, but she can chant us, i, o, um, o…
I don’t think anyone in this thread has talked much about rhetoric and contemporary education. I would be happy if someone else said more clearly what truth needs to be said here. Provisionally, I would hazard this as a very rough approximation (please correct me if you know better):
The problem with rhetoric in education today is that it is alive and very unwell. Students are taught rhetoric with little or no attention to logic or grammar or basic facts, resulting in a whole lot of sophistry.
I know a few who enjoy it! My 9 year-olds are Italian speakers so it may be a little easier for them than for other American kids, but they think Latin is fun. I always thought it was fun, too, though I didn’t start until I was 14. But I studied it through high school and majored in Classics.
Re: reading Virgil, may I suggest Eve Adler’s “Vergil’s Empire: Political Thought in the Aeneid”? I have not yet read all of it, but Adler was brilliant.
This is probably apocryphal, but I heard years ago that there was some 19th century children’s edition of the Classics that edited out all the sexual references but — due a pang of conscience and stupidity — felt obliged to publish a single volume that collected them all. Apparently, that was the one kids went for.
One of the smartest, most well rounded, people I know has only a High School education. But that High School was prestigious St. Francis Prep in Brooklyn. And it was back in the days when both Latin and discipline were required.
He is a very successful investor and not a frivolous man. He firmly contends that all one needs are good rigorous training in Mathematics, Latin and Grammar.