This is the second of a series of posts about Dorothy Sayers’s essay “The Lost Tools of Learning.” I think that’s sufficient introduction for anyone who reads this blog.
Also, I’m going to call her Dottie throughout, because I want to.
The Trivium, as Dottie explains it, is a way to “teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of learning.” It means mastering a language in three stages: Grammar (the structure), Dialectic (the reasoning), and Rhetoric (the expression). So does the Trivium only apply to language? Well, yes and no. All three parts of the Trivium are language arts, but as Dottie says, “language itself is the medium in which thought is expressed.” Human beings need language to think, which means that mastering language can aid us in mastering thought itself. This paves the way for mastery in any subject whatsoever, whether geometry, music, astronomy, medicine, theology, or law. That’s the idea, anyway.
I won’t take time here to talk about whether there can be such a thing as “the grammar of math.” I know people have strong feelings about that. Instead I want to ask whether any classical Christian schools are actually following Dottie’s suggestions when it comes to the Grammar stage.
Dottie defines the Grammar stage as learning what a language is, how it’s put together, and how it works. She matches this onto what she calls “the Poll-Parrot Age,” in which “learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable.” (Later in the essay she gives an age range of nine to eleven years old.) Many classical educators treat the Grammar stage as a time of pure memorization. “Don’t worry about whether the students understand,” they say. “They’re just gathering material.” In general, kids like to memorize stuff, so everything appears hunky-dory. Grammar—check.
But pure memorization doesn’t teach a student what language is, how it’s put together, and how it works. To do that, you must teach actual grammar. Some classical schools teach English grammar in the early years, so that students know what direct objects and subordinate clauses are before they leave elementary school. But Dottie’s actual suggestion is teaching Latin grammar. Because Latin is an inflected language, its grammar is better than English grammar for teaching “what language is, how it’s put together, and how it works.” In the Grammar stage, then, Latin should be more than chanting declensions and conjugations. Students should know what direct objects and subordinate clauses are in Latin before they leave elementary school.
Again, according to Dottie, the Trivium is a three-tier system: you must master the first stage before you ascend to the next. If you want to study Dialectic (the study of argumentation), you have to understand Grammar—which means Latin grammar. But nearly every classical school moves students to the “Logic Stage” based on age, not ability. Doesn’t that blow the entire system apart? How can a student learn to use language, to define terms and make accurate statements, to construct an argument and detect fallacies without knowing what language is, how it’s put together, and how it works? And forget about Rhetoric! How can a teenager who hasn’t mastered the structure of language and arguments to express himself well?
To be fair, Dottie is a little inconsistent here. When she describes the Trivium, she emphasizes its tiered structure (Rhetoric is built on Dialectic, which is built on Grammar). Later, when describing the “Pert Age,” she says it begins “so soon as the pupil shows himself disposed to Pertness and interminable argument” or “when the capacity for abstract thought begins to manifest itself.” These benchmarks seem more tied to a child’s psychological development than how far he’s progressed in Latin.
If the Trivium consists of three stages laid firmly atop one another, and if we follow Dottie’s definition of Grammar, a student must study enough Latin to understand “what language is, how it’s put together, and how it works” before moving on to Dialectic. How many classical schools actually operate this way?
Christian Leithart 