The classical method recognizes three learning stages. These correspond to the natural development of the student’s mind as he or she gains knowledge, understanding, and wisdom:
With a classical education, a student acquires what Dorothy Sayers called “the tools of learning,” which enable each one to continue as a lifelong student in his or her calling. Dorothy Sayers’ speech, “The Lost Tools of Learning,” gives a more detailed explanation of the classical education model.
Definition of Grammar
Methodology
“Logic provides the beginning thinker with a set of rules that will help her to decide whether or not she can trust the information she’s receiving. This logic will help her ask appropriate questions:
Definition of Logic
Methodology
“If grammar-stage learning is fact-centered, and logic-stage learning is skilled-centered, then rhetoric-stage learning is idea-centered.” (Bauer, The Well-Trained Mind)
“(During the Poetic Stage), the imagination – usually dormant during the Pert Age – will reawaken, and prompt (the students) to suspect the limitations of logic and reason. This means that (the students) are passing into the Poetic Age and are ready to embark on the study of rhetoric. The doors of the storehouse of knowledge should now be thrown open for them to browse about as they will. The things once learned by rote will now be brought together to form a new synthesis; here and there a sudden insight will bring about the most exciting of all discoveries: the realization that a truism is true.” (Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”)
“Rhetoric is dependent upon the first two stages of the Trivium. The Grammar stage laid a foundation of knowledge; without knowledge, the rhetorician has nothing of substance to say. The Logic stage taught the student to think through the validity of arguments, to weigh the value of evidence. In the Rhetoric stage, the student uses knowledge and the skill of logical argument to write and speak about all the subjects in the curriculum.” (Bauer, The Well-Trained Mind)
Definition of Rhetoric
Methodology