What do you know about Classical Education and its advantages?

Answer 1

Be careful not to confuse a Classical Education with a liberal-arts education. The idea of the liberal arts has evolved over time to embrace many different fields of study including religion, health, literature, and social sciences. This is a good thing, but very different from the Classical view of the liberal arts.

Primary education (Trivium): Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. Students learn how to reason, speak, write, and be persuasive.

Secondary education (Quadrivium): Originally: Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music, and Geometry. These were believed to be basic fields from which all practical knowledge could be derived. The four secondary arts developed and evolved throughout the middle ages. One modern equivalent of the quadrivium could be mathematics, science, fine arts, and history or literature.

Tertiary education: This is where you specialize and learn a practical skill upon which you can form a career, usually through apprenticeship.

Today our school systems still make at least a modest nod toward the Classical liberal arts tradition. While most US and European primary and secondary schools do not divide up the trivium and quadrivium, most universities require study of liberal arts, and graduate school is almost always a form of tertiary education (trade school). Trade schools for which less formal education is required can be found at community colleges, and rely on the liberal arts that are taught in the public K-12 school systems.

Answer 2

There are several possible meanings to "classical education".

During the late-Middle Ages and through the Enlightenment periods of recent history, there were two aspects of education that were necessary for any properly 'cultured' person of Europe or Western civilization.

There was the Trivium, which meant the crossroads of three ways: Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic. This was in the day when to be "literate" did not necessarily simply mean the ability to read, but the ability to read Latin. The Romance, as in Roman-based, languages (French, Spanish, and Italian) languages were derived from Latin, so there would necessarily be similarities and the study of Grammar helped. After the language was intricately learned, one needed to learn to speak it, so the Rhetorical arts were employed. Of course, in the process of reading and speaking the language, there were issues that caused a person to rise above ignorance and stupidity. This was called Logic. Reasoned speech, understanding reasoned writings, all called for an understanding what it means to be reasonable--which is where logic comes in.

Below these three fundamentals of Classical education, there was the Quadrivium. A cultured person needed to have studied Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. In Plato's Academy there was a sign over the entrance that said (in Greek, of course, the other language of "culture"), "Let no one enter who is not a mathematician." Remember, in medeval times algebra and similar representative mathematics had either not been introduced or not firmly taken hold, but it was enough to be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, yet one needed to be cognizant of issues of irrational numbers and such, because you would encounter them in the study of geometry. Geometry was logic applied to figures, but arithmetic was required to work with geometry, so as with the language arts of the Trivium, the interrelatedness of the disciplines was seen here too. Music had its mathematical counterparts with timing, scales, and harmonics. Learning that grace of human art added a different dimension to human culture. In astronomy, there was the mind stretching to see our place in a much, much broader universe. Something to consider, when Kepler made his supporting laws of the astronomical perspective of Copernicus (that the sun was the center about which the earth and planets rotated, not the earth as center of the universe), not only did Kepler correctly connect the observations with us on an eliptical orbit, but several of his famous "Laws" involve harmonics. In order to read his groundbreaking work, you had to be able to read music. There were some who also took the new art of telescopic astronomy and drew lines across a lense, then scanned the skies to let the stars be notes of a measure in order to find new melodies.

The stories and connections are almost endless, but starting in the medeval European universities, one studied theology or the seven liberal arts. Over time, specific sciences came into their own importance and one could receive a terminal or pinnacle degree in them, such as a doctor in natural philosophy of ---biology (living things), botany (plants), zoology (animals), chemistry (physical elements), physics (the mechanics of how matter works), and such.

Answer 3

A classical education concentrates on the humanities and study of the masters----philosophers, writers, painters....and scientists.
The point is to build a very broad base of knowlege from which you can pull to understand and learn more specific things...like your job. Most intelligent employers do not believe it is the role of the schools to teach specific skills...but to graduate students who can think and have a basic knowlege of the world. Prepared to learn!