What is classical homeschooling? In a nutshell, it’s classical education at home!
Modern Classical Homeschooling is based on a lecture Dorothy Sayers gave in 1947 at Oxford titled The Lost Tools of Learning.
In it she spelled out her vision of a return to the ancient style of education.
This style of education would end people’s susceptibility to mass propaganda. It would teach people to think, reason, and argue effectively.
Dorothy Sayers’ lecture is the foundation of classical homeschooling.
Classical homeschooling begins with the youngest students in what we call the grammar stage. During this stage, children love to memorize, parrot, and mimic. So we take advantage of this love and have the children memorize facts, learn stories, and recite poetry.
Grammar stage children are not asked to critically think about what they’re learning. They’re asked to memorize and recite.
As children reach their preteen years, they begin to argue. They love to find exceptions to the rules and faults in the people around them. We call this time period the dialectic years and teach our preteens to argue logically and well.
Dialectic students are taught to critically think about the world using the facts they memorized in the grammar years.
The third stage of classical homeschooling is called the rhetoric stage and corresponds to high school and the teenage years. Teenagers love to discuss their friends, their opinions, and the world.
We use these discussions to instill high school students with oration and rhetoric skills. In other words, we teach our rhetoric teenagers to communicate their ideas well.
When all is said and done, classical homeschooling gives us young adults with a treasure trove of facts. Young adults who can argue, debate, and critically think. Young adults who can communicate their opinions, beliefs, and thoughts well.
We have young adults who are immune to mass propaganda.
Learn more about classical homeschooling by reading Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style
