Trivium (liberal arts)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The word trivium, from Latin, is made of two parts. The first part tres meant "three" and the second part vía meant "way".
In antiquity and the High Middle Ages, there were different ways of teaching young men at the university. The trivium was three simplest ways to study the world, and so young men learned them first. After the trivium, they studied the quadrivium. Together, these subjects were called the seven liberal arts. The most difficult, and final subject studied was theology.
The three subjects were related to talking about the world. These subjects were grammar, logic and rhetoric. They were ways of preparing for the quadrivium, which includes arithmetic,geometry, music and astronomy.
Grammar
One way of studying the world is to look at the form of the words. Grammar is the mechanics of the language. When a man studied grammar, he studied how words were put together, and how words were combined to make sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and stories.
The word "grammar" has a more limited meaning now than it did before now. Many subjects, such as syntax and phonetics were part of grammar.
Logic
One way of studying the world is to look at the meaning of words. Logic is the mechanics of thought and analysis. Logic is the study of how meanings are related to each other, and how to make good decisions. A fallacy is when someone does not draw a conclusion according to the rules of logic. An old name for logic was dialectics.
Rhetoric
One way of studying the world is to look at communicating with words. Rhetoric is the mechanics of discourse. Discourse is the process of two or more people communicating about an idea. Young men studied rhetoric in order to learn how to instruct and to persuade.
Related pages
Trivium (liberal arts) - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Here is a website devoted to the Trivium
Trivium Education Home - Trivium Education.com
Trivium - Trivium Education.com
And here is an excellent website:
Resources for the Trivium Method of Critical Thinking and Creative Problem Solving, useful to the Peace Revolution curriculum
The British writer Dorothy L Sayers had some very clear insights into the system. Here is the central section from a brilliant piece she wrote:
My views about child psychology are, I admit, neither orthodox nor enlightened. Looking back upon myself (since I am the child I know best and the only child I can pretend to know from inside) I recognize three states of development. These, in a rough-and- ready fashion, I will call the Poll-Parrot, the Pert, and the Poetic--the latter coinciding, approximately, with the onset of puberty.
The Poll-Parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and appearances of things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars; one rejoices in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of unintelligible polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of things.
The Pert age, which follows upon this (and, naturally, overlaps it to some extent), is characterized by contradicting, answering back, liking to "catch people out" (especially one's elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its nuisance-value is extremely high. It usually sets in about the Fourth Form.
The Poetic age is popularly known as the "difficult" age. It is self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it rather specializes in being misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to all others.
Now it seems to me that the layout of the Trivium adapts itself with a singular appropriateness to these three ages: Grammar to the Poll-Parrot, Dialectic to the Pert, and Rhetoric to the Poetic age.
The Lost Tools of Learning
The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers
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