classical learning essay

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Classical Argument

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A (Very) Brief History of Rhetoric

The study of rhetoric has existed for thousands of years, predating even Socrates, Plato and the other ancient Greek philosophers that we often credit as the founders of Western philosophy. Although ancient rhetoric is most commonly associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, early examples of rhetoric date all the way back to ancient Akkadian writings in Mesopotamia.

In ancient Greece and Rome, rhetoric was most often considered to be the art of persuasion and was primarily described as a spoken skill. In these societies, discourse occurred almost exclusively in the public sphere, so learning the art of effective, convincing speaking was essential for public orators, legal experts, politicians, philosophers, generals, and educators. To prepare for the speeches they would need to make in these roles, students engaged in written exercises called  progymnasmata . Today, rhetorical scholars still use strategies from the classical era to conceptualize argument. However, whereas oral discourse was the main focus of the classical rhetoricians, modern scholars also study the peculiarities of written argument.

Aristotle provides a crucial point of reference for ancient and modern scholars alike. Over 2000 years ago, Aristotle literally wrote the book on rhetoric. His text  Rhētorikḗ ( On Rhetoric ) explores the techniques and purposes of persuasion in ancient Greece, laying the foundation for the study and implementation of rhetoric in future generations. Though the ways we communicate and conceptualize rhetoric have changed, many of the principles in this book are still used today. And this is for good reason: Aristotle’s strategies can provide a great guide for organizing your thoughts as well as writing effective arguments, essays, and speeches.

Below, you will find a brief guide to some of the most fundamental concepts in classical rhetoric, most of which originate in  On Rhetoric.

The Rhetorical Appeals

To understand how argument works in  On Rhetoric , you must first understand the major appeals associated with rhetoric. Aristotle identifies four major rhetorical appeals: ethos (credibility), logos (logic), pathos (emotion), and Kairos(time). 

• Ethos –  persuasion through the author's character or credibility. This is the way a speaker (or writer) presents herself to the audience. You can build credibility by citing professional sources, using content-specific language, and by showing evidence of your ethical, knowledgeable background.
• Logos –  persuasion through logic. This is the way a speaker appeals to the audience through practicality and hard evidence. You can develop logos by presenting data,  statistics, or facts by  crafting a clear claim with a logically-sequenced argument.  ( See enthymeme and syllogism )
• Pathos –  persuasion through emotion or disposition . This is the way a speaker appeals to the audience through emotion, pity, passions, or dispositions. The idea is usually to evoke and strengthen feelings already present within the audience. This can be achieved through story-telling, vivid imagery, and an impassioned voice.  Academic arguments in particular ​benefit from understanding pathos as appealing to an audience's academic disposition on a given topic, subject, or argument.
• Kairos – an appeal made through the adept use of time. This is the way a speaker appeals to the audience through notions of time. It is also considered to be the appropriate or opportune time for a speaker to insert herself into a conversation or discourse, using the three appeals listed above. A Kairotic appeal can be made through calls to immediate action, presenting an opportunity as temporary, and by describing a specific moment as propitious or ideal.

​*Note:  When using these terms in a Rhetorical Analysis, make sure your syntax is correct. One does not appeal to ethos, logos, or pathos directly. Rather, one appeals to an audience's emotion/disposition, reason/logic, or sense of the author's character/credibility within the text. Ethos, pathos, and logos are themselves the appeals an author uses to persuade an audience. 

An easy way to conceptualize the rhetorical appeals is through advertisements, particularly infomercials or commercials. We are constantly being exposed to the types of rhetoric above, whether it be while watching television or movies, browsing the internet, or watching videos on YouTube.

Imagine a commercial for a new car. The commercial opens with images of a family driving a brand-new car through rugged, forested terrain, over large rocks, past waterfalls, and finally to a serene camping spot near a tranquil lake surrounded by giant redwood trees. The scene cuts to shots of the interior of the car, showing off its technological capacities and its impressive spaciousness. A voiceover announces that not only has this car won numerous awards over its competitors but that it is also priced considerably lower than comparable models, while getting better gas mileage. “But don’t wait,” the voiceover says excitedly, “current lessees pay 0% APR financing for 12 months.”

In just a few moments, this commercial has shown masterful use of all four appeals. The commercial utilizes pathos by appealing to our romantic notions of family, escape, and the great outdoors. The commercial develops ethos by listing its awards, and it appeals to our logical tendencies by pointing out we will save money immediately because the car is priced lower than its competitors, as well as in the long run because of its higher MPG rate. Finally, the commercial provides an opportune and propitious moment for its targeted audience to purchase a car immediately. 

Depending on the nature of the text, argument, or conversation, one appeal will likely become most dominant, but rhetoric is generally most effective when the speaker or writer draws on multiple appeals to work in conjunction with one another. To learn more about Aristotle's rhetorical appeals, click here.

Components and Structure

The classical argument is made up of five components, which are most commonly composed in the following order:

• Exordium –  The introduction, opening, or hook.
• Narratio –  The context or background of the topic.
• Proposito and Partitio –  The claim/stance and the argument.
• Confirmatio and/or Refutatio –  positive proofs and negative proofs of support.
• Peroratio –  The conclusion and call to action.

Think of the exordium as your introduction or “hook.” In your exordium, you have an opportunity to gain the interest of your reader, but you also have the responsibility of situating the argument and setting the tone of your writing. That is, you should find a way to appeal to the audience’s interest while also introducing the topic and its importance in a professional and considerate manner. Something to include in this section is the significance of discussing the topic in this given moment (Kairos). This provides the issue a sense of urgency that can validate your argument.

This is also a good opportunity to consider who your intended audience is and to address their concerns within the context of the argument. For example, if you were writing an argument on the importance of technology in the English classroom and your intended audience was the board of a local high school, you might consider the following:

• New learning possibilities for students (General Audience Concerns)
• The necessity of modern technology in finding new, up-to-date information (Hook/Kairos)
• Detailed narrative of how technology in one school vastly improved student literacy (Hook/Pathos) 
• Statistics showing a link between exposure to technology and rising trends in literacy (Hook/Logos)
• Quotes from education and technology professors expressing an urgency for technology in English classrooms (Hook/Ethos)

Of course, you probably should not include all of these types of appeals in the opening section of your argument—if you do, you may end up with a boring, overlong introduction that doesn’t function well as a hook. Instead, consider using some of these points as evidence later on. Ask yourself:  What will be most important to my audience? What information will most likely result in the action I want to bring about?  Think about which appeal will work best to gain the attention of your intended audience and start there.

The narratio provides relevant foundational information and describes the social context in which your topic exists. This might include information on the historical background, including recent changes or updates to the topic, social perception, important events, and other academic research. This helps to establish the rhetorical situation for the argument: that is, the situation the argument is currently in, as impacted by events, people, opinion, and urgency of some kind. For your argument on technology in the English classroom, you might include:

• Advances in education-related technology over the centuries
• Recent trends in education technology
• A description of the importance of digital literacy
• Statistics documenting the lack of home technology for many students
• A selection of expert opinions on the usefulness of technology in all classrooms

Providing this type of information creates the setting for your argument. In other words, it provides the place and purpose for the argument to take place. By situating your argument within in a viable context, you create an opportunity to assert yourself into the discussion, as well as to give your reader a genuine understanding of your topic’s importance.

Propositio and Partitio

These two concepts function together to help set up your argument. You can think of them functioning together to form a single thesis. The propositio informs your audience of your stance, and the partitio lays out your argument. In other words, the propositio tells your audience what you think about a topic, and the partitio briefly explains why you think that way and how you will prove your point. 

Because this section helps to set up the rest of your argument, you should place it near the beginning of your paper. Keep in mind, however, that you should not give away all of your information or evidence in your partitio. This section should be fairly short: perhaps 3-4 sentences at most for most academic essays. You can think of this section of your argument like the trailer for a new film: it should be concise, should entice the audience, and should give them a good example of what they are going to experience, but it shouldn’t include every detail. Just as a filmgoer must see an entire film to gain an understanding of its significance or quality, so too must your audience read the rest of your argument to truly understand its depth and scope. 

In the case of your argument on implementing technology in the English classroom, it’s important to think not only of your own motivations for pursuing this technology in the classroom, but also of what will motivate or persuade your respective audience(s). Some writing contexts call for an audience of one. Some require consideration of multiple audiences, in which case you must find ways to craft an argument which appeals to each member of your audience. For example, if your audience included a school board as well as parents andteachers, your propositio might look something like this:

“The introduction of newer digital technology in the English classroom would be beneficial for all parties involved. Students are already engaged in all kinds of technological spaces, and it is important to implement teaching practices that invest students’ interests and prior knowledge. Not only would the marriage of English studies and technology extend pedagogical opportunities, it would also create an ease of instruction for teachers, engage students in creative learning environments, and familiarize students with the creation and sharing technologies that they will be expected to use at their future colleges and careers. Plus, recent studies suggest a correlation between exposure to technology and higher literacy rates, a trend many education professionals say isn’t going to change.”

Note how the above paragraph considers the concerns and motivations of all three audience members, takes a stance, and provides support for the stance in a way that allows for the rest of the argument to grow from its ideas. Keep in mind that whatever you promise in your propositio and partitio (in this case the new teaching practices, literacy statistics, and professional opinion) must appear in the body of your argument. Don’t make any claims here that you cannot prove later in your argument.

Confirmatio and Refutatio  

These two represent different types of proofs that you will need to consider when crafting your argument. The confirmatio and refutatio work in opposite ways, but are both very effective in strengthening your claims. Luckily, both words are cognates—words that sound/look in similar in multiple languages—and are therefore are easy to keep straight. Confirmatio is a way to confirm your claims and is considered a positive proof; refutatio is a way to acknowledge and refute a counterclaim and is considered a negative proof.

The confirmatio is your argument’s support: the evidence that helps to support your claims. For your argument on technology in the English classroom, you might include the following:

• Students grades drastically increase when technology is inserted into academics
• Teachers widely agree that students are more engaged in classroom activities that involve technology
• Students who accepted to elite colleges generally possess strong technological skills

The refutatio provides negative proofs. This is an opportunity for you to acknowledge that other opinions exist and have merit, while also showing why those claims do not warrant rejecting your argument. 

If you feel strange including information that seems to undermine or weaken your own claims, ask yourself this: have you ever been in a debate with someone who entirely disregarded every point you tried to make without considering the credibility of what you said? Did this make their argument less convincing? That’s what your paper can look like if you don’t acknowledge that other opinions indeed exist and warrant attention. 

After acknowledging an opposing viewpoint, you have two options. You can either concede the point (that is, admit that the point is valid and you can find no fault with their reasoning), or you can refute their claim by pointing out the flaws in your opponent’s argument. For example, if your opponent were to argue that technology is likely to distract students more than help them (an argument you’d be sure to include in your argument so as not to seem ignorant of opposing views) you’d have two options:

• Concession: You might concede this point by saying “Despite all of the potential for positive learning provided by technology, proponents of more traditional classroom materials point out the distractive possibilities that such technology would introduce into the classroom. They argue that distractions such as computer games, social media, and music-streaming services would only get in the way of learning.” 

In your concession of the argument, you acknowledge the merit of the opposing argument, but you should still try to flip the evidence in a positive way. Note how before conceding we include “despite all of the potential for positive learning.” This reminds your reader that, although you are conceding a single point, there are still many reasons to side with you.

• Refutation: To refute this same point you might say something like, “While proponents of more traditional English classrooms express concerns about student distraction, it’s important to realize that in modern times, students are already distracted by the technology they carry around in their pockets. By redirecting student attention to the technology administered by the school, this distraction is shifted to class content. Plus, with website and app blocking resources available to schools, it is simple for an institution to simply decide which websites and apps to ban and block, thereby ensuring students are on task.”

Note how we acknowledged the opposing argument, but immediately pointed out its flaws using straightforward logic and a counterexample. In so doing, we effectively strengthen our argument and move forward with our proposal.

Your peroratio is your conclusion. This is your final opportunity to make an impact in your essay and leave an impression on your audience. In this section, you are expected to summarize and re-evaluate everything you have proven throughout your argument. However, there are multiple ways of doing this. Depending on the topic of your essay, you might employ one or more of the following in your closing:

• Call to action (encourage your audience to do something that will change the situation or topic you have been discussing).
• Discuss the implications for the future. What might happen if things continue the way they are going? Is this good or bad? Try to be impactful without being overly dramatic.
• Discuss other related topics that warrant further research and discussion.
• Make a historical parallel regarding a similar issue that can help to strengthen your argument.
• Urge a continued conversation of the topic for the future.

Remember that your peroratio is the last impression your audience will have of your argument. Be sure to consider carefully which rhetorical appeals to employ to gain a desirable effect. Make sure also to summarize your findings, including the most effective and emphatic pieces of evidence from your argument, reassert your major claim, and end on a compelling, memorable note. Good luck and happy arguing!

Why Read the Classics?

Four Reasons Why We Should Read and Discuss the Classics:

1. Reading and discussing the classics make us better human beings.

Classical educators have always touted liberal learning as inherently humanizing. The ultimate purpose of education is to make us better people, to cultivate wisdom and virtue, not simply provide career preparation.  The ancients referred to classical education as  liberal  and  humane , emphasizing virtuous participation in a free society. By living a wise and virtuous life, one is able to fulfill the purpose of his humanity (thus the term,  humane ) .   As H.I. Marrou said, “Classical education aimed at developing men as men, not as cogs in a political machine or bees in a hive.”  Similarly, John Stuart Mill said, “Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.” The goal of education is not utilitarian; it is humane.

The content, the means by which this humanizing occurs, is the liberal arts, rooted in the classics.  The classic texts “not only exhibit distinguished style, fine artistry, and keen intellect but create whole universes of imagination and thought.”  They portray life as complex and multi-faceted, illustrating human glory and tragedy, beautifully depicting the drama of man’s most significant struggles.  The classics uproot our assumptions and display epic human struggles. They compel us to examine our own lives and contemplate what is good, true, and beautiful.  The impact on the reader is transformative.

In Werner Jaeger’s summary of Socrates’ teaching, he states, “Education is not the cultivation of certain branches of knowledge… The real essence of education is that it enables men to reach the true aim of their lives.”  The classics provide an education that indeed requires us to struggle with the true aim of our lives. By doing so, they make us better men.

2. Reading the classics keeps us from acting as Cyclops. 

Immanuel Kant, the dense and controversial 18 th  century German philosopher, railed his students for being Cyclops.  “What constitutes them as Cyclops is not their strength,” as Fredeirich Paulsen points out, “but the fact that they only have one eye; they see things only from a single standpoint, that of their own specialty.”  The task of philosophy and learning, according to Kant, is to furnish us a second eye.  According to Kant, “The second eye is the self-knowledge of human reason, without which we can have no proper estimate of the extent of our knowledge.” While we may argue with Kant concerning the identity of the second eye, or what it should be, his point that education broadens one’s perspective is indisputable.

The classics “lift the readers out of narrowness and provincialism into a wider vision of humanity.”  They help us see our lives, our vocations, and our culture through a broad lens.  Polymaths such as Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Milton, and Jefferson were able to draw from a sea of ideas found in the ancients.  They studied math, science, history, economics, theology, philosophy, literature, and virtually everything else.  From their broadly informed perspectives, the great thinkers of the West were able to make incredible contributions to society and move from one subject to another with ease and enjoyment.  Their immersion in and facility with the classics provided a liberating, expansive, two-eyed vision that enriched their understanding and mitigated the narrow short-sightedness of specialization.

3. Reading the classics compels us to ask the most important questions of life.

Hegel referred to a classic as “a question, an address to the responsive breast, a call to the mind and the spirit.” Think of the enduring questions that have emerged from the great texts of Western civilization: Is man free? Does God exist? What is the nature of the universe? How do we know truth? Does man have a soul? What type of government is best?

The classics provide enduring questions of a transcendent quality.  That is, they ask questions that continue to be asked again and again, despite ages and sages.  The classics present questions that are profound, or even very simple, that exceed human comprehension, yet if not asked, detract from our humanity.  Enduring questions are ones that challenge the greatest minds and intrigue the simplest ones (i.e., children). They make life engaging and interesting.  Enduring questions lead to more questions and to thoughtful, soul-searching reflection about great ideas. The classics ask these questions like no other texts we encounter.

The classics compel us to ask who we are, why we are here, what is true, and what is good.  We are obliged to struggle with Hamlet’s gut-wrenching turmoil over whether to seek retribution and justice.  We are faced with Achilles’ dilemma, when he proclaims:

I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death.

Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,

My return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;

But if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,

The excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life left for me

And my end in death will not come to me quickly. (Iliad)

These kinds of texts prompt weighty questions.   How do we respond to feelings of retribution?  What do we value as our legacy? For what are we willing to die?  Thus, the classics ask us the most penetrating and humanizing questions in ways that capture our imaginations and emotions.  Andrew Kern, President of the CiRCE Institute, once asserted, “The quality of your life depends upon the quality of the questions you ask.” If he is right, we ought to read the classics.

4. Why Christians should read and discuss the classics.

Robert Lundin claimed, “The Christian student of culture would never wish to confuse the power of the classic with the authority of the Scriptures. The Bible is the Word of God while the greatest classics are only supreme embodiments of human insight.” Nevertheless, we would be wrong to dismiss them simply because they are not authoritative in the same way as Scripture. The most influential Christian thinkers in church history read and engaged the classics. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Aquinas, and many others understood classical languages and literature, having been educated in the liberal arts tradition.

They recognized the value of conversing with the great ideas of the West even while “taking every thought captive for Christ.”  They grasped the controversies with which the church struggled and were able to both think carefully and speak persuasively about truth in their own age.  These men of God possessed the ability to think biblically, and in Pauline fashion, could plunder the pagans.  They could employ apologetic skill by thinking thoroughly and carefully about the opposing philosophies of their time. These scholars could empathize with their detractors and yet speak boldly from an informed understanding. While there have certainly been those, like Tertullian, who would condemn any association between Athens and Jerusalem, there are many more, such as Basil, who saw the value of young Christians stimulated to exercise their discernment through a wise engagement with pagan literature.

Ultimately, if classical education (reading the classics) is about who we are as human beings and not what we  do  for a living (our vocation); if it is about who we become and not what skill we can perform, we must have an ideal for what, or rather whom, we should be like. Jesus is the full expression of what it means to be human and thus is the ultimate aim of education. He is Truth and Wisdom incarnate. In Christ, the apostle Paul declares, are “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:8). He embodies truth and virtue. Therefore, we must seek to conform our lives to knowing Him and being like Him. In our pursuit toward becoming better human beings, we must keep the Incarnate Christ, the perfect human being, as our standard. Understanding this truth provides a rich and unique approach to the humanities by examining the enduring questions of man in light of God’s revelation through His Son.

Thanksgiving as Recognition

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• The Core Chapter 5: The Core of a Classical Education: Writing

I hope that this article finds you collecting fall leaves with your children, wandering through corn mazes, and savoring great books with a mug of apple cider.  My family has leaped fully into the joys of autumn!

This article is part 3 in a series of articles looking at the core or foundations of classical education as presented in Leigh’s book   The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations of Classical Education .  In previous articles, we looked at the reasons for pursuing a classical education, chiefly that the classical model works with a child’s natural stages of mental development and teaches them how to think rather than what to think.  In the first core subject article, we looked at applying the classical model to teaching children how to read.

Now, let’s turn to the core of writing which Leigh outlines in Chapter 5 of  The Core .   Teaching a child to write classically involves following the trivium skills of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.  To lay the foundations for writing in the grammar stage, the fundamental skills are handwriting, spelling, and copywork.  Then, dialectic students can progress to the technical vocabulary of grammar and analysis of sentence structure.  Finally, rhetoric students can hone their skills of expression by employing stylistic techniques which allow them to express complex ideas.

The Grammar Stage of Writing: Copywork and Dictation

When children are very small (ages 4-7), you must help them lay the foundations for writing by establishing good habits.  Small children must learn correct posture and the proper way to hold their pencil.  It is hard work to copy letters, so children (and parents) need patience, diligence, and lots of practice.  Preschoolers can start writing on a dry erase board or a magnetic doodling board using stencils (these are generally available at office supply stores and educational supply stores).  Using these tools is less tiring to their hands than paper and pencil when they are very small.  Children also need to spend time coloring which develops the muscles and fine motor skills necessary for writing.  My children color while we are reading aloud or listening to  Story of the World .

When children are ready to write with pencil and paper, they can begin to use a very basic handwriting curriculum like  Handwriting Without Tears  or  A Reason for Handwriting .  They must first master the lowercase and uppercase letters before beginning to copy words and then sentences (around ages 6-7).  Once they can copy sentences, children should practice copywork and dictation.   Copywork involves copying a sentence or a short passage from the board or from a book.  Practice with both is ideal.  If you don’t have a chalkboard or white board at home, it’s a good idea to invest in one.  We purchased a large sheet of shower board from a home improvement store and mounted it our schoolroom with mirror brackets (for a total cost of $15).

During copywork, students should pay attention to capitalization and punctuation.  I assign my children passages of dialogue so that they can learn how to punctuate quotes.  They copy poems so that they can learn the rules for punctuating and indenting lines of verse.  Classic collections of children’s poems are easy to find.  In addition to copywork, children should practice dictation.  During dictation, children must figure out the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation for themselves which makes it a different skill from copywork.  Many spelling curricula offer dictation resources such as  Spelling Plus  and its companion resource  Dictation  which we carry in the CC bookstore.

Although these activities may seem tedious to us as adults, they are critical skills which prepare children to write articulately and elegantly later.  Our Founding Fathers and authors like Shakespeare all began their writing careers with copywork which exposed them to quality writing styles.

The Dialectic Stage:  Learning to Write by Imitation

One of the great follies of a modern education is that modern educators often encourage creative writing and self expression before children have any life experiences which supply the material for the writing or any word tools which supply the method of writing.  A classical education instead pursues the time-tested method of learning to write paragraphs and essays by summarizing source material and re-writing it.

In other words, we give the students the content.  Then, students build their word banks by adding quality adjectives, strong verbs, prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, and adverbs.  Because older grammar stage children (ages 9-12) have not necessarily built a large vocabulary, we give them word lists to start with and then teach them how to use a Thesaurus.   In our Essentials and Challenge courses, we follow the methodology of the  Institute for Excellence in Writing  which encourages this imitative method.

Students can practice their writing skills with any source material.  I have had my own children summarize the Veritas Press history cards that we use in the Foundations program, the Classical Conversations science cards, Aesop’s fables, and short fairy tales.  They can then use their outline to write their own version of the original material.  Finally, they can use their word lists to enhance their composition.

Just as smaller children needed daily practice with handwriting, older children need weekly practice with writing.  Children ages 9-10 can reasonably be expected to summarize and re-write a quality paragraph each week.  Children ages 11-12 can write two or three paragraphs a week.

The Rhetoric of Writing:  Organized, Analytical, and Elegant Compositions

As our children progress to the Rhetoric stage of writing (ages 13-18), they have will have enough skills and practice to begin writing without a model or source.  Instead, high school students should be encouraged to write about all of their subject studies:  history, science, philosophy, literature, etc.

In the dialectic stage, students begin to write without a model by presenting opinions in literature and current events or by summarizing and reporting on science facts.  These compositions begin to look like the five paragraph essay which includes an introductory paragraph, a thesis statement including three topics that will be discussed, three topic paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph.

As they transition to the rhetoric stage, students move away from summarizing facts and move toward analytical writing.  For example, in literature, students move from book reports which report the background, characters, plot and theme to comparing two works of literature or analyzing the worldview of a classic novel.  In history, students move from summarizing important WW II battles to arguing that the Allied victory depended primarily on D-Day and Hiroshima.

A Rhetoric student’s writing should be well-organized.  Their points of argument should be thoroughly supported from the source material.  Their sentence structure must be more complex and their diction more elevated.  In their conclusions, rhetoric students should move beyond mere summary to an evaluation.  For example, what lessons can we learn today from analyzing Brutus’ decision to assassinate Julius Caesar.  (To assist your students with this difficult skill, have them pay close attention to quality sermons.  Pastors almost always conclude their sermons by asking the congregation to change their thinking or behavior).

Learning to argue persuasively and write eloquently require the same character qualities that we asked of small children when they were learning to form letters:  diligence, patience, and practice.  Older students must be encouraged to wrestle down difficult ideas and to revise, revise, revise.

Summary:  Modern Confusion vs. a Classical Vision for Writing

As classical home educators, we must shed the modern cultural notions that writing, like fine arts, cannot be judged.  There are standards for good writing.  When these standards are not followed, we produce bad writing.  Although writing is a creative experience, it is not a mystical, formless process.  We can learn the tools of writing and teach them to our children.

_______________________________________

The Writing Educators Tool-Kit (resources available in the Classical Conversations bookstore)

The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations of Classical Education   by Leigh A. Bortins

IEW’s  Teaching Writing: Structure and Style Kit

CiRCE Institute’s  Lost Tools of Writing

To read Jennifer’s other articles about  The Core , click on the links below:

• The Core Chapters 1-3: Back to School (Exploring the Classical Model)
• The Core Chapter 4: The Core of a Classical Education Reading
• The Core Chapter 6: The Core of a Classical Education: Math
• The Core Chapter 7: The Core of a Classical Education: Geography
• The Core Chapter 8: The Core of a Classical Education: History
• The Core Chapter 9: The Core of a Classical Education: Science
• The Core Chapter 10: The Core of a Classical Education: Fine Arts

Written by:

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John cicone: "what is classical education".

What is classical education? In our modern times, you will find a variety of answers to this question—some quite long and others more succinct. I believe, however, that to properly answer the question, we must understand two important secondary questions that are implied in our primary question. By analyzing these two implied secondary questions, we can then develop a complete answer for our primary question.

The first implied secondary question is, “What is education?”. From ancient cultures and civilizations, we learn that all peoples have a view that education is important. Simply put, education is the importance of passing knowledge, experience, and wisdom to a new generation.

By answering “What is education?,” we flow quite easily into another question which is, “What is the purpose or goal of education?.” I have been living and working in Tanzania for the past eighteen months, and I have learned that local tribes all value educating their children; however, they have different goals for their graduates. The Masai are a very traditional tribe and typically educate their children with the skills, virtues, and knowledge needed to be a good member of their community. They teach practical skills, such as cattle raising, hunting, sewing, and farming, among others. Knowledge that Westerners consider essential, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, are not considered important to the Masai. The Chaga tribe, on the other hand, has a more modern view of education, and many of their children attend schools with the goal of being trained to be accountants, lawyers, business owners, etc. Both tribes have the same goal: to educate their children so they have the necessary skills and virtues (necessary as defined by the culture) to be positive contributors to the society, and in doing so they emphasize a different set of skills and a different type of knowledge.

We can now apply the answers to these two secondary questions to our primary question, “What is classical education?.” First, we understand that we are passing on knowledge, experience, and wisdom to a new generation. However, the goal of classical education is quite different than many other forms of education. In classical education, the goal is to produce a graduate who will live a virtuous life with the foundational skills and knowledge necessary to be a positive contributor to society.

In classical education, the concept of schole is preeminent. Schole is the idea that learning is a, enjoyable, lifelong process. Classical education during childhood and teenage years is designed to provide everyone with the knowledge and skills considered foundational to any occupation. The graduate is expected to continue being educated in a more specific occupation. Once in that occupation, the person is expected to continue learning about many fields of knowledge, both related and unrelated to their occupation. This is the concept of schole .

Why is this expectation so critical to classical education? Wouldn ’ t it be better if a person focused on learning knowledge and skills related to their occupation? Why does a carpenter need to know history or a sports journalist need to know art? Many modern forms of education ask these questions and conclude that there is no good reason for this expanded knowledge. However, to classical education proponents, people are defined by more than one specific set of knowledge or skills. Life is complex and someone who lacks knowledge in many areas will not be the best contributor to society.

Our modern times are a great example. Our world and nation grapple with difficult problems—racism, global warming, poverty, etc. Solutions to these problems are complex. Those working to solve these problems, whether in the private or government sector, need to be knowledgeable in many areas, (i.e., history, science, diplomacy, psychology, debate, logic, etc.). Unfortunately, while our leaders are all educated, many with advanced degrees, the education they received was poor and incomplete. They were educated in a specific set of knowledge for a specific occupation. Lifelong learning has been reduced to skimming social media websites rather than focused, intentional reading. Debates are “won” by the person who employs logical fallacies in the cleverest way.

The expectation that certain fundamental skills are taught in the formative years of a person ’ s life, along with a lifelong pursuit of learning in a rich, deep, and mature way, is critical because everyone is then well-rounded in knowledge. Everyone can present a persuasive, logical argument based on facts and wisdom. Such people can truly be positive contributors to society. We need carpenters who know history and understand how historical events are related and contrasted so they can provide meaningful commentary and opinions on world events. We need sports journalists who appreciate the complexities of art and apply this knowledge to the beauty and grace of the human body moving in an athletic competition so they can improve the quality of their articles. If you ponder our current world, you will begin to think of numerous examples where a classical education would be most beneficial.

In summary, “What is classical education?” Classical education is a means of passing on knowledge, experience, and wisdom to create virtuous people who can be positive contributors to society. A graduate of a classical education is a person who can reason logically and persuasively in both written and oral forms of communication, who appreciates truth, beauty, and goodness, and who is prepared to be trained into any specific occupation.

I did not receive such an education. The education I received was not bad, but it was lacking. Thankfully, anyone at any age can decide to pursue a classical education and fill in the gaps. I hope you will join me in this wonderful journey.

John Cicone, MEd , is the Head Administrator of the Rafiki Foundation School Tanzania.

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number 59 • Spring 2024

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Classical Education's Aristocracy of Anyone

Micah meadowcroft.

In grade school, my classmates and I played a game in which the girls were ancient Roman patricians, running imagined villas where trees stood behind the church that housed our school, and the boys got to be themselves — the barbarian tribes of the frontier, harrying the empire. We created — to memory at least — a complicated, foliage-based economy, with markets and "international" trade, and jump-rope chariots, and slave revolts. Latin is a dead language to most Americans, but we were not going to let all the conjugating and declining we had been doing go to waste. Even if we couldn't properly speak her tongue, Rome was alive enough to us; we had read all about her, because we were students at Cedar Tree Classical Christian School.

Regular readers of National Affairs will recall the late Ian Lindquist's Fall 2019 introduction to the classical-school movement, which characterized classical education at the primary and secondary level as an institutionalist response to cultural crisis. These institutions are growing, both in size and in number. The Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), founded in 1993, now boasts more than 450 member schools. Other representatives of this movement include the Society for Classical Learning, the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, the American Classical League, the Center for Independent Research on Classical Education (or CiRCE Institute), and the Classic Learning Test, along with a host of publishers and other organizations dedicated to the support of private classical religious schools.

The classical model has become a significant part of home schooling and charter schools, too. Great Hearts Academies, whose blueprint school was established in 1996, has more than 30 campuses throughout Arizona and Texas. Since its founding in 2010, Hillsdale College's charter-school initiative has assisted communities across the country in establishing more than 20 member schools, with dozens more being approved to use its curriculum. And Classical Conversations, a home-schooling tutorial company launched in 1997, says it serves more than 125,000 students.

Lindquist argued that despite the incoherence of so many uses of the term "classical," there is something shared and distinctly American about the educational institutions that claim the name — families and communities building schools, starting companies, and forming associations. These are institutions built on institutions, renewing civil society as they both emerge from and form robust, tradition-minded local communities, sharing the task of replenishing America's social and human capital.

Lindquist was right to note the American character of the classical-schools movement. This character extends beyond the entrepreneurial nature of the movement, to the question of what it means to recover or renew something called classical . Much like the way the United States of America was founded both as a modern engineering project incarnating a new political science and as a recollection of ancient political philosophy and the traditional rights of Englishmen, the contemporary classical-education movement is an act of construction — one might say an invented tradition — seeking also to revivify and participate in something once living, now recognized as dead.

A MOVEMENT'S GENESIS

The conventional history of the contemporary classical-education movement goes something like this: In 1980, three different groups of parents, in three different states, without knowing one another or even being aware of each other, found themselves deeply unsatisfied with the American public-education system and the other schooling options around them. But unlike many other people in identical circumstances, they did not choose to homeschool; instead, they all set out to build a new sort of school — new because it was going to try to be old, too. First out of the gate was Cair Paravel Latin School in Topeka, Kansas, inspired in part by the legendary Integrated Humanities Program (IHP) at the University of Kansas. By the fall of 1981, it was joined by the Trinity School at Greenlawn in South Bend, Indiana, and Logos School in Moscow, Idaho.

Most distinctive among their various inspirations was the English writer Dorothy Sayers, who in 1947 delivered a paper at Oxford entitled "The Lost Tools of Learning." Sayers asked her audience — and us today — whether "we are really teaching the right things in the right way." She proposed that, faced with the technicity and pace of life today, in an age of mass literacy and mass communication, where words and information are so much the stuff of life, educating the young well requires us to "turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object, towards the end of the Middle Ages." Why? Because from then until now we have taught students an increasing and dizzying array of subjects, and gradually quite failed to teach them how to think , or how to learn, which is the same thing.

Medieval education, in Sayers's account, was defined by the trivium of grammar, logic (or dialectic), and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Sayers sets the quadrivium aside, and though classical schools do not neglect those — ACCS president David Goodwin told me he believes what he would call a "Fourth Generation" of the classical-education revival will focus on the quadrivium  — for now it is the trivium and its relationship to learning Latin that most obviously indicates the classical pedagogical approach. The combination of grammar, logic/dialectic, and rhetoric forms the mental habits that can become thinking and learning.

Of course, none of the elements of the trivium or even the broader world of "classics" ever disappeared entirely, and people have grasped how to learn and think despite modernity's narrowing and materialist horizons. But this so-called "medieval" approach recognized that learning is not only a compendium of subjects, but an art, and that there are tools made fit for it. Sayers told her small audience more than 70 years ago that though she did not expect many to listen, she hoped some people would pick up these tools of learning and start building. "If 'the Middle Ages' is, in this context, simply a picturesque phrase denoting a particular educational theory," she suggested, "there seems to be no a priori reason why we should not 'go back' to it."

This history should be contested, or at least clarified — and there are university programs, preparatory schools, and books that complicate any timeline for contemporary classical education. But let us begin, like Socrates, with the conventional.

Established in 1980, Cair Paravel Latin School (CPLS) is not found a little north of Glasswater near the Isle of Galma in C. S. Lewis's fictional land of Narnia, but rather in another fantasy setting: Kansas. In addition to Sayers, two things lurk behind everything about the Topeka school: Lewis and the Integrated Humanities Program. Lewis, of course, gave Cair Paravel its name, its aesthetics (graduating seniors are reminded "once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia," while departing teachers are teased "once an employee of Narnia, always an employee of Narnia"), and its commitment to mere Christianity.

The IHP was a short-lived but enormously influential school within the University of Kansas, taught by Frank Nelick, Dennis Quinn, and John Senior, and shaped in part by the work of canon-warrior Mortimer Adler. Several of Cair Paravel's founding fathers were alumni of the IHP, and it was by this route that they arrived at the conviction that something was deeply wrong with contemporary education, and that it ought to be fixed not only at the collegiate level, but in primary and secondary schooling, too.

For being among the oldest of the contemporary classical Christian schools, it is striking how small a role Cair Paravel has played in the broader movement. CPLS has been content to be itself, an excellent private Christian school in Topeka, Kansas. It does not publish its curriculum; it makes no clones of itself; it has started no associations and convened no conferences. CPLS came into being, discovered itself, went through good years and bad, found its fellow schools, and has been content to be in its own world while also being a part of the movement's broader world; it is now an accredited member of the ACCS.

The ACCS — the largest, most visible face of classical education today — came out of Logos School in Moscow, Idaho (home of the University of Idaho). In the late 1970s, Pastor Douglas Wilson and his wife Nancy realized they couldn't see handing over their oldest daughter to someone else to educate, so Wilson set out to start a school. "I rashly said, 'don't worry, we'll have a Christian school started by the time she hits kindergarten,'" Wilson told me at the 2022 meeting of the ACCS's annual Repairing the Ruins Conference in Frisco, Texas. (It was the association's biggest ever at the time, with about 1,300 people in attendance.) Wilson followed through, starting Logos in 1981. The school had 19 students in the first year. Forty years in they had 600 — in a town with a population of 26,000.

How did starting a school in 1981 in Moscow, Idaho, of all places, turn into a thousand people packing a convention space in the suburbs of Dallas? There was a book — there usually is. In the spring of 1991, Wilson published Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning , a direct reference to Dorothy Sayers's essay "The Lost Tools of Learning," which recounts the early years of building Logos after her blueprint. Wilson had read Turning Point: A Christian Worldview Declaration by Marvin Olasky and Herbert Schlossberg, published in 1987. "It was obviously the first in a series of books, and it was the intro book," he said. "We were 10 years into Logos, and I thought, 'I want to write the one on education.'" So Wilson wrote and visited Olasky — who then visited Moscow and Logos with his wife — and got the contract.

When Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning was published, Wilson said, "we were caught flat-footed, totally surprised" by the discovery that "when you put my book down, you said, 'we have to start a school.'" (It's true; my parents did.) "And when people said 'oh, we have to start a school,' the next thing they do is they call us up." Of course there were too many calls, and too many letters — it was the '90s and people still wrote those — asking too many questions about how Logos did what it does. So Wilson decided to hold a conference in Moscow, and they would record the talks — "cassette tapes were a thing" — which they could give people for frequently asked questions. "There was such a response that I thought, 'we have to start an association, this is going to do something.'" The ACCS was born.

THE TRINITY NETWORK

If you have heard of Trinity Schools, it might be because of Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett. When California senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett "the dogma lives loudly in you," she was referring to the Notre Dame Law School professor's belonging to the ecumenical charismatic Christian community People of Praise, which was founded in South Bend, Indiana, in 1971. In 1981, People of Praise started a school, Trinity at Greenlawn, in South Bend. Justice Barrett's children attended that school, and when the family moved to D.C., her children began attending Trinity's third campus, Trinity at Meadowview in northern Virginia. (The second campus was established in Eagan, Minnesota.) Trinity is distinctive, even from other schools in the classical Christian education movement. It seeks to be one school on three campuses. It serves only sixth through 12th grade (seventh in Virginia). The vast majority of classes are divided by sex, so that functionally a boy's school and a girl's school exist in the same building, periodically merging for certain classes.

Trinity Schools got their start in the late '70s, when People of Praise formed an education committee to consider what their schooling options might be if they decided those available in South Bend were unsatisfactory. Soon afterward, the community's leadership asked a committee member, Tom Finke, to visit schools around the region. "We didn't feel like anybody had what we wanted to do," Finke told me when I visited Trinity at Greenlawn in the spring of 2022. "Or to put it another way, we didn't want to start a school that was just going to do what everyone else was doing." Central to this process, and to the life and character of Trinity Schools, was the late Kerry Koller, who died in September 2020 in retirement after having served as president of Trinity Schools for many years. Koller, who had a Ph.D. in philosophy from Notre Dame, had been exposed to great-books education while attending Saint Mary's College of California, where he had come to know Ronald McArthur, a founder of Thomas Aquinas College. As Finke told me, Koller eventually turned to McArthur for advice, saying something along the lines of: "We see what you're doing, we kind of have some feel for that, we like it," but how would we go about it at the high-school level?

McArthur pointed Koller in the direction of John Schmitt, who had been an early member of the faculty at Thomas Aquinas before moving back east to found a secondary school of his own. "So we invited him to come, this would have been 1980...and he came for a long weekend." They liked what they heard. Finke and Koller went out to see Schmitt's school in action, "and we came back and gave another report." In March of 1981, Finke and People of Praise decided that "it's time to cross the Rubicon" and open in the fall.

John Schmitt and his school are the wrinkle in the conventional, ACCS-predominated timeline of contemporary classical education. He is, like the Baptist of that name, an unexpected forerunner. If Cair Paravel and Logos were a "sort of Leibniz and Newton," as Douglas Wilson described their mutual discovery to me, then the history of mathematics does not provide a suitable analogy for Trivium School in Lancaster, Massachusetts. While John Schmitt died about a decade ago, I spoke to his son, and Trivium's current headmaster, William Schmitt, last summer. "We opened our doors on October 25, 1979," Schmitt told me. "I was a senior, so I was there; I joined the senior class and graduated in 1980, and came back in 2000" to teach and then become headmaster. Much like Wilson and the founders of Cair Paravel, the younger Schmitt's father was influenced by Dorothy Sayers. Indeed, the very name "Trivium School" comes from Sayers's essay. "In January of 1979," Schmitt recalled, " National Review published or republished an essay by Dorothy Sayers called 'The Lost Tools of Learning' and I think that really sparked my dad to...say, 'yes we can do this and put this into practice. I count that as kind of the catalyst for the beginning of the revival of classical education."

Sayers's essay gave the elder Schmitt, who had tried running a secondary school, a framework on which to build something he thought could last. "He started a school called Thomas More School," the younger Schmitt told me, "I think in 1959, up in New Hampshire, and when the '60s and '70s hit he sort of gave up and said, I think, the problem was that model just doesn't work anymore, so he quit and he closed down the school." Indeed, the animating spirit of the Northeast prep schools had died, and its education theory devolved into secular progressivism.

The younger Schmitt continued:

My dad had always wanted to found a school. He studied education at Harvard. He didn't think very much of their program at all; he always made fun of it. But he did read some Renaissance history on education, and he went on and taught at a couple private schools, ones that had a headmaster who had founded the school. He comes from that kind of secular background.

Schmitt described Trivium as "kind of an amalgamation" of the preparatory-school tradition with Sayers's essay and the great-books lessons of Thomas Aquinas College. As he put it, "we always imagine ourselves as a weird sort of mixture of an old-fashioned prep school with some Catholic ideas, together."

METHOD OR CONTENT?

The history of classical schools is complicated, yet at its core, it still comes back to Dorothy Sayers and her version of the trivium . In 1979, it was a vision driven by men ready to build things needed. Now, more than 40 years into the project, Sayers's paradigm has become something to be acknowledged gratefully, yes, but questioned and perhaps surpassed. Whatever makes classical education "classical," Sayers did point to it, but her "Lost Tools" cannot capture it. She was too much a thinker in her moment, too honest about constructing something, too engaged in a kind of literary creation, to provide the tradition itself. Recall that Sayers used the Middle Ages as a mere "picturesque phrase denoting a particular educational theory." Nevertheless, to understand the classical-education movement today, we must know what its leaders were and are responding to — the reference point from which there is movement toward or away.

A student in the Middle Ages, Sayers suggested, learned language with all its vocabulary and structure (grammar); learned how language works for communication and argument, for saying true things and fallacious things about the world (dialectic); and learned how language can be used well, beautifully and persuasively, with eloquence (rhetoric). Since it is by language that we share thought, this long and careful familiarization with language becomes an education in thinking, learning, and teaching.

Additionally, in Sayers's presentation, the components of the trivium match basic observations about childhood development. As she put it, there are three frames of mind a normal child goes through: the Poll-parrot, the Pert, and the Poetic. These states of psychological development, Sayers argued, can be paired with grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. An educational sequence can thus work with the student's natural growth. The Poll-parrot memorizes. Little children have brains like sponges; they absorb all without scruple or difficulty. When it comes to learning the basics, the grammar, of language — Latin is the one Sayers advises us to start with, and most have listened — and dates and dead people and poetry and all the rest, that sponginess is a great advantage and resource. But of course it does end, and children grow Pert. They start asking pertinent questions and impertinent questions alike. "Why?" is a popular one. Adults are always reminded how complicated "why" can be, how essential some things are and how contingent others, when the Pert stage rolls around.

Sayers wanted to harness that hunger for the workings of things with careful training in formal logic. The child becoming aware of the world is becoming capable of dialogue; back talk can be turned into argument. Finally, there comes the Poetic age. Kids begin to realize that they are individuals in a community, that they have identities with boundaries that are partly in their hands. Everyone remembers his years of desperate self-expression and moody misunderstanding; rhetoric might give the passionate bright young thing a voice and vocabulary to convey his feelings to peers and parents. The aim, then, is to use grammar to lay out material that can be built with logic and adorned and finished in rhetoric, producing in the end a young person who has learned how to learn.

Logos School — and to a certain extent Cair Paravel — adapted this plan directly to American K-12 education, with a return to a grammar school rather than an elementary school, the replacement of middle school with logic grades, and a recasting of high school as the rhetoric stage. This remains common among ACCS member schools, but interpretations and adjustments have been necessary. In the case of Trivium School in Massachusetts, John Schmitt set out to serve only the seventh through 12th grades. "In Sayers's essay the focus is not really so much the classes that you have, but the application of grammar, logic, rhetoric to any class," his son told me. "We highlight that." They group grades by stages of the trivium , but it's just "an emphasis." For Schmitt and Trivium School, Sayers's pedagogical insight is more basic than her psychological theory. She "took the way that you learn Latin and she applied it to every course...in the Middle Ages, you learned Latin grammar, and then you learned the ordering in the grammar itself but also how to think, and then how to express yourself in rhetoric."

An overreliance on the trivium as a structure for learning threatens to make "classical education" a method among others — a description of means rather than ends. For some, the right response is to focus instead on content  — on the transmission of a cultural canon. To the team at Memoria Press and Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky, "classical education" is very nearly as simple as Latin, Greek mythology, and Roman history — namely, the classics. The late Cheryl Lowe founded Memoria Press in 1994. While homeschooling her two boys, Lowe failed to find a Latin textbook suitable for their age, so she created Latina Christiana , an introductory Latin text that has been used by many classical Christian schools (including the one I attended). "We feel like studying Latin is the thing that defines classical education," her daughter-in-law Leigh Lowe told me, because it is the language at the heart of Western culture. In Lowe's mind there's nothing anachronistic about the project; it is a genuine recovery. "This worked for generations and we're going to have the humility to accept that."

Martin Cothran — longtime business partner of Cheryl Lowe — is director of the Classical Latin School Association. "Passing on Western Civilization is the project," he told me. Cothran said he used to think that his and Lowe's emphasis on content and transmission put him at odds with the rest of the movement. "Classical education is not a method," he said — nor is it three stages of learning. At an ACCS conference some years ago, he suggested that "Dorothy Sayers is thinking and speaking post-psychology," and is thus providing a necessarily modern taxonomy of learning. "I was looking for a fight and I couldn't get one," he admitted. "People didn't think that way; they were interested in what children should know, period." Since then, the movement has gotten past the early commitment to the Sayers formula and speculations about how "little Johnny" develops.

David Goodwin, the president of the ACCS and co-author of The Battle for the American Mind with Pete Hegseth, separates the development of the classical-education movement into three generations. "There were the First Generation schools, which were largely based on the Logos model, because they were the ones with the loudest voice. And then eventually schools were formed upon the Second Generation, which was kind of a great-books, ad fontes approach." The Third Generation took off in the late 2000s. "The question that keeps coming up," says Goodwin, is: "If our mission isn't academic but rather the cultivation of wisdom and virtue in Christ, are we achieving that?"

Confident in the positive academic outcomes of the approach, classical-school educators now ask whether the schools are rightly shaping students' affections to desire the right things. "A lot of schools realized our work lacked soul. You can teach logic, you can teach rhetoric, you can teach grammar," Goodwin said, but you also shape the character of the students. As the progressive instructors so many classical educators reacted against knew well, education is not only informational but formative. "Gen Three," Goodwin observed, "[is] not really a subject, it's really a posture of how you deal with students. Your job is to inspire and to cultivate the paideia of God in the students."

NOT CLASSICAL ENOUGH

Here lies a potential point of tension in the movement: First, are schools outposts of godly culture, a recovery of Christendom? Or are they transmitting a civilizational inheritance older than the Christian Church? And if some schools are Christian or religious, and consider that element essential to the project, while others are charter and thus secular, are they doing the same thing? Can they be brought into conversation?

The Barney Charter Schools initiative represents the secular classical-education movement's own venture into Goodwin's "Third Generation." Hillsdale's curriculum and teacher training seek to offer "an education for the mind and the heart," as Kathleen O'Toole, assistant provost for K-12 education at Hillsdale, told me. "Going to school doesn't just mean learning a bunch of information, it's also as influential or more in some cases as your family in forming who you become." The goal of the civics and history focus of a Barney-affiliated school is the moral formation of the child. "We recognize that any formation toward virtue has got to take account of the fact that we are not just isolated individuals; we are political animals or social animals," O'Toole said.

To Andrew Kern of the aforementioned CiRCE Institute, none of these perspectives are radical enough. "I have become a thorn in the flesh of every classical educator everywhere," Kern told me. After starting multiple classical schools, he founded CiRCE in 1996 to answer these questions: "How should we teach? What should we teach? How should we assess? How should we cultivate wisdom and virtue in these kids?" In Kern's own assessment, the problem is that the classical-education movement hasn't fully abandoned (and maybe isn't prepared to abandon) modern assumptions about knowledge and the cosmos. It is not yet sufficiently classical .

Kern thinks he has found the fundamental difference between a truly classical perspective and the assumptions that define our world today: "Prior to 1600, unless you were a sophist, pretty well every educator believed that what you needed to know the truth was virtue, and not just moral virtues, intellectual virtues as well, physical virtues. Virtue enables you to see the truth; without virtue you can't see the truth." But, he says, "we've replaced virtue with method," so that for the last 400 years, "what education has been is a fight over methods." Therefore, for Kern, the essential question for classical education today is the following: "To what extent is the classical renewal going back to virtue and to what extent is it participating in the methods?" Even as classical schools focus on spiritual development or cultural transmission in subject divisions, grading styles, and testing, "to a large extent the classical renewal is still functioning within the methodological structure, the meta-method." Kern believes that is the crux issue facing the movement, because "what your method can reveal determines what you see, or the virtues you attained can determine what you see."

Perhaps unexpectedly, it is in the Trinity Schools founded by People of Praise that classical education appears most comfortable with confronting its relationship to modernity. The original John Schmitt-inspired and trivium -conscious great-books curriculum is less front and center at Trinity than in 1985, when Koller distilled the Trinity vision in an essay for Center Journal , a scholarly quarterly he started through People of Praise. But from the beginning Trinity has sought to be a kind of "terminal education," as Jon Balsbaugh, former president of Trinity Schools, puts it: sufficient to be the end of formal schooling and the beginning of lifelong learning. As Koller wrote:

This foundation needs to be broad enough to take up concerns of the human spirit in general and not merely in some of its manifestations....Most importantly, this kind of education serves as a foundation for the lifelong task of searching for the truth and appropriating it into our lives. Adler makes this point well: "Education is a lifelong process of which schooling is only a small but necessary part. The various stages of schooling reach terminal points. Each can be completed in a definite term of years. But learning never reaches a terminal point."

That still holds true in aspiration. Everyone I spoke to at Trinity in South Bend reiterated that the guiding principle is answering the question: What should an educated human adult know?

According to Balsbaugh, "there were some critical texts that we would read at certain points or think about collectively," resulting under Koller's direction in an effort to reacquaint themselves with modernity. Multiple times, longtime Trinity teachers mentioned what they called a Newtonian paradigm shift. "The shift from Newtonian mechanics and a mechanical universe to post-Newtonian physics should be accompanied by a philosophical shift in what the world is and how it works," Balsbaugh explained. Like the Copernican revolution, the replacement of Newtonian physics with contemporary quantum mechanics is a key part of philosophical history and of the West's attempts to wrestle with certainty and change. This ongoing conversation and reconciliation with parts of modernity extends to other parts of the curriculum. Trinity requires courses in linear algebra and MATLAB computer programming, and it's no ploy for college prep. "The world runs on mathematical modeling and computer data," said Balsbaugh. "Our students whatever they do will understand how to program a computer, or how air traffic control works, or if not understand it, at least be able to wonder at it."

Wonder, virtue, habit, character formation — for William Schmitt of the Trivium School, these gestures at holism contra the modern reign of quantity form the soul of the movement to which his father played forerunner. "To my mind that unity is really at the heart of what the revival of classical education is all about....It's not simply a reaction against progressive education or a reaction where we want to go back to the 1950s," Schmitt explained. "It has a positive character to it." The personal formation that used to be so important to the prep schools of the old American aristocracy "is integral to what we're doing," Schmitt said.

That tradition sickened and eventually died around 1970, by John Schmitt's reckoning. "All those schools, at least the ones that I know about, have lost a lot of what I'm talking about," his son told me. "It's all about scores, and portfolios, and it costs a whole lot more and they're interested in getting into the upper class, and the SATs matter." What Trivium School (and the classical-education movement more broadly) represents is a throwback to the Renaissance humanists and scholastics. "What you have here is the same ideas as you had at the beginning of the Renaissance," Schmitt said. That vision inspired his father, and he's gratified to see other people recognize it.

A HUMANIST REVIVAL

Revival, rebirth, Renaissance : The new is interesting because it is in some ways old. The classical-education movement seeks to revive not only scholastic modes of thought, but humanist education. Especially in grammar and rhetoric — the poems, speeches, history, and literature, the emphasis on virtue and service to God and country — teachers across America consciously or unconsciously channel the thought of humanists like Pier Paolo Vergerio and Battista Guarino. These men understood their task to be the revival and preservation of older knowledge, of Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch. They believed, with Bernard of Chartres as cited by John of Salisbury, that originality and independence are not necessarily virtues, especially when one is a spiritual or intellectual dwarf and there are giants available with shoulders to stand on.

The classical-education movement of the last four decades comes out of a peculiarly American combination of close-to-earth dwarfish realism and confident aspirations to gianthood. Where else but in America would it be conceivable to start these schools from scratch, in church basements and mobile buildings and roller rinks? (True story: Logos is located in a former roller rink.) For all their efforts to build schools and associations and initiatives and curricula on the giants of the past, on Augustine and Plato and Homer and Moses, the founders of the contemporary classical-school movement were themselves giants of good old-fashioned American civil society. The products of these schools — people like me — are dwarves with access to two sets of giant shoulders. If we can look any farther, it's because of the vistas of history we have been given, and because of the long labors of parents, teachers, and administrators to repair civilizational ruins.

The United States is the only place this could have happened, not just because it is where the pioneer spirit found and still finds its fullest expression. Of all the nations, only America fully embraces in its foundations what French intellectual Rémi Brague calls secondarity . Walk around D.C., read the pseudonymous authors of the "Federalist" and the "Anti-Federalist" papers, look at a map of the Midwest or South, scattered with cities with names like Cincinnati and Athens and Memphis. That is Roman secondarity all over. The Romans took what they wanted from the cultures they encountered, robbed the past to build their present. They did it out of a sense of awe and respect for the less martial but more wise, more beautiful, more holy civilizations that came before their greatness. The fathers of this country did much the same, seeing their endeavor in explicitly Roman and classical terms. It was a founding for a new age, born of ages prior. Continuity with English rights and privileges justified their revolution, but division from the Old World created an opportunity for something fresh.

Classical education in America is an expression of this same spirit. In aesthetics and superficial subject matter, these new schools often resemble the old elite Northeastern WASP or British prep schools. Many hope to recapture for the children of suburban America the same standards of learning that the education movements of the 19th century wanted for farmers' sons, and built Midwestern colleges to ensure. The unapologetic identities of the religious schools (who remain a majority) express the pluralism of the American experiment. But they also look back in time, much further. They make the same virtue of anachronism that scholars in the Middle Ages did; like scribes in monasteries, they may not understand what the words they copy meant to those who first spoke them, but they value them for the present, for what those words can mean for them now. Amid the anomie of contemporary life, with its technicity, speed, and endless information, to be part of a story — yes, a story of the West, as problematic as it may be to some — that stretches back millennia, is to possess a foundation on which to build a life. It is, in its own way, a post-modern escape from the groundlessness of post-modernity into a community of both the dead and living.

The humanist educators that classical schooling emulates understood their task as training the nobility, sons of kings and lords and important men, to live lives worthy of their status. While the scholastics taught the logic chopping necessary for a career in the Church or law or medicine, the humanists taught their students stories of great deeds, of virtue and magnanimity, of martial glory and the strategies of court. They would grow up, it was hoped, to be nobler nobles, to do great deeds themselves, and be great-souled to all. In America, a free republic for free people, a country for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, classical schooling cannot but shoulder that humanist task: giving an education worthy of free people, an education for a nobility. The young United States aspired to become a nation without a titled aristocracy; classical schools aspire to give an aristocratic education to anyone.

Of course in the most literal sense, an aristocracy of everyone cannot exist. The aristoi of an aristocracy, the best who will rule, is a relative description. We cannot escape inequalities of ability in a world of limits, a fallen world. But classical schooling suggests that we need not teach to the lowest common denominator of civic life. We need not teach with the goal of producing only semi-socialized citizens who can navigate — with expert assistance, of course — their way through the bureaucratic maze of government services, regulations, and elections, or become a resigned cog in the great machine of a global economy. Declining expectations for compulsory education have made college attendance an unsustainably extended requirement for many; universities have become domains of remedial education and ideological conditioning. Classical schools suggest we can teach to a higher goal of human excellence. We can provide, long before a college freshman survey course, a context for a life of learning, which does not need a paper degree to prove its worth, but is instead displayed in a person's virtues.

Micah Meadowcroft is research director for the Center for Renewing America and a contributing editor of The American Conservative . He did the research for this essay as a 2021-22 Robert Novak journalism fellow, supported by the Fund for American Studies.

Opportunity Pluralism in Education

Bruno v. manno.

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Classical Education , Spring 2018 , The Classical Teacher

Classical education is more than a method.

If you were to ask most classical educators what classical education is, you would find them hard-pressed to give a short, coherent answer. That is the way with a lot of movements: It’s easy to get swept up in the enthusiasm, but when asked to formulate what it is that excites you, it’s hard to articulate.

But when you can get an answer to the question, “What is classical education?,” it is almost always in terms of Dorothy Sayers’ trivium, her three “states of development”—the grammar stage, the dialectic stage, and the rhetoric stage. These together, we are told, are what constitute a classical education.

The origin of this conception of classical education can be found in a speech Sayers gave to students at Oxford University during a vacation term in 1947, titled “The Lost Tools of Learning.” Despite the lack of attention paid to it at the time or in the succeeding decades, its republication in Douglas Wilson’s 1991 book, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning , made it a rallying cry for thousands of classical home and private schools across the country.

Sayers’ Trivium

In her speech, Sayers discussed three “states of development” every child proceeds through in the course of his education. There is the “Poll-Parrot,” or grammar stage, which roughly approximates what we would consider grammar school, and emphasizes observation and memorization. The second, “Pert,” or dialectic stage, begins when children start to contest and argue. Then comes the rhetoric , or “Poetic” stage. Whereas memorization is the dominant mode in the grammar stage, and analysis in the dialectic stage, synthesis is the dominant mode in the rhetoric stage.

The first thing to say is this: Classical education is not defined by Dorothy Sayers’ trivium, and no one prior to the very end of the twentieth century ever said (or would have thought to say) that it was. Nor did Sayers herself ever explicitly identify her states of development as classical education—in her speech or anywhere else. In fact, the term “classical education” does not even appear in her essay.

Sayers’ trivium is only about seventy years old, while the origin and practice of classical education goes back well over two millennia. Sayers’ developmental trivium was never consciously put into practice until the 1990s, well after classical education had been knocked from its long-held position as the primary understanding of what education is.

Hers, she says, is “a modern trivium [my emphasis] with modifications.” Her curriculum was not the Medieval but the “ neo -Medieval” curriculum. We should consider what is “modern” about her modern trivium and what is “neo” in her neo-Medieval curriculum. And we should ask what is the nature of the relationship between Sayers’ trivium and classical education as it has always been known and as it is properly understood.

Educational Taxonomies

Sayers does not try to explain what classical education is in her speech. That is not even remotely her purpose. And her audience would have associated classical education, not with anything new she was proposing in her speech, but primarily with the reading of the Great Books in their original languages, and secondarily with the mastery of the liberal arts. Her audience also would have understood that the trivium she was proposing was something different from the classical trivium. The classical trivium had traditionally been seen as a simple listing of the first three liberal arts (those intellectual arts related to language), which, along with the mathematical arts of the quadrivium ( arithmetic , geometry , music , and astronomy ) made up the seven classical liberal arts.

The classical trivium— grammar , logic , and rhetoric —was a taxonomy of intellectual skills , proceeding from the simple and most basic language skills to the more complex and sophisticated. Grammar taught students how language was structured, logic how to use language in the construction of valid arguments, and rhetoric how language could be used for the purpose of persuasion.

Sayers’ trivium uses the terminology of the classical trivium, but produces something entirely different. Hers is a developmental trivium: The classical trivium is a taxonomy of skills subjects , but hers is a taxonomy of learning . It is focused on the intrinsic developmental psychology of students, not the extrinsic content of an educational program.

Sayers’ move constitutes a Copernican shift in the understanding of education by making the subject of her taxonomy not knowledge , but the process of learning—not what , but how children learn. And what is, if not non-classical, then at least somewhat new and unique, is the position her taxonomy occupies in her overall philosophy of education.

The Psychological Nature of Sayers’ Trivium

Sayers’ approach to education was very much in line with the psychological emphasis of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as it was manifested in John Dewey’s psychological educational emphasis. Like Dewey, Sayers’ educational philosophy is “child-centered.” Her trivium is framed, as she herself states, in terms of modern “child psychology.” This is one of the huge shifts in emphasis that marks off modern thinking from distinctively classical thinking. No educator before the nineteenth century would have thought to even frame education in this way.

Historically, the developmental psychology Sayers assumes simply played little or no role in the classical concepts that dominated education thinking prior to the mid-nineteenth century. Classical educators were focused more on the content they were teaching the child, and the purpose for which they were teaching it, than on the developmental state of the child.

Sayers’ Instrumentalism

Sayers, like Dewey, places the process of education above its content and purpose . We moderns are obsessed with methodology. We think that the way we do something is just as—if not more—important than what we are doing—or why we are doing it.

“[T]he ordinary pupil, whose formal education ends at 16,” she says, “will take the trivium only.” In other words, Sayers is advocating an education in which the process of learning constitutes its entirety. In the grammar stage, she says that the material studied, “is only of secondary importance.” She goes on to say that subjects “are all to be regarded as mere grist for the mental mill to work upon.”

She is taxonomical when it comes to how children learn, but anarchical when it comes to what they should learn. For Sayers, the tools of learning are not just the tools, but the totality. “For the sole true end of education,” she says, “is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves.”

Are we really to believe that the tools of learning are the only things that matter in an education? In classical education, the old liberal arts were important, but they were merely the “handmaids” of learning. They played only one role, and a subordinate one, in the drama of learning. They constituted its means , not its end . Sayers confuses the means of education with its end, or perhaps more accurately, she considers the means the end itself.

The Illusion of Technique

In the modern educational world, where technique trumps teaching, Sayers’ trivium provides classical educators with a method we can call our own. Instead of repudiating the Modern Madness of Method we settle for saying, “My method is better than your method.” This is not a classical impulse. The classical impulse is to focus primarily on the ideal person we are trying to form and the models by which this may be done, and only secondarily on the process by which this is accomplished.

It is not that Sayers’ insights are not valuable (they are) or that they should not be considered useful (they should). But we must realize that her insights are secondary, not primary, to the educational enterprise.

What Classical Education Is

Classical education is the inculcation of wisdom and virtue through a facility with the liberal arts and a familiarity with the Great Books. St. Thomas Aquinas defines wisdom as “ordering things rightly.” If we grant this, then the relation between Sayers’ trivium and classical education as it has always been conceived comes into better focus.

Process and content are not mutually exclusive. What is needed is a proper balance between the two, but a balance that places an unambiguous emphasis on the content that forms the student’s soul. We cannot exclude method altogether—that would not be wise. But neither can we exalt the process of education above its purpose.

How many times do we invoke Dorothy Sayers in contrast to the number of times we appeal to Shakespeare , Dante , Aristotle , St. Paul, and Homer ? We have little justification to claim we are better than modern educators if all we do is replace an emphasis on Dewey with an emphasis on Dorothy Sayers. Make no mistake: Dorothy is better than Dewey. But neither one should trump the tradition. Neither one, however right or wrong, stands taller than the giants on whose shoulders we all stand.

If we articulate classical education as merely a method and fail to cast the vision of the Christian West as it has manifested itself in our literature , our science , and our history , then we will have replaced one modern mistake with a similar one no less modern.

As we strive to find the right words to describe what we are doing—to our fellow educators, to parents at our schools, and to ourselves—we need to properly balance the appeal of a sound method with an articulation of what that method is designed to achieve. We think that parents are going to respond to our Dorothy Sayers “three stages of learning” presentation, when, in fact, they will respond even more hungrily to our call for them to enroll themselves and their children in the fateful defense of Western Christian culture.

We live in the cultural twilight of a great civilization in which a growing darkness is increasingly blinding us to the wonders of creation and the nature of who we are as beings created in the image of God. It is a battle that will require far more than a mere method.

Martin Cothran

Martin Cothran is the editor of Memoria Press' The Classical Teacher magazine and provost of Memoria College. He is the author of several books for private and home schools, including Memoria Press' Traditional Logic, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric programs. He is a former Latin, Logic, and Rhetoric Instructor at Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds a B.A. in philosophy and economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an M.A. in Christian Apologetics from the Simon Greenleaf School (now part of Trinity University). He is widely-quoted on educational issues and other issues of public importance, and is a frequent guest on Kentucky Educational Television's "Kentucky Tonight," a weekly public affairs program. His articles on current events have appeared in numerous newspapers, including the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader.

One thought on “ Classical Education is More Than a Method ”

Well stated. Keep up the good fight, Martin.

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A Classical Teacher's Journal

Essay writing #4: the classical argument.

The second essay format I teach my students is the classical argument. It is more advanced than the simple argument for a number of reasons.

To begin with, the thesis in a classical argument is debatable in a consequential way, meaning there is something at stake. That something might be political, social, religious, or any number of things that affect the broader world. Given this substantive nature, the argument often requires outside research as opposed to simply one’s own personal analysis. Finally, in order to lend authority to one’s position, the essay format spells out and refutes the opposing position .

In a middle school classroom like mine, I might use a simple argument for analysis of King Arthur but a classical argument for analysis of the justice of the Crusades. Given their complicated history and enduring legacy, a meaningful position on the Crusades requires research and attention to a vast array of conflicting viewpoints.

As I explain to my students, a classical argument is more than “I think this about such and such.” It’s also, “You should think this, too.” It’s clearly a persuasive argument because it tries to draw people to the writer’s viewpoint and dispel any doubt that other views could be correct.

The essay structure itself consists of five parts, which support a single thesis statement through deductive writing , meaning they begin with the thesis statement and then move on to support it.

PART ONE – THE INTRODUCTION AND THESIS STATEMENT

Happily, the introduction of a classical argument models the same format as that of a simple argument. It introduces the topic to be discussed and presents the thesis statement . I instruct students to limit themselves to approximately 3-5 sentences. The brevity of the opening paragraph is one of its strengths and should not be compromised by extraneous information.

This paragraph consists of three parts. The first is the opening sentence itself. This should typically consist of a simple statement of fact, especially for students who are just learning to write an essay for the first time. More “provocative” openings like questions or startling facts are a lot harder to pull off, and I recommend new writers avoid them.

The second part of the opening paragraph offers transitional background information and justification for why the topic is relevant.

Well-done transitional sentences pave the way for the final part of the opening, which is the one-sentence thesis itself, or the position the essay takes. I always remind students that the thesis should be something debatable much like an opinion. In other words, it is not simply a fact.

PART TWO – THE NARRATION

This part of the essay establishes context for the argument . First, it tells the story, so to speak, behind the essay. That story might be the history of a war or the facts of a case or some other relevant background.

Next, it addresses the reality that there are opposing views about the subject matter. It should state what those views are without actually getting into the arguments for either position. That will come later.

Finally, the narration makes a type of appeal to the reader, letting him know what is at stake in the essay and asking him to weigh each side carefully.

There is no set number of sentences, but a good paragraph of 8-10 sentences usually does it for middle school students. More advanced writers might write several paragraphs in this part.

PART THREE – THE CONFIRMATION  

Much like the body of a simple argument, the confirmation presents the evidence to support the thesis. It should have a topic sentence, at least three pieces of thoroughly explained evidence, and a concluding sentence that clearly ties the confirmation back to the thesis.

Again, a good paragraph of 8-10 sentences is ideal for middle school students, but more advanced writers might have several paragraphs in this section as well. .  

PART FOUR – THE REFUTATION AND CONCESSION

With careful planning, this part of the essay is often the strongest because it allows the writer to dismiss all, or nearly all, of the opposition’s claims .

It should have a topic sentence followed by as many objections as the writer can come up with. If there are areas where the opposition may have a good point, the writer should concede that but without giving full weight to their overall position. Finally, this part of the essay should have a concluding sentence that relates back to the thesis.

The refutation and concession should mirror the confirmation in structure and length.

PART FIVE – THE CONCLUSION

Its purpose is to drive home the thesis statement by casting its relevance more broadly than what was initially presented in the introduction and narration.

Beginning writers often erroneously think of a conclusion as a restatement of what has already been said. Though this might work on a basic level, it represents only a superficial understanding of the key purpose of the conclusion and tends to be boring.

I find it helpful to refer to the conclusion as the “so what” part of the essay . We often think of it in terms of the broad lessons we learned from exploring an argument in a specific context. In other words, it is the student’s opportunity to reiterate what is at stake in the argument.

The conclusion should be divided into three parts, inversely mirroring the introduction . It, too, should be relatively short but powerful.

The first part of the conclusion recalls the thesis but presents it in a new way. I refer to this as a “thesis with a twist.” The second part provides transitional information on the connection between the thesis and the stakes at play in the argument. The final part is broader still, typically consisting of only one or two sentences, and should press the moral imperative of making the “right” choice for “the world.”

A REMINDER ABOUT PROCESS

If the writing process is important for the simple argument, it is all the more important for the classical argument, which is far more complicated.

From using Socratic discussions and disputations, to developing a thesis, to outlining the argument, to writing it out, every phase needs thorough, well-planned attention. Any breakdown in the writing process can greatly undermine the strength of the argument, and it shows all the more in this essay format.

Conversely, careful adherence to the process results in a persuasive argument even if the writing is wanting in style and beauty.

The classical argument, when followed properly, is as full-proof of a persuasive format as it gets. Naturally, there will be many readers who are not convinced in the end, but they will at least have to concede that the argument is convincing.  

First image courtesy of the New York Public Library, New York

Second image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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“Beauty will save the world.”

Fyodor dostoevsky.

Classical Conditioning Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Describe the theory of classical conditioning, scenario for classical conditioning application, implementation, conditioning chart.

Learning, which is defined as the process of human beings gaining knowledge and expertise is an important aspect of man’s life and continues throughout his existence. Learning theories propose mechanisms that account for the changes that occur as a result of our learning experiences.

Learning theories have resulted in the identification of mechanisms through which experiences in the environment would alter and sustain changes in behavior. These changes are of a relatively permanent nature, and Newman and Philip (2007) affirm that the changes in human behavior are as a result of human beings’ extensive capacity for learning.

Classical conditioning is one of the most popular learning theories developed in the late 1920s. This theory has been reviewed and applied in many areas and has helped in understanding learning. This paper will give a brief description of the theory of classical conditioning and how it works. A scenario whereby this theory could be applied in real life situations will be given and a detailed description of how one would implement classical conditioning demonstrated.

The Russian Scientist, Ivan Pavlov, is hugely credited for coming up with the classical conditioning theory and demonstrating its working. Pavlov’s experimental works led him to discover classical conditioning and its laws which he demonstrated using his famous Pavlov’s dog experiment. By definition, classical conditioning is the “pairing of an unconditioned stimulus with a conditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response” (Levin, 1995, p.175).

In classical conditioning, there is already a preexisting bond between the stimulus and some physiological response in the learner. Classical conditioning has since its formulation been overlooked as being fairly simple and easy to understand and only applicable in limited areas. However, there has been a renewed interest in classical conditioning due to the realization that this theory has a much wider application that was previously assumed. ,

In Pavlov’s classic example, when a hungry dog is presented with food, it salivates. If this presentation of food is linked to another unconnected event (ringing of the bell in Pavlov’s case) once conditioned, the dog will automatically salivate even at being presented with the event without food. The food is the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) while salivation is an unconditioned response (UCR) since it is a naturally occurring reflex (Gines et al, 2000).

This learned response to a neutral event (since ringing of a bell would previously only have evoked interest from the dog, not salivation) is called the conditioned response. As such, classical conditioning is “a type of learning that occurs when two different events happen at the same time and one of the events takes on the quality of eliciting the other event” (Salkind, 2004. p.165).

The classical conditioning paradigm can be seen to contain two important attributes which are: the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the conditioned response (CR). In Pavlov’s example, after the pairing of the food and the ringing of the bell, a presentation of the bell alone will result in the unconditioned response of salivation from the dog. The bell’s role is that of the conditioned stimulus while salivation is the conditioned response.

Levin (1995) demonstrates that classical conditioning can be used as a form of treatment for alcoholism known as aversive therapy. In this treatment, punishment (such as an electric shock) is paired with drinking whereby the alcohol becomes the conditioned stimulus for the anticipation of pain. This results in a behavioral change in the drinker so long as the association between pain and drinking holds.

Other factors affect the strength of the conditioned reflex created through classical conditioning. These factors are reinforcement and extinction. Reinforcement is whereby the relationship between the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned response is strengthened through repeated association (Salkind, 2004). Extinction is the process by which a conditioned response is lost due to lack of reinforcement.

As has been illustrated in the above paragraphs, classical conditioning theory can be used to help someone learn or unlearn a habit. In my specific situation, I aim to use classical conditioning to make a friend unlearn a habit I find unacceptable in my house.

My friend always smokes in my living room despite my numerous calls for him to stop this habit. I propose to use classical conditioning theory to train my friend to stop smoking in my house altogether by making him associate smoking to an unpleasant blaring noise.

Before conditioning, the irritating blaring sound is a neutral stimulus. Newman and Philip (2007) note that such a stimulus on its own elicits a response of interest or attention but nothing more. Cigarettes are an unconditioned stimulus that evokes a natural reaction resulting in smoking from my friend.

My classical conditioning implementation will, therefore, involve pairing the irritating blaring music with smoking. As such, cigarettes will become the conditioned stimulus for the anticipation of an irritating noise whenever my friend is in my house. For this to work, I will have to make my friend associate two different events (smoking and the blaring sounds) with each other.

I shall, therefore, ensure that each time my friend starts smoking in my house, I shall turn the irritating blaring sounds on. Once my friend has finished smoking, I shall turn to noises off. Newman and Philip (2007) assert that a conditioned response is only established to the degree that there is a meaningful relationship between the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus.

This means that the NS and US must occur together many times before conditioning is established. For this reason, I shall make sure that I continue will this activity (turning on the blaring noise as soon as smoking begins) indefinitely.

With repeated association of the NS (blaring noise) and the US (cigarettes), the blaring noise will become a conditioned stimulus and will be associated with smoking, which will now become the conditioned response.

As such, my friend will relate cigarette smoking in my house to loud irritating noises, and for this reason, he will stop smoking to avoid experiencing the irritating noises which he will have grown to associate with cigarettes. To avoid this conditioning from becoming extinct, I would keep on reinforcing the relationship between the blaring noise and smoking so as to strengthen the association in my friend.

Gines, Et AL. (2000). Educational Psychology. Rex Bookstore.

Levin, D. L. (1995). Introduction to Alcoholism Counseling: a Bio-Psycho-Social Approach. Taylor & Francis.

Newman, B. M. Philip, R. N. (2007). Theories of Human Development. Routledge.

Salkind, J. N. (2004 ). An Introduction to Theories of Human Development. Sage.

• NS = Neutral Stimulus
• UR = Unconditioned Response
• NR = Neutral Response
• CS = Conditioned Stimulus
• US = Unconditioned Stimulus
• CR = Conditioned Response
• Evolution of Predator and Prey Pairings
• Psychophysics: Conditioning and Attentional Process
• Behavioral Theoretical Perspective
• Moral Values in Education
• NC Taxpayers and College Education
• Student Performance: Examination & Other Forms of Assessment
• Dog' Education in "The Culture Clash" by Jean Donaldson
• Handbook 'Good Study' by Neil Burdess
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, April 16). Classical Conditioning. https://ivypanda.com/essays/classical-conditioning-essay/

"Classical Conditioning." IvyPanda , 16 Apr. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/classical-conditioning-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Classical Conditioning'. 16 April.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Classical Conditioning." April 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/classical-conditioning-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Classical Conditioning." April 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/classical-conditioning-essay/.

Bibliography

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Five Different Approaches: Dorothy Sayers

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Dorothy Sayers and Classical Education

Classical education has its roots in the classical era of Greek and Rome. Roman children learned to speak and read Greek and Latin. Boys developed the logical skills to argue in the forum. The rhetoric skills to convince the masses to follow them.

The medieval times carried on the tradition and expounded on it. Universities gradually sprang up. Greek and Latin still formed the basis for educated men and women.

Then we reach the eighteen hundreds and new educational philosophies developed. People questioned the automatic teaching of Greek and Latin instead of teaching practical skills and new knowledge.

The educational system changed for better and worse.

Enter Dorothy Sayers into the scene.

In 1947 Dorothy Sayers gave a lecture titled The Lost Tools of Learning at Oxford University.  She outlined a course of education that sparked imaginations around the world. Eventually, it became the modern classical education movement.

What did she expound in her lecture? That while we teach students subjects, we fail to teach them to think. We fail to teach them to learn.

We must return to the first part of the medieval syllabus, specifically the Trivium .

The Trivium consists of three parts, grammar , dialectic , and rhetoric . Not subjects but rather skills children and adults need in order to tackle the subjects of the Quadrivium or any other subject for that matter.

The Trivium envisioned by Dorothy Sayers

Grammar stage (9-11 years old).

The first stage is the Poll-Parrot Age or Grammar stage. Children between 9 and 11 are in this stage. These young children love learning things by heart. They rejoice when asked to recite. They also accept things without questioning.

These kids don’t try to trap us in contradictions. Instead, they listen with eager ears to everything we say .

The grammar stage is the time to begin the study of Latin, as we should begin Latin as early as possible. Dorothy Sayers recommends post-classical and medieval Latin rather than classical Latin.

During the grammar stage, children memorize verse and prose. We fill their memories with stories, tales, myths . Children learn of past events, dates, and people in history.

Geography and science aren’t neglected either. These young children memorize capitols, rivers, mountains, collections of facts such as plants, animals, and planets.

Sums, mathematical facts, geometric shapes, groupings of numbers, and other mathematical facts are also memorized. Theology is learned.

The goal is to give the children material to work with during the dialectic stage . We don’t force them to explain what they’re learning, just learn it, store it, and absorb it. They’ll need it in the dialectic stage.

Dialectic Stage:  (12-14 year old)

The pert age begins when children become sassy and argumentative . They love to catch you out in contradictions. They adore finding mistakes in their books. The nuisance value is through the roof.

It’s time to begin Formal Logic and teach these kids to think.

Children learn syntax and analysis. They write essays and critics. They learn algebra, geometry, and advanced math.

In history, geography, and science,  children discuss and argue the ethics and reasons for various actions. They make connections between events. We expect them to explain events and put them into perspective .

Dorothy Sayers spoke of requiring the kids to use the facts, stories, and dates. To put the facts memorized in the grammar years to use. These facts provide fodder for their arguments now.

In short, we expect the children to think . To take situations in their own life and argue the ethics for and against. Is it right, is it wrong, why and why not?

It’s now time to teach children to analyze everything. To break it apart, think about it, and consider the ramifications.

Not in an ugly way, but to see the beauty of a well-constructed argument . We don’t argue to hurt and destroy. We argue to find the truth and beauty according to Dorothy Sayers.

The specific subjects studied aren’t important. The system of critical thinking and argumentation is important. Children learn to use facts they know to consider the world and their place in it.

Towards the close of this stage, students find they need more material. they have more to learn. Their imaginations reawaken.

Rhetoric Stage (14-16 years old)

We’ve entered the poetic age: the age when children believe themselves misunderstood and are self-centered. They long to express themselves and reach for a synthesis of what they’ve learned.

Dorothy Sayers doesn’t try to map out a curriculum for the rhetoric stage. If we’ve done our job well, our teens are ready to study anything. Instead, she recommends we focus on only one or two subjects rather than trying to cover 6-8 half-heartedly.

Let the teenagers dive into a specialty of their choice and immerse themselves in it. Become experts rather than trying for many subjects and only superficially covering those.

At 16 the kids are ready for university and the study of the Quadrivium – or their major.

Is it enough?

If we have done our jobs well, our children are ready for life. They know how to memorize facts, analyze these facts, and then take the facts further and apply them creatively to their own lives.

Our young adults have learned how to learn, how to think, how to express themselves. They’re ready for advanced learning and adult life.

By following Dorothy Sayers, we have given our children the Lost Tools of Learning .

Read more of the 5 Approaches to Classical Education posting this week:

• Dorothy Sayers and the Lost Tools of Learning
• The Well-Trained Mind
• Teaching the Trivium
• Classical Conversations
• Tapestry of Grace

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15 comments.

So we were a classical homeschool for at least 2 years before I finally started teaching Latin.I was just so resistant to teaching it until I read Teaching the Trivium. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around having a High School Student really only work on 2 classes. I get the idea of depth, I just haven’t figured out how that would translate into a transcript.

I think that’s why very few of the classical books such as Teaching the Trivium and The Well-Trained Mind actually drop down to 1 or 2 subjects. Unit study might work using history or science as a base, but there’s still the study of Latin and math… unless your Latin is strong enough to read works in the original Latin for history and science. It’s an interesting challenge! 🙂

Thanks for sharing this great post at Good Morning mondays. Blessings

Thanks for dropping by, Terri! 🙂

I just read Sayers Lost Tools of learning tonight, again. I love her thought processes! I compare the trivium to learning about stop signs. First we learn what a stop sign, what is looks like, what we’re supposed to do. Then, during the “Pert” age, we argue with the stop sign. Literally! We ask it why it’s there, how it came to be, etc. And we prove to ourselves whether a stop sign is necessary or not at that particular intersection. Finally, in the rhetorical stage we don’t actually need the stop sign anymore because we would wisely stop at intersections anyway! Wouldn’t it be lovely if the world were full of wise people who didn’t need stop signs? With wisdom comes freedom. Ignorance breeds bondage. Sorry, long comment! Just getting my thoughts out!

Jennifer, isn’t it true, kids in the “Pert” age argue with everything! I love the image of a kid arguing with the stop sign. 🙂 I’ve always thought of the trivium as building a car. First we learn the parts, then we learn how to put it together, then we build our own. But it doesn’t account for the arguing!

Sayers is a fascinating figure to study. Thank you so much for sharing!

Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop this week. We hope to see you drop by our neck of the woods next week!

She is fascinating. Thanks for dropping by. 🙂

Great series! I’m off to read the other posts. I think it is interesting contemplating the trivium as stages of development as opposed to skills to be mastered like the ancients used them. Very interesting!

It’s a fascinating development. I find it meshes well with my experience raising kids. First they’re cute and parrot everything we say. Then they turn argumentative. Finally the kids turn thoughtful and talk for hours working out their thoughts and believes.

That being said, there’s much to be said for the traditional interpretation of the trivium as skills to be learned. During the days when all educated men and women learned Latin and Greek, kids first learned the grammar of the languages. Then they learned to argue and analyze. Finally the kids learned rhetoric.

What’s fascinating is that the skills and stages overlap to a great degree. Kids learned the grammar during the grammar years, when they were happy memorizing without question. Just as kids were finishing learning the grammar of Latin and Greek, they were beginning to argue. The argumentative years and the study of logic overlapped again. Then they learned rhetoric as the kids turned philosophical. At this point they were ready to learn the quadrivium at university.

Great blog, thanks for sharing such wonderful stages of trivium. I think it is interesting, the trivium as stages for development of skills as ancients did.

Thank you, Sara, for sharing such a great blog!!! I have read a little bit of Trivium and what I have come to know Is in ancient times if any skill is to be mastered Trivium was used. Some of the great techniques. Keep Writing such great articles.

Thanks, Chris.

Quick question of direction and hope. I’m a father of three. My youngest is sophomore in high school and had a tough freshman year. Where do I begin with him. I did not recognize he was so far off track. My older two took to learning like ducks to water. I have never been concerned with grades, just understand the material grades will fall where they may. I seem to have dropped the ball.

Donald, I would start slowly, subject by subject. First, make certain he reads well and then have your son free read every day. Next, figure out where he is in math. Find a good curriculum and start covering a lesson in math. Do the same with writing, languages, history / social studies, and science. Take one subject at a time, make certain it’s progressing well, and then move on to the next.

Comments are closed.

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Classical Conditioning: Classical Yet Modern

This manuscript is part of a special issue to commemorate professor Paul Eelen, who passed away on August 21, 2016. Paul was a clinically oriented scientist, for whom learning principles (Pavlovian or operant) were more than salivary responses and lever presses. His expertise in learning psychology and his enthusiasm to translate this knowledge to clinical practice inspired many inside and outside academia. Several of his original writings were in the Dutch language. Instead of editing a special issue with contributions of colleagues and friends, we decided to translate a selection of his manuscripts to English to allow wide access to his original insights and opinions. Even though the manuscripts were written more than two decades ago, their content is surprisingly contemporary. The present manuscript was originally published as part of a Liber Amicorum for Paul Eelen’s own supervisor, prof. Joseph Nuttin. In this chapter, Paul Eelen presents a modern view on Pavlovian learning. It appeared in 1980, at the heyday of cognitive psychology which initially dismissed conditioning. Paul Eelen’s perseverance in presenting learning principles as key to study human behaviour has proven correct and ahead of time.

First published as: Eelen, P. (1980). Klassieke conditionering: Klassiek en toch modern. In Liber Amicorum, Prof. J. R. Nuttin, Gedrag, dynamische relatie en betekeniswereld (pp. 321–343). Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven.

Even though ever more complex areas of research have found their way into psychology, “Pavlov’s dog” continues to fascinate many researchers. What causes the enduring fascination with conditioning research? Does such research even have psychological significance? Would it not be better if it remained a study field for physiologists, as it originally was? The answers to these questions are partly determined by one’s conceptualization of classical conditioning. Most people are by now sufficiently familiar with its schematic representation: a conditioned stimulus (CS) elicits a conditioned response (CR), provided this stimulus has repeatedly been presented together with an unconditioned stimulus (US) that “inherently” elicits an unconditioned response (UR). Several limiting conditions qualify this schematic depiction. The CS must be “neutral” vis-à-vis the US. In other words, it cannot spontaneously elicit a response that is identical to the UR. The US must “inherently” elicit a well-defined response, which is why stimuli that are biologically significant for the studied organism are typically used (for some theorists, this became a necessary condition for conditioning to take place). The resulting CR must be an autonomous response that is part of the reaction pattern that the US evokes. This schematic depiction also provides insight into the necessary (and sufficient) conditions for conditioning to occur: both stimuli have to occur simultaneously. Finally, this schematic representation already implies what is learned: learning is equated with the modified reaction pattern vis-à-vis the CS. To put it simply, the dog learns to salivate at the sound of the bell.

This schematic depiction and the limiting conditions it implies constitute a strong simplification of the original phenomenon. After all, Pavlov’s interest in conditioning originated from his observation that the dog started to salivate when it heard and saw the man who brought the food. This rather complex event – someone who brings food – was ultimately reduced to a little lamp or an auditory signal predicting food. The “food” event of seeing a meat chunk in a bowl was reduced to the injection of meat powder directly into the animal’s mouth. The dog’s overall reaction pattern upon hearing the man who brings the food – and anyone who has a dog will be familiar with this pattern – was ultimately reduced to droplets of saliva (the reductive nature of this response was already highlighted by Zener, 1937 ). Moreover, the autonomous reaction that held Pavlov’s primary interest as a physiologist was initially not viewed as a core index of learning the relation between two events, but was subsequently seen as an almost integral part of the definition of classical conditioning ( Gormezano & Kehoe, 1975 ). We can probably all concur with Rescorla and Holland’s related observation that “if conditioning were confined to what some have called “spit and twitches”, it would lose much of its psychological interest” ( Rescorla & Holland, 1976, p. 184 ).

This strong reduction of the original events is probably characteristic of every type of operationalisation. This is justified in and of itself: operationalisations that reduce a phenomenon to its essence are vital for obtaining fundamental knowledge about the necessary and sufficient conditions that determine the occurrence of that phenomenon. But the danger exists that the question behind a concrete operationalisation is simply forgotten after a while. Moreover, there is a real danger that general statements and laws are formulated that are strongly connected to the concrete operationalisation. Something along those lines certainly happened in the study and appreciation of classical conditioning. The aim of this contribution, then, is to shed light on a number of recent trends in classical conditioning studies that might justify the title of this contribution. First, I summarize the most important findings that call for a broader framing of classical conditioning research. This is followed by a comprehensive discussion of one particular form of learning, that is, taste aversion that results from relations between the taste of food or drink on the one hand, and artificially induced nausea on the other hand. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the Garcia effect. The topic of taste aversion is discussed not because it is an almost prototypical example of classical conditioning, but because it contributed substantially to the questioning of important assumptions about conditioning. A number of authors have even called this the beginning of a “paradigmatic revolution” ( Rozin, 1977 ; Bolles, 1975 ). The final part is somewhat speculative in nature: using the preceding observations as a starting point, it argues that a nontrivial similarity exists between recent theories in classical conditioning studies and those in a literature that at first glance appears to bear little relation to it, that is, attribution theories in social psychology.

Classical conditioning: learning associations between two events

Every existing organism must in some way or another be sensitive to both meaningful as well as more coincidental relations between events in the environment, especially when such relations concern biologically significant events. At the same time, it would be maladaptive for an organism if the mere coincident occurrence of two events would be a sufficient condition for the organism to establish a connection between the two. Nevertheless, a coincident occurrence has often been considered a sufficient condition for learning a relation. When doubts were expressed about this idea, they concerned the nature of either one of both events (does one of the events need to have reinforcement value) rather than the nature of the relation itself (i.e., co-occurrence). What follows will demonstrate that every organism can process a wider range of informational relations than the mere joint occurrence of events. In describing this broad range, we aim to list general facts rather than to go deep into possible explanations.

The role of contingency

Instead of using terms indicating co-occurrence, relations can also be expressed in terms of correlation or contingency. What is emphasised in this case is not the temporal relation between two events but their logical relation. Applied to the situation of Pavlov’s dog, this means that a perfect positive correlation is introduced between the CS and the US in the experimental context. In other words, the conditional probability that the US is presented, given that the CS has been presented, equals 1; the probability that the US is presented in the absence of the CS equals 0. This is symbolically expressed as ρ(US/CS) = 1.0 and ρ(US/°CS) = 0. This can probably be further illustrated using what Seligman, Maier and Solomon called “The Pavlovian contingency space” (cf. Figure ​ Figure1 1 ).

Pavlovian contingency space . The x-axis represents the conditional probability that the unconditioned stimulus (US) occurs together with the conditioned stimulus (CS). The y-axis represents the probability that the US occurs without the CS. There is no contingency between both stimuli on the diagonal line where both probabilities are equal (after Seligman, Maier and Solomon, 1971 ).

Given that the essence of the classical conditioning procedure lies in the experimenter’s full control over the two stimuli that are presented, this paradigm lends itself superbly to a study of the effects of variations in the correlational strength of CS-US relations.

Rescorla ( 1968 ) was one of the first to study this issue systematically. Over several experiments ( Rescorla, 1975 ), he demonstrated that animals are sensitive to variations in contingency, ranging from a perfect positive correlation to a perfect negative correlation (respectively below and above the diagonal in Figure ​ Figure1.) 1 .) In this way, he succeeded in translating Pavlov’s two most important findings – excitatory and inhibitory conditioning – into contingency terms. Excitatory conditioning occurs whenever the animal learns that the CS and US tend to go together, in other words when ρ(US/CS) > ρ(US/°CS). A large number of behavioural indices then allow one to determine that the animal is behaving as if it “expects” the US when the CS is presented. Inhibitory conditioning occurs when the animal learns that the US and the CS tend not to go together, ρ(US/CS) < ρ(US/°CS). In this case, when the CS is presented, the animal will behave in a manner that is opposite to how it would behave in excitatory conditioning. When the CS and US are “randomly” presented, with no relation between both stimuli in other words, or ρ(US/CS) = ρ(US/°CS), it is observed that the CS does not acquire a new significance for the animal; in other words, the CS does not elicit a differential reaction. This nonetheless represents a form of active learning: learning that there is no relation is not synonymous to not learning ( Mackintosh, 1973 ; Seligman, 1969 ). Let us illustrate this rather abstract formulation for what is known as “fear conditioning”, which is usually operationalised through the administration of an electrical shock as a US and an external stimulus (e.g., a visual signal) as a CS.

When, within the context of the experiment, the probability of a shock increases after the presentation of a given visual signal, this stimulus acquires a signalling function for the shock: the animal will behave “anxiously” when the CS is presented. If, however, the chance that a shock is administered is lower after the visual stimulus than in the absence of that stimulus, the animal will behave in a fairly “relaxed” fashion when the CS is administered. When the visual signal and the shock are “randomly” presented, the visual signal does not acquire a special meaning. Instead, the context as a whole becomes “fear-inducing” to the animal ( Seligman, 1968 ).

The need for a contingent relation already indicates that mere co-occurrence is not a sufficient condition for an organism to learn the relation between two events. Some way or another, the organism is sensitive to the predictive value of stimuli and the covariance of events in its environment. What follows will illustrate that even a perfect contingency does not constitute a sufficient condition.

Latent inhibition

Lubov (1973) coined the term “latent inhibition” to describe the following observation: when a stimulus is repeatedly presented by itself (i.e., without a US) in a particular context and when it is subsequently always followed by a US, it is difficult to obtain conditioning. It is not all too clear whether one should invoke non-associative or associative principles to explain this phenomenon. On the one hand, it could be argued that the organism no longer is attentive to the stimulus and, as it were, no longer even notices the stimulus because it has repeatedly been presented in the past. On the other hand, it could be argued that the organism has learned that the stimulus is irrelevant because the stimulus has repeatedly been presented on its own and that it afterwards struggles to realise that it is precisely this stimulus that should be considered the signal for an important event ( Mackintosh, 1975 ). There is a certain similarity between latent inhibition and what occurs when a US is administered repeatedly before it is preceded by a CS. Here too, the results show that it is difficult to make this CS acquire the function of a signal for the US. For instance, when a series of shocks are administered in a non-contingent fashion and every shock is afterwards preceded by a tone in that same context, it takes a long time for the organism to learn this tone-shock relation. Again, the explanation for such data can be sought in non-associative or associative principles ( Randich & Lolordo, 1979 ).

Overshadowing

When two stimuli are presented together and consistently followed by a US, often only one of those stimuli will acquire the function of a signal for the US. Pavlov ( 1927 ) already discussed this phenomenon extensively and related it to the difference in “saliency” of the stimuli (as determined by the modality and intensity of the stimuli). Formal classical conditioning models have built in this “saliency” as a parameter – either as a fixed value ( Rescorla & Wagner, 1972 ) or as a fluctuating value in accordance with the relation to the US ( Mackintosh, 1975 ).

Relative information value

Suppose that stimulus A and B are presented together and followed by an electric shock. In group I, stimulus B is also presented separately but not followed by a shock in between the A+B presentations. In group II, B is also presented separately every now and then, but here it is followed by a shock. In group III, only A+B trials are presented. The question is what happens to the signal value of stimulus A. A and a shock are after all paired an equal number of times in all groups. The relative information value of A, however, varies between groups because B is presented separately in groups I and II. In group I, A becomes the best predictor for a shock. B is a better predictor in group II, while the information value of both stimuli is equal in group III. When A is now separately tested in the three groups, conditioned responding varies in accordance with the manipulated information value ( Wagner, 1969 ).

No phenomenon has probably made a larger contribution to clarifying the complexity of conditioning than blocking. It would be impossible to comprehensively list the relevant literature. We will therefore limit ourselves to a description of the basic phenomenon. Kamin ( 1969 ) was the first to bring this phenomenon to light in his “overshadowing” studies. Stimulus A (e.g., a visual signal) is frequently followed by an electric shock. When the conditioning is complete, stimulus B (e.g., an auditory signal) is presented together with stimulus A, and both are followed by a shock. B does not acquire a signal value even though there is a perfect correlation between B and a shock from this moment onward. This is evident from the fact that when B is presented on its own, it does not elicit a response. It is as if the previous conditioning of A is blocking the conditioning of B, hence the term. There are indications that the animal does notice stimulus B, but that it learns as it were that B presents irrelevant or at least redundant information about the US ( Mackintosh, 1978 ).

The above information clearly indicates that mere stimulus co-occurrence is not a sufficient condition for an organism to relate two events. The discussion below will demonstrate that it is also not a necessary condition, which again offers a different perspective on classical conditioning. Instead of an automatic process that plays out in a passive organism, the organism emerges as an active information-processing system.

It is probably possible to relate all the phenomena that were discussed above to the role of contingency. But the question remains what mechanism can be invoked for explaining the role of contingency. Some do not hesitate to postulate that the animal has a cognitive representation of the contingency space ( Alloy & Seligman, 1979 ). Others have drawn more cautious conclusions. As Rescorla notes:

“Most of us are not comfortable with the notion that organisms take in large blocks of time, count up numbers of US events, and somehow arrive at probability estimates … It is tempting to think of simple “tricks” that the organism could use to perform in this apparently rational fashion” ( Rescorla, 1969, p. 84–85 ) .

In other words, being influenced by a correlational relation does not ipso facto imply that the organism concerned has any understanding of this correlation. It is therefore remarkable that Rescorla, who perhaps highlighted the role of contingency more than anyone else, succeeded in developing a theory in which the learning of relations can be traced back to the co-occurrence of two events after all ( Rescorla & Wagner, 1972 ). At the level of formalisation, this theory remains purely descriptive. We would like to note, however, the psychological intuition on which it was built ( Rescorla, 1969 ). The notion of “expectation discrepancy” is central here. As soon as something (important) happens unexpectedly – in other words, it was not predicted – it is as if the animal starts searching for a predictor for this event. Expectation discrepancy appears to be a necessary condition for a stimulus to be interpreted as the signal for this unexpected event. No new learning occurs when either the context (see latent inhibition) or other signals (see blocking) had already predicted the event. This “expectation discrepancy” also explains inhibitory conditioning: when an event that an organism expects to occur in a particular context does not occur, a stimulus that is correlated with this expectation discrepancy may acquire an inhibitory function. Note that this theory emphasizes the role of the environment and the organism’s prior history. We deliberately use metaphors like “to start searching for a predictor”, “to interpret an event” etc. It is as if the facts can only be described in such terms. Such language becomes even more imperative when describing taste aversion.

Taste aversion: The Garcia effect

A short article by Garcia and Koelling published in Psychonomic Science in 1966 was the starting point of the literature on what is now known as the Garcia effect. At the time, there was nothing to suggest that the article would become a classic. Quite the contrary, the article had been rejected by a more renowned journal, which the then editor would later express his regrets about. As is often the case with “classics”, the article was indeed rather weak at the methodological level, but it contained fairly far-reaching theoretical implications. Today, these are referred to as the “Garcia effect”, “the message of Garcia” and “the paradigmatic revolution”. At least 600 articles that were more or less inspired by the Garcia effect have been published since then. This exceptional level of attention does not guarantee scientific relevance in itself. Garcia’s findings may have originally been called into question due to their methodological shortcomings, but the extensive attention has at the least ensured sufficient subsequent independent replications of Garcia’s experiments. The phenomenon is real. The debate about its reach and interpretation, however, remains active today. We first discuss the meaning of “the message of Garcia” by describing a couple of typical experiments. We subsequently reflect on the varying attempts that have been made to interpret this phenomenon.

“The message of Garcia”

What the message of Garcia essentially revolves around is probably best illustrated with an anecdote recounted by Seligman ( Seligman & Hager, 1972 ). After he was served “filet mignon with béarnaise sauce” during a dinner, he became unwell at night. This nausea later proved to be a harbinger of a flu attack. But Seligman had already ascribed it to the béarnaise sauce, and since then he cannot suffer the look, let alone the taste of this sauce. This anecdote raises several questions. Why did he “ascribe” his becoming sick to the béarnaise sauce? Why not to the filet, the dessert or the drinks? Why not to the restaurant or the other guests? Why did his aversion to béarnaise sauce not disappear when it later turned out that the flu was a far more likely cause? Why did béarnaise sauce taste so bad since then? It turns out that answering these questions becomes difficult when this event is translated into a conditioning paradigm, with flavour as the CS and becoming sick as the US (or UR). The most noticeable departures from the normal rules are the extended time period between the CS and US and the difficulty of the extinction, even after the adjusted interpretation. The nature of the US moreover appeared to determine the selection of the CS and, finally, a process that is qualitatively different appears to be at stake here: the béarnaise sauce is avoided not because it is seen as a predictor of nausea, but because it acquires an intrinsically bad flavour.

Garcia’s studies evoke similar questions. The discussion of a typical study will illustrate this further. Garcia and Koelling ( 1966 ) deprived caged rats of water for the duration of the experiment. Every day, the rats were placed in individual test cages that contained a drink tube. After an adjustment period in which clean water was offered, the learning phase began. The water was replaced by a saline solution. Every time the drink tube opening was touched, a visual and auditory stimulus were presented so that every drinking attempt was paired with a “bright-noisy-tasty” constellation of stimuli. In the first group, drinking coincided with a period of radiation (X-rays). 1 In the second group, lithium chloride was used as the saline solution; this has a poisonous effect but the rats cannot distinguish it from a non-poisonous saline solution ( Nachman, 1963 ). In a third group, an electric shock was administered two seconds after drinking. This learning phase was spread over several days in all the groups. On non-conditioning days, the test cage contained only normal water, the drinking of which was not paired with the abovementioned constellation of stimuli. This was followed by a test phase in which either the audiovisual stimulus or the flavour (saline solution) without the audiovisual stimulus was presented during the drinking of clean water. In the X-ray and lithium groups, there was a clear suppression of drinking with the flavour test but not with the audiovisual test, while precisely the opposite occurred in the shock group. In other words, there appears to be an interaction between the nature of the discriminative stimulus and the drinking consequences.

At first glance, several findings regarding conditioned taste aversion indeed contradicted the basic rules of conditioning. First and foremost, there was a clear parametric difference with more typical conditioning preparations: the time interval between the taste CS and administration of the aversive US (induced sickness) was typically much larger. “Records” of 24 hours of difference were set ( Etscorn & Stephens, 1973 )! In the experiment described above, an interaction moreover exists between the nature of the CS and the nature of the US, which is probably the finding that has prompted the most discussion: It is not possible to learn an association between whichever two things. Finally, we already noted that we are seemingly dealing with a qualitatively different phenomenon.

Theoretical reflections

The different attempts to explain flavour aversion can be separated into two main orientations. A first orientation refers to the biological nature of every organism. Through the course of natural selection, every organism has come to be equipped with specific learning mechanisms that, depending on the organism’s adaptation, show specific characteristics as a function of the different challenges the animal faces in its environment. For instance, it is indeed vitally important for an animal to learn the association between certain food attributes and certain metabolic effects. A second orientation attempts to reconcile the properties of flavour aversion with the more general fundamental rules that govern the learning of relations between two events. It does not deny that parametric and perhaps qualitative differences clearly exist between learned taste aversion and the more conventional conditioning findings. But these differences supposedly originate from the particular characteristics of the used stimuli. Insofar that these characteristics can be described, their influence can be assessed through experiments – independent of the flavour aversion phenomenon.

It is indeed remarkable that all the factors that influence learning of an association between two events (cf. below) also have an influence on learned flavour aversion. First, there is the impact of contingency. Inducing a flavour aversion requires a positive correlation: “random” administration of a flavour and US does not have an effect, and a negative correlation between a flavour and the US results in a preference for this flavour ( Best, 1975 ). Latent inhibition is also possible: flavour aversion is slow to develop when the animal is made to taste a certain flavour repeatedly before it is paired with an aversive substance ( Domjan, 1972 ; Elkins, 1973 ). It is equally clear that when the animal is first repeatedly made ill in a way that is non-contingent to ingestion of a particular food, the animal subsequently no longer ascribes this becoming sick to the flavour of the food ( Braveman, 1977 ). “Blocking” finally has also been demonstrated; a learned aversion to a particular flavour can “block” learning of aversion to a different flavour ( Revusky, 1971 ). It is important to note a study by Rudy, Iwens and Best ( 1977 ) in this regard. They first induced a contingency between an external stimulus (black cage) and nausea. When the flavour of saccharine was subsequently involved in this contingency, the animal no longer ascribed the nausea to the flavour. This study is important in two regards. First, it demonstrates that associations between external stimuli and “nausea” can indeed be learned as long as an external stimulus is used that is fairly salient and that can compete with a flavour stimulus in terms of “novelty”. In addition, the results of this experiment certainly do not appear to correspond to what one would expect from a “preparedness” view. If learning of a flavour-nausea contingency is truly “prepared”, it does not seem very plausible that learning of this contingency can be fairly easily “blocked” by a pre-induced artificial or at least unprepared contingency.

These findings indicate that the Garcia effect is not as extraordinary as it appears to be at first glance and that it can in fact be integrated into the more general findings about association learning ( Logue, 1979 ). The particular characteristics of the Garcia effect, however, have urged reflection on the more conventional procedures from a different perspective.

Consider, for instance, the parametric difference between flavour aversion and set-ups that are more conventional in terms of the time lapse between the CS and US (or between the discriminative stimulus and reinforcement). The hypothesis of an after-flavour during nausea was of course the most simple one, but it was emphatically rejected empirically ( Revusky & Garcia, 1970 ). It is therefore almost certain that the Garcia effect is due to a memory phenomenon. When the rat becomes sick, he “remembers” the type of food that may have caused this. Revusky ( 1971 , 1977 ) integrates these findings into what he describes as a more general associative interference theory. This theory inspired Lett ( 1973 , 1974 , 1975 , 1977 ) to demonstrate that a rat is capable of bridging a fairly large time interval between a discriminative stimulus and reinforcement – and this with more conventional procedures. For this to happen, however, the situation must be designed so that the animal is urged to again “call to mind” the discriminative stimulus during reinforcement. It is remarkable that the Garcia effect, which is so deeply rooted in the biological singularity of the organism, is an illustration of the animal’s cognitive capabilities and that it has helped integrate recent findings in the psychology of memory into conditioning studies ( Best & Gemberling, 1977 ; Wagner, 1978 ).

In addition, there is the interaction between the nature of the CS and the US. This interaction is in fact only exceptional when one merely considers the external characteristics of a relationship between two events (contiguity, contingency). It becomes more comprehensible when one assumes that other factors also exist that influence the learning of relations, such as similarity, spatial factors, etc. This insight was probably best articulated by Testa ( 1975 , 1976); he related learned flavour aversion to the more general question of how the animal perceives causal relations in its natural environment. He argues for factors to be integrated into the study of conditioning that had already been previously underlined by gestalt psychologists in relation to perception. We find a similar plea in Revusky ( 1977 ) and Rescorla and Cunningham ( 1979 ).

Conditioning and attribution

After demonstrating how an organism can process complex relations, we have presented a discussion of learned flavour aversion because the latter highlights a central problem: what pushes the animal to selectively attribute certain effects to the ingestion of food or drink when both events are so far removed in time? Rather than viewing this simply as an innate mechanism, it was argued that this phenomenon should be integrated as much as possible into what we know about the learning of associations between events. What then is the meaning of all of this? It seems that there is a fundamental similarity between these findings in the conditioning literature and attribution theory as it was developed in the social psychological literature. This observation suggests that common principles exist that cause both humans and animals to discover causal relations in their environment. Such a speculative observation probably requires a number of prior explanations. Attribution theory is the study of the manner in which certain events are explained in terms of their potential causes. Born from the field of social psychology – a historic coincidence in Kelley’s view ( 1967 ) – the main topic of attribution research was people’s causal analysis of the behaviour of others and one’s self. In other words, on the basis of which rules do I infer the “why” behind my own or other people’s actions? But in essence, a much broader question is at stake in attribution theory: how does one make causal inferences between all sorts of events? The question even arises whether a clear distinction ought to be made between a causal interpretation of events and a causal interpretation of actions. The distinction between “cause” and “reason” is key here, and it was also the focus of a recent discussion ( Buss, 1978 ; Harvey & Tucker, 1979 ; Kruglanski, 1979 ; Buss, 1979 ). Only causal interpretations of events will be discussed below. To put it in more trivial terms, when a rat is administered a shock by the experimenter, it might ask itself: What is this shock due to (asks after the cause)? It does not ask: why did this experimenter give me a shock (asks after the reason)? Both are “why” questions, but they are logically different from each other. Second, a distinction should be made between the attribution process and the content of the attributions ( Nisbett & Wilson, 1977 ; Kruglanski, 1979 ). At the level of contents, it is obvious that any animal-human comparison would be a tenuous one. But this is also true for a comparison between mutual humans, if only because of cultural differences ( Kruglanski, 1979 ). As regards attribution as process, it is probably possible to arrive at more general statements about the heuristics that apply to both humans and animals. A third introductory remark concerns the status of the concept of attribution. Attribution is intended as a “mediating” concept that can either be assigned a reality value or an “as if” nature. This is true for most “cognitive” concepts that were designed to mediate between input and output (consider, for instance, the concept of “expectancy”). In our view, there is a trend towards increasing emphasis on the “as if” nature of attributions in social psychology. The most common descriptions – somewhat schematically – present this sequence as follows: 1. something occurs (S) – 2. the organism asks itself “why” – 3. following deliberation, it arrives or does not arrive at a judgement – 4. it acts in a manner that is consistent with this (R). If assigned a reality value, it is possible to render the typically non-observable links 2. and 3. observable in humans by simply inquiring after them. It would not be exaggerated to state that this is the focus of most attribution research. And any study of attributions in animals is of course impossible in this respect. But it has been asked more and more whether the “links” do not acquire a different status precisely because they are made observable. Let us again briefly go back to Seligman’s anecdote about the béarnaise sauce. If Seligman is asked: “Why did you become sick?”, he will answer: “Because I had a flu attack.” In other words, does a “conscious” reflection on the occurrence of an event not respond to different rules than the total original experience of this occurrence? Is this not where the truth lies of Pascal’s statement that “le cœur a ces raisons que la raison ne connaît pas”? In a rather extensive article, Nisbett and Wilson ( 1977 ) defended the proposition that these cognitive mediating processes circumvent every form of introspection. To support their argument, they cited a number of statements by cognitive psychologists, including Neisser and Mandler, that we would like to cite here. For instance, Neisser writes that “the constructive processes (of encoding perceptual sensations) themselves never appear in consciousness, their products do” (Neisser, 1967, p. 301). And Mandler considers that “there are many systems that cannot be brought into consciousness, and probably most systems that analyze the environment in the first place have that characteristic. In most of these cases, only the products of cognitive and mental activities are available to consciousness” ( Mandler, 1975, p. 245 ). Although Nisbett and Wilson’s proposition is debatable ( Smith & Miller, 1978 ), Langer ( 1978 ) does not hesitate to go one step further: she simply denies the mediating role of conscious cognitions in most of our day-to-day actions: “Much psychological research relies on a theoretical model that depicts the individual as one who is cognitively aware most of the time, and who consciously, constantly, and systematically applies “rules” to incoming information about the environment in order to formulate interpretations and courses of actions. Attribution theorists rely on this model in attempting to uncover the sources of regularities in human behaviour. But if in fact it can be demonstrated that much complex human behaviour can and does occur without these assumed cognitive assessments, then we must question both pervasiveness of attribution making as a cognitive process and the assumptions made by most social psychologists” ( Langer, 1978, p. 35 ). We find a similar plea to look for very simple heuristics to explain the notion of attribution in Kahneman and Tversky ( 1973 ), Pryor and Kriss ( 1977 ) and especially Taylor and Fiske ( 1978 ) who concluded that most attribution processes “seem to occur automatically and substantially without awareness, and as such, they differ qualitatively from the intentional, conscious, controlled kind of search which we like to think characterises all our behaviour” ( Taylor & Fiske, 1978, p. 283 ).

These introductory explanations probably create more room for the proposition that there is something common about the way that humans and animals infer causal relations. We rely on a recent overview article by Kelley and Michela ( 1980 ) on attribution theory to buttress this claim in a more direct way. They first offer the general scheme that is implicitly contained in the study field of attribution (Figure ​ (Figure2 2 ).

Schematic model of attribution research (after Kelley & Michela, 1980 ).

As indicated above, any type of direct research into (2) is evidently impossible with animals. One has to limit oneself to manipulations of (1) and inferring what happens in (2) from a change in (3). But as also noted above, this limitation probably also applies to studies of attribution in humans. On the antecedent side (1) then, there is a clear similarity between the factors influencing the nature of attributions and conditioning. Let us illustrate this using the principles that Kelley and Michela distilled from attribution literature. These principles hold that certain aspects of the information that the organism is confronted with lead to attributions. Almost every one of these is a principle that we already mentioned in our discussion of the factors that influence conditioning.

• Covariance : The ANOVA model. This principle was primarily emphasised by Kelley himself ( Kelley, 1967 , 1973 ). “The effect is attributed to that condition which is present when the effect is present and which is absent when the effect is absent” ( Kelley, 1967, p. 194 ). This covariance principle is of course heavily analogous, if not identical, to the role of contingency in classical conditioning. This raises a twofold observation: first, there is no reason to suppose, as Kelley does, that the influence of this covariance principle must revert to a model of the human as a “naïve” scientist who thinks according to an ANOVA model (he probably only does so in the context of attribution experiments!). As noted above, the influence of contingency does not necessarily imply that the organism has any notion of contingency. In addition, there is the dilemma of moving from a correlation judgement to a causal judgement. A causal relation after all implies a correlation, but the reverse does not hold. Is a causal judgement only possible when one implicitly also has knowledge of the mechanisms that connect cause and effect? Or are other conditions necessary in addition to perfect correlation for two events to be perceived in a cause-effect relation? This dilemma brings us to the question posed by Michotte ( 1954 ): Is causality a phenomenal experience or a “post hoc” reflection? It is interesting to note in this regard that Testa ( 1974 ) relied on Michotte’s findings to explain flavour aversion.
• Saliency : “The notion here is that an effect is attributed to the cause that is most salient in the perceptual field at the time the effect is observed.” ( Kelley & Michela, 1980, p. 466 ). This “saliency” is again a factor that plays a role in conditioning (see below).
• Similarity and Contiguity : The principle of contiguity does not require much explanation to be related to conditioning. Rescorla and Furrow ( 1977 ) convincingly demonstrated the role of “similarity”, which has always been seen as an associative principle, within a conditioning paradigm.
• Primacy : “The general notion here is that a person scans and interprets a sequence of information until he attains an attribution from it and then disregard later information or assimilates it to his earlier impression” ( Kelley & Michela, 1980, p. 467 ). Conditioning literature analogies also exist for this. It for instance takes a long time for the animal to recognise a “random” relationship such as when a tone and a shock are “randomly” presented but this random series begun with a contingency between both events. The reverse is also true: a contingency is also learned with difficulty in the case of a random start and subsequent contingency ( Alloy & Seligman, 1979 ).

Conditioning literature parallels also exist for the interaction between the nature of the information on the one hand and the existing “beliefs” or causal models and the motivational component (Figure ​ (Figure2) 2 ) on the other. The “blocking” phenomenon can be considered a causal model that interferes with the learning of other causal relations: both humans and animals do not look for every possible cause but instead suffice themselves with one sufficient cause. In addition, the motivational component has always been central to conditioning. To explain this using anthropomorphic terms, the animal only asks itself a why-question when something important occurs.

We here touch on a point that made us relate the notion of attribution to findings on conditioning. We prefer the term attribution over the term association to denote what happens during conditioning. Not only because “association” is a historically heavily charged concept, but because the term does not permit a distinction between the propositions “event X reminds me of event Y” and “I ascribe event X to event Y”. To again illustrate this using Seligman’s example: when he becomes nauseous, he can perfectly remember the full dinner event, but only one relation, one “attribution” is made with the béarnaise sauce. Remembrance is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to establish a causal relation between two events. Winograd ( 1971 ) described this as follows: “Let us imagine that I emerge from my house in the morning and find a flat tire on my car. It occurs to me immediately that around nine o’clock the previous evening, while driving home, I heard a disturbingly loud noise as I drove over something in the road. Now, 12 hours later, I “associate” the flat tire with the impact. This is not an association in the usual S-R contiguity sense; rather, I have related two events which were separated by a long period of time. I can do this only if I have a record of the earlier event, or memory. In fact, I have many memories of previous events, and that is the problem. The question to be dealt with is one of trace selection or contact, of how I have related these two particular events” ( Winograd, 1971, p. 272–273 ). This, precisely, is the dilemma posed by the Garcia effect, looked at from a different perspective. It is why use of the term “attribution” rather than the term “association” becomes even more imperative when we keep the phenomenon of flavour aversion in mind. As Revusky and Garcia write, “Probably, the rat can really associate these events, but will not attribute the production of shock to the flavored water. In other words, a rat can learn that consumption of flavored water precedes shock, but will not readily learn that consumption of flavoured water produces shock” ( Revusky & Garcia, 1970, p. 41 ). A bit further, both authors write: “This paper would probably be more precise if, whenever the term “association” is used, “attribution” were to be substituted” (p. 43). Does, after this discussion, it still seems absurd that an animal responds “as if” it were making an attribution?

Of course, a change in terminology is only a pseudo-solution to a dilemma that has been key since Pavlov’s dog: How is a relation between two events learned? This contribution offers only limited insight into this question, and it is quite fortunate that the effective learning of such relations does not depend on its explanation. But the search for such an explanation becomes imperative the moment it is established that the learning of relations fails. Because this probably constitutes a true breeding ground for human and animal suffering: the inability to explain an important event.

Finally, this contribution might foster the impression that contemporary conditioning psychology tries to anthropomorphise the rat too much, when in the past humans were seen too much as rats. But a rat is a rat and a human a human. Nevertheless, it does not seem very fruitful to me to hermetically seal off both study domains. Whereas Estes notes that “the thought arises that the processes and mechanisms of human cognition represent specializations and elaborations of processes and mechanisms which can advantageously be studied in animals that learn as well as in machines that think” ( Estes, 1975, p. 6 ), this contribution was written from the conviction that Estes’ first alternative continues to be valuable. For as long as a computer does not salivate upon seeing a chunk of meat, “Pavlov’s dog” continues to be a fascinating phenomenon.

The use of X-rays in this experiment probably calls for some explanation about the prior history of the Garcia effect. Commissioned by the ministry of defence, Garcia and his collaborators completed a series of investigations into the influence of ionising radiation on animal behaviour during the fifties. Their most important finding was that such radiation – even when administered in small doses – had an aversive nature to the animal, and the behavioural component that this could most clearly be inferred from was the strongly reduced drink and food intake. It proved much more difficult, however, to use these radiation effects to teach spatial avoidance behaviour ( Garcia, Kimeldorf & Hunt, 1961 ).

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.

The Classical Classroom

A glimpse inside Hillsdale College's network of classical schools across the country.

Teaching Reading, Writing, and Speaking

an introduction to Hillsdale College’s approach to teaching English language arts in the K-12 years

English Language Arts

Since antiquity, a liberal education (i.e., an education for free human beings) has prioritized the study of language. This study of language focused the students’ attention on three arts: grammar, the rules that govern a particular language; logic, the means of separating truth from error; and rhetoric, the manners of eloquent persuasion through speaking and writing. In the Middle Ages, these three arts were called the trivium or “the place where three roads meet” (tri + via). Together with the four mathematical arts or quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), the trivium made up the seven liberal arts.

While grammar, logic, and rhetoric continue to play important roles in a quality education, the term “language arts” is often used to refer to a set of language skills that serve students throughout the curriculum. In the essay “Of Studies” (1625), Francis Bacon identifies these language skills and points us to their practical purpose when he says,

“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”

In other words, reading gives us knowledge of the world, conference (listening and speaking) prepares us to interact with others, and writing forces us to arrange our thoughts with precision.

In classical schools today, the curriculum must include a variety of important subjects: history, mathematics, visual arts, science, music, physical education, and others. But as it was in antiquity, language instruction—in the form of reading, listening, speaking, writing, and grammar—must play a central role in the earliest years of schooling.

To read is to make meaning from text, and it is one of the foundational reasons why children come to school. In the lower elementary grades, we often explain that students are “learning to read.” This means that they are using their knowledge of the predictable relationships between letters and sounds (or phonics) to decode words. Learning to read, however, encompasses more than the ability to sound out the words. Children also need direct, explicit instruction in fluency (the ability to read with automaticity, correct intonation, and proper phrasing), vocabulary (rooted in content-rich lessons, morphology, Greek and Latin roots, and meaningful practices with words), and comprehension (the ability to make connections, identify main ideas and supporting details, make inferences, and develop analyses of what is read). These latter skills are taught in part in the younger grades, but children are still learning to read in grades 3-8 as they encounter more complex texts that require higher cognitive demands.

Assuming that the child has experienced a language-rich environment that includes exposure to both the alphabet and the sounds of English in the early years of development, the average kindergarten student should be ready for a course of study that makes explicit the relationship between letters and their possible sounds. If the child has not experienced a language-rich environment in his early life or if the child has some difficulties learning, then the school may have to modify reading instruction accordingly. These necessary modifications should not, however, involve an abandonment of the explicit phonics curriculum. In connection with a rigorous spelling program, lower elementary students should increase their speed and accuracy of connecting letters and sounds as they develop their fluency as readers.

Children are learning to read for many years, and a thoughtful approach to teaching reading includes thinking about how a student can engage with the works of great authors and how he will practice what a teacher models in thinking about difficult passages.

Most elementary-level students make an important shift in their reading ability by the third or fourth grade. In their first years of schooling, the students were “learning to read,” but by the third and fourth grade, students have become fluent enough decoders of text that they can now use these decoding skills as a tool for learning: they are “reading to learn.” This ability to comprehend text was limited in earlier grades because so much of the students’ mental capacity was focused on decoding. But in the middle and upper elementary grades, the students are much more fluent readers, and their minds are free to focus on the meaning of the text rather than the relationship between sounds and symbols. In the upper-elementary years, students should continue to improve their fluency as readers and should learn more about the nature of words (e.g., compounds, synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms) and their meaningful parts (i.e., roots, prefixes, suffixes) through a rich vocabulary and spelling program.

If a child cannot decode text, he or she cannot make meaning from the text, but the same is true for a student who can decode but who lacks background knowledge or the ability to use reading strategies when they are stuck in a difficult text. The phrases “learning to read” and “reading to learn” do not then imply that reading instruction halts after the second grade. In some respects, it is critical that reading instruction becomes even more targeted as students are exposed to more challenging books and ideas. Children are learning to read for many years, and a thoughtful approach to teaching reading includes thinking about how a student can engage with the works of great authors and how he will practice what a teacher models in her thinking about difficult passages.

Conversation: Listening & Speaking

Unlike reading and writing, listening and speaking do not require the use of abstract written symbols (i.e., letters), and therefore these two language skills can be acquired naturally without direct, explicit instruction. Despite this difference most educators agree that even the more “natural” language skills such as listening and speaking can and should be cultivated through quality instruction and practice.

In the elementary grades, teachers can help students become better listeners and speakers through a variety of activities. First, teachers should preserve time in the school day to read aloud to their students. The type of texts can vary (e.g., fiction, history, and biography), but reading aloud allows teachers to expose students to works of literature that the students may not yet be able to read on their own. Furthermore, reading aloud fosters habits of attentive listening in a way that students find delightful rather than restrictive. Finally, a talented reader can bring texts alive for students, giving emphasis and color in the reading that allows students to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of the work. Considering this, reading aloud should be regarded as a positive good that teachers regularly perform, rather than simply a crutch for students who are too young to read for themselves. During these read-alouds, the students should learn how to sit still and listen quietly to the teacher. In addition, the teacher should stop periodically to ask questions of the students and engage them in the kinds of activities that a mature reader does automatically.

Second, teachers should lead short, focused class discussions in a variety of subjects, and they should model the kinds of questions and answers—not to mention the attitude and manners—that are essential to a healthy discussion. While some of the questions that a teacher might ask at this level will be closed-ended (i.e., what, who, where, and when?), the teacher should also introduce more open- ended questions (i.e., how and why?) that will lead to more fruitful discussions. These kinds of inquiries will lay a foundation for more in-depth seminars in the middle- and high-school grades.

Third, teachers should require students to memorize and recite great works of poetry and famous speeches. The teacher should take time to describe and model what a quality recitation looks and sounds like. Students can perform these recitations as a class and in small groups, but they should also have the opportunity to recite something by themselves to the teacher, in front of the class, or at a special event. The memorization of speeches and poetry holds a time-honored place in classical education and is a good in its own right. A robust memory, stored with fine and beautiful poems, speeches, and passages, constitutes a real form of knowledge that will have an enduring influence on the student’s character and will equip the student with important intellectual resources.

 Fourth, students should have opportunities to speak their own words—both prepared and extemporaneous. In the lower grades, this might involve something like a brief show-and-tell activity where a student must talk about an object for 1-2 minutes and answer 1-2 questions from the teacher and his peers. In the upper-elementary grades, the student might need to present a brief oral summary to the class on a topic from history, science, or art. All of these activities are preparing students to be good listeners and speakers, and they are laying the foundation for much more difficult listening and speaking requirements in the upper-school grades.

As it was with the other language arts, writing instruction in the elementary grades is all about preparing students for what is to come. Writing instruction in kindergarten will begin with forming individual letters. Although there are exceptions, most handwriting (or penmanship) programs begin with manuscript (also known as “printing”) rather than cursive. Cursive should be part of a quality writing curriculum, but most often this instruction will begin only after the students can successfully form both the lowercase and uppercase letters in manuscript. In most cases this means that cursive instruction will begin in the second half of the second grade year or later. Some handwriting programs introduce forms of the letter—uppercase and lowercase—concurrently. If only one form of the letter is introduced at this level, it will most likely be the lowercase because lowercase occurs more frequently in texts. Many students struggle to form letters correctly at this level because their fine-motor skills are still developing, but most students can develop good handwriting with plenty of regular practice and consistent feedback from the teacher.

Throughout the lower elementary grades, students should progress from letters to words to sentences to paragraphs so that by the end of the third grade, students are able to compose a quality paragraph. Students should recognize that a paragraph is a mini-argument, and they should be able to write single paragraphs on a variety of topics, including a topic sentence that clearly states a central idea and secondary sentences that support the topic sentence through evidence or examples. In the upper elementary grades, students should learn how to connect a series of paragraphs together. By the end of the sixth grade, students should be able to write a concise, well-crafted essay of four or more paragraphs that includes an introduction, body, and conclusion.

As students mature in their writing in the middle and high school grades, it is essential that teachers maintain a firm relationship between writing and thinking. Writing must begin with a clear idea and end with the clear and persuasive communication of that idea to others. This means that various forms, models, and templates (like the “5-paragraph essay”) may help to guide students, but using these templates is not writing in its fullest sense, and overdependence on them may hinder students in their development as writers. Rather, teachers should introduce students to tools for writing and demand that they use them, guide them and nurture them as writers, and encourage them to think critically and independently. While students will undoubtedly be required to write certain forms of essays (e.g., a compare/contrast essay, a definition essay, a process essay, a personal narrative, a lab report, etc.), each must learn that the requirements of a particular assignment are intended as a vehicle for the clear communication of his or her own thoughts. It may be more difficult to teach writing this way, but students will be immeasurably better for it.

Learning to write is hard work and is perhaps harder still to teach. In order to strike a balance between a clear writing process and the necessary intellectual participation on the part of the individual writer, teachers must work to create a habit of mind in their students. The fundamentals of writing ought to be grounded in logic, focus, purpose, and organization. In most cases, writing will begin with compiling ideas and planning their layout, proceed with a great deal of practice, and finish with honing and revision. Teachers must encourage students to be deliberate in the goals of their writing—and this means in all of their writing, in all of their classes. Each discipline asks something different from the students in form and content; however, one thing should remain the same in every class: students should have a clear sense of purpose to writing, namely to communicate their thoughts in a cohesive, organized, and clear manner.

As our students develop through the grammar and logic of using various forms and tools to communicate clearly, they will also develop in their rhetorical capacity. Ultimately students should learn to think and write symphonically, with each paragraph working in harmony with other paragraphs to offer the reader the student’s thoughts. Good writing is like a chess match, where every move is connected to every other move. Teachers are working to develop in their students both a touch of the poet and a touch of the engineer. Teachers must recognize that they are developing the writer rather than the composition. In pursuit of this end, they can build a strong foundation in the fundamentals, model clear thinking, critique poor thinking, and coach students in the elements of style and rhetorical effectiveness.

English Grammar

While all three classical language arts (the trivium) have been indirectly represented in the descriptions above, grammar deserves special attention in the elementary grades. To most readers, it will come as no surprise that explicit English grammar instruction has been all but ignored in modern public schooling. For a detailed explanation of how and why this happened, see David Mulroy’s insightful book  The War Against Grammar . When modern public schools do offer explicit English grammar instruction, teachers most often address it quickly and minimally so that the class can move on to something more practical like writing. But while knowledge of grammar often does help students become better at reading, writing, speaking, and listening, grammar is worth knowing for its own sake—just like biology, mathematics, and history—and it deserves to be taught slowly and carefully over a number of years.

In the lower elementary grades, the emphasis should be on teaching students how to read. This task is difficult and time-consuming, and if students do not focus on learning to read during these early years, they will struggle to succeed throughout the rest of their schooling. However, students can still begin to learn some basic terms and concept in the first few years of school. Lower elementary teachers should begin to introduce grammar terms so that by the end of the second grade, students have learned basic definitions for all eight parts of speech. If students have this knowledge by the end of the second grade, then they will be prepared for a more comprehensive program in the coming years.

If students have made adequate progress in learning to read and have acquired some basic grammar terminology, the third grade is the best time to begin an explicit, systematic English grammar instruction program. In four years (grades 3-6), students should be able to acquire a basic understanding of the nature and function of English grammar that begins with the basic elements of a sentence and concludes with compound-complex sentences. Because of elementary students’ natural capacity to acquire language both implicitly and explicitly, schools should not wait until the middle- school years to begin explicit grammar instruction. Schools should make every effort to capitalize on this post-reading and pre-puberty window to teach students English grammar. If students receive quality grammar instruction in the upper elementary grades, then all middle and upperschool teachers will be able to hold students accountable for proper grammar, and they will be able to use language to teach students other content.

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Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, everything you need to know about the clt test.

College Admissions , General Education

Did you know that there are alternative exams to the SAT and ACT ? The Classic Learning Test, or CLT exam, is an alternative college entrance exam accepted by some schools. If you’re interested in taking a college entrance exam that bills itself as affordable, convenient, and innovative, the CLT exam might be worth your time.

Because this alternative exam option may not be as familiar to you as the SAT/ACT, this article will help you understand the CLT test and what it covers. We’ll talk about:

What the Classic Learning Test (CLT) is, plus:

• Why someone should take the CLT
• When the CLT test dates are
• How the CLT compares to the SAT and ACT
• What you should know about the CLT format

We’ll wrap everything up with four expert tips for taking the CLT exam. Let’s get started!

Feature Image: CLT/ Classic Learning Test

The CLT is a new standardized test that's primarily accepted at small, private, religious schools. Read on to learn more about what the CLT is...and who should take it.

What Is the CLT?

The Classic Learning Test is an online college entrance exam designed for 11th and 12th grade students . This college entrance exam was launched in 2015 as an alternative to the SAT and ACT, and is accepted by over 200 colleges across the U.S .

The CLT is a newcomer to the standardized test scene, and it bills itself as an exam that focuses on testing the basics of a “ classical education ,” namely logic, reasoning, and reading. It also uses excerpts of classic literature to test reading skills, and there’s more of a logic (rather than a calculation) focus on the quantitative reasoning section.

The format of the CLT is different, too. Unlike the ACT (which has four sections plus writing) and the SAT (which has two sections plus writing), the CLT consists of three required sections:

• Verbal Reasoning , which tests students’ textual comprehension and analysis skills
• Grammar/Writing , which tests students’ textual editing and improvement skills
• Quantitative Reasoning , which tests students’ skills in logic and mathematics

There is also an optional essay portion of the exam that students can choose to take, but the score on this portion will not affect your numerical score on the exam. Each CLT exam section (excluding the writing section) consists of 40 questions.

The CLT test lasts for a total of two hours or 120 minutes. This total testing period is divided into the following time frames for each individual exam section:

• 40 minutes — Verbal Reasoning section
• 35 minutes — Grammar/Writing section
• 45 minutes — Quantitative Reasoning section
• Additional 30 minutes — Optional essay section (not included in total two hour exam time)

Students who take the CLT in school will receive their official exam scores the Tuesday after taking the exam. For students taking the test online, their scores will be released the second Tuesday after their exam date. CLT scores can be sent to an unlimited number of colleges of your choosing.

Who Can Take the CLT Exam?

So who can take the CLT exam? The CLT is specifically designed for high school juniors and seniors who plan to go to college. If you’re a junior or senior in high school (or a high school graduate planning to go to college after a break), you can take the CLT.

Having said that, the CLT is not a common standardized test. That means there may not be a CLT testing site in your area, and not every school administers the test themselves. However, there is an online option available in that case if you’re interested in taking the exam.

While some states allow you to take the ACT or SAT for free, there isn’t a widely available program that subsidizes the cost of the CLT. You can apply for a fee waiver , but waivers are granted on a case-by-case basis rather than on a set of standardized criteria, which is how both the SAT and ACT determine who receives a waiver. That means the CLT may be cost prohibitive for some students.

Additionally, not all colleges consider the CLT a valid entrance exam . (We’ll talk more about what schools accept the CLT later.) So while you might meet the criteria for taking the CLT, you might not want to take the test because your target , safety , and reach schools don’t accept it.

Why Take The CLT Exam?

Like we mentioned earlier, about 200 colleges in the U.S. accept the CLT as an alternative to the SAT or ACT. In other words, these universities will accept your CLT scores just like they would SAT or ACT scores in order for you to gain admission. 

Schools that accept the CLT tend to be small, religious, private universities like Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia or Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington. If you’re considering going to one of these small private colleges, then you might consider taking the CLT.

If you’re applying to schools that accept the CLT, there are some other benefits to the exam, too. For instance, the CLT has a relatively short test time of only two hours, it’s a digital test, and you don’t need a calculator.

The best reason to take the CLT test is to become eligible for scholarship offerings that are directly tied to CLT scores. More than 100 U.S. colleges have specific scholarships that are awarded to students who achieve high CLT scores. Like we mentioned earlier, the majority of these schools are small, private, religiously-affiliated colleges, so students who are interested in applying to this type of school are especially poised to benefit from taking the CLT. You can view a complete list of colleges that have incorporated CLT scores into their academic scholarships here .

Like the SAT and ACT, the CLT is offered multiple times per year.

When Is The CLT?

The CLT is offered on several testing dates throughout the year. However, the format for administering the CLT differs for each testing date, and it’s important to understand what testing format you’re signing up for before you register.

The CLT is offered in two formats throughout the year.

The first way you can take the CLT Exam is with a remote proctor. For this testing format, students will use a laptop or desktop computer and a web browser to take the exam online at an assigned time from their own home.

You can take the CLT through a designated CLT Partner School. On a “Partner Schools Only” testing date, specific schools will administer the CLT to students on the assigned testing date. Your school will notify you if a Partner School testing date is being provided.

You can also view these testing site details in our table of official upcoming CLT testing dates for the 2022-2023 school year:

Generally speaking, the CLT and the SAT/ACT are pretty similar: they're all designed to test your college readiness, and they generally cover the same core skills. But there are definitely some differences you should be aware of, too!

How Is the CLT Different From the SAT/ACT?

Generally speaking, the CLT isn’t that much different from the SAT or ACT . It still tests your fundamental skills in math, reading, and writing as a way to determine your college readiness. You’ll still have to read passages and answer questions about them, define vocabulary terms, use formulas to solve math problems, and tackle logic questions.

Having said that, there are some differences between the CLT and the ACT/SAT that you should know about. We’ll go over those below.

The CLT Exam Is Shorter

First, the CLT is a shorter exam , with only three required sections that consist of fewer questions and last for a total of only two hours. In comparison, both the SAT and the ACT last for three hours, and both of these exams include more questions per section than the CLT.

The CLT Exam Tests Slightly Different Concepts

Additionally, the CLT tests some concepts a little differently . For instance, in the Verbal Reasoning section of the exam, you’ll be asked to read passages from classic literature and answer questions about them.

Here’s an example of one of those passages:

The style of these questions is very similar to those found on the Reading section of the SAT and the Reading and English sections of the ACT.

The big difference is that this reading is excerpted from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. While you don’t have to have read the book in order to answer these questions, you do need to be comfortable with reading literature if you’re taking the CLT exam.

The Quantitative Reasoning section is also a little different from what you’d see on the SAT or ACT. Again, you’ll still have to solve math and math-based logic problems on the CLT, just like you would the ACT or SAT. The biggest change is that you’ll have to solve proportionally more logic problems than you would have to on the other tests.

Here’s an example of a logic and reasoning question from the CLT:

While the SAT and ACT definitely ask questions like this, these types of questions are much more common on the CLT. 

The CLT Exam Is Scored Differently 

The CLT also allows a higher overall score than the SAT and ACT . To help explain this, let’s take a look at the CLT score equivalency chart: 

*information provided by CLTexam.com

So if you get a 114 on the CLT, it’s the same as making a 36 on the ACT (or a 1600 on the SAT ). But a perfect score on the CLT is actually a 120. That means scoring between a 114 and a 120 on the CLT is theoretically better than a perfect score on the other two exams. 

Having said that, the CLT is only accepted at a limited number of schools. So unless you’re only applying to colleges that accept the CLT, a perfect CLT score isn’t as good of a return on your investment as a perfect SAT or ACT score would be. 

The CLT Is Offered Online

Another way the CLT is currently different from the SAT/ACT is that the CLT can be taken online. Unlike the SAT (which won’t go digital for US students until 2024) and the ACT (which only offers digital testing in some states and countries), CLT exam takers also have the option to take the exam online from their own homes.

CLT Scores Come in Faster

If you take the CLT, it also offers much faster score reporting than either the ACT or SAT. The CLT offers scoring within eight business days of taking the exam. In comparison, SAT and ACT exam takers receive their scores two to four weeks after taking the exam.

There Are CLT-Specific Scholarships 

Finally, the CLT corresponds with several academic scholarships at small, private, and liberal arts colleges that aren’t available to SAT/ACT test takers . These schools may come with a higher cost of attendance and/or fewer financial aid opportunities, which may make the scholarship opportunities associated with CLT scores even more important. 

Deciding whether to take the CLT instead of the SAT or ACT can be a tough decision. Our quiz can help you determine whether the CLT is the right test for you.

Should You Take the CLT?

If you’ve read all of this and still aren’t sure about whether the CLT is a good fit for you, take our simple five question quiz to help you decide if taking the CLT is best for your college admissions goals. Just answer “yes” or “no” to the following questions:

• Would you like a chance to demonstrate your academic skills and aptitude through a shorter college entrance exam?
• Are you interested in a format that allows you to take the exam using your own computer in the comfort of your own home?
• Would you like to receive your exam scores more quickly, and have them sent to an unlimited number of schools?
• Do you have several small, private, and/or liberal arts colleges on your top list of schools to apply to?
• Do you hope to be considered for special scholarship opportunities that you couldn’t get based on your SAT/ACT scores alone?

If you answered “yes” to most or all of the questions above, there’s a good chance that the CLT is a good fit for you . (Just make sure you check with each school you’re applying to and double-check that they accept the CLT!) 

Here's how the CLT is pieced together. (See what we did there?) 

The General CLT Format

The CLT test consists of three required sections of 40 questions each, and the test lasts for a total duration of two hours (not including administering instructions and scheduled breaks). As a reminder, the three required sections of the CLT exam are:

• Verbal Reasoning 
• Grammar/Writing 
• Quantitative Reasoning 

Let’s take a look at each section in a little more detail. 

Verbal Reasoning

The Verbal Reasoning section of the CLT consists of 40 questions and lasts for 40 minutes. The Verbal Reasoning section of the CLT presents four reading passages that are each followed by ten corresponding multiple choice questions. The questions following each reading passage will test students’ reading comprehension and textual analysis skills. 

The content areas on this exam section breakdown as follows:

You’ll encounter three types of questions in the comprehension category : questions that assess your understanding of a reading passage as a whole, questions that assess your understanding of the details of a reading passage, and questions that assess your ability to identify relationships between the different reading passages.

You’ll also encounter two types of analysis questions on this section: questions that assess your ability to analyze elements of the passage as a text, such as figurative language, analogies, and cause-effect relationships, and questions that test your ability to interpret evidence presented in the reading passages.

Grammar/Writing

The Grammar/Writing section of the CLT consists of 40 questions and lasts for a total of 35 minutes. You’ll be asked to answer multiple choice questions about four passages. The content areas and question types on this second section of the CLT exam breakdown like this:

The questions on this section are broken up into two main content areas: writing and grammar. Writing questions will test your ability to identify and correct errors pertaining to the structure, style, and word choice used in a given passage. Grammar questions will test your ability to identify and correct errors of agreement, punctuation, and sentence structure.

Quantitative Reasoning

The Quantitative Reasoning section of the CLT consists of 40 questions and lasts for 45 minutes. This multiple choice section of the CLT exam is divided up into three main content areas that break down into the following seven different question types:

The Quantitative Reasoning section of the CLT stands out among college entrance exams because it places a higher emphasis on your logic and reasoning skills. In other words, a higher proportion of the quantitative questions on the CLT are logic-based compared to the SAT or ACT.

Having said that, you’ll still have to do some calculations. A list of helpful math formulas is also provided at the beginning of this exam section and can be accessed at any time. You won’t be allowed to use a calculator to complete this section of the CLT test, however.

4 Tips on How to Prep for the CLT

If you decide taking the CLT is right for you, you’ll want to prepare effectively for the exam so you can achieve your target score. Keep reading for our top four tips for knocking the Classical Learning Test out of the park . 

Tip 1: Take a Practice CLT Exam

One of the best things you can do to prepare for the CLT is to take a practice exam. The CLT provides one example test that you can take on their website . Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of CLT prep materials out there, but you might also consider looking into online CLT study guides and combining those with a practice exam.

Taking a practice CLT will give you a sense of what to expect from this college entrance exam. You’ll get familiar with the instructions, format, and question types, which will save you time on your test day. Just be sure to take the practice test under realistic conditions!

Tip 2: Use the ACT/SAT To Your Advantage

If you’re choosing to take the Classical Learning Test in addition to the SAT and ACT, you can actually use any ACT/SAT prep materials to help you prep for the CLT as well.

That’s because the CLT isn’t substantially different from the SAT or ACT. Many of the core skills that are tested on all three exams are the same. For instance, you’ll still need to know how to read a passage quickly , and you’ll still have to understand core math concepts to answer quantitative questions. 

Great ACT and SAT prep books help you learn the fundamental skills you’ll need to know to be successful on college entrance exams generally . Additionally, many of the test-taking strategies that are covered in prep books will translate to the CLT exam, too. 

If you’re not sure which study guides are worth investing in, make sure you check out our articles about the best ACT prep books and the best SAT prep books . 

Tip 3: Review Missed Practice Questions

A tried-and-true strategy for test prep is dedicating extra time to questions and content that you struggle with. The CLT website allows you to review explanations for the answers to questions you miss on their practice exam.

Reviewing these explanations can help you improve your understanding of difficult content and turn missed questions into correct answers as you continue practicing. Targeting your problem areas when you prep for the CLT will help you answer more question types correctly when you take the real exam.

Tip 4: Take the ACT/SAT Practice Tests for Extra Review

Finally, taking numerous practice tests will help you hone your test-taking skills and give you a great chance to review the material.

Since there are only a limited number of CLT practice tests available, you may find you need a few other tests along the way. ACT practice tests and SAT practice tests are a good way to check your progress on mastering core knowledge skills, even if they aren’t exactly the same.

What's Next?

If you’re thinking about taking the CLT, it might mean you’re thinking about going to a religious college. Be sure to check out our list of the top 20 Christian colleges in the United States.

Keep in mind that tests like the CLT are just one part of your college admissions journey. You’ll also need to write great admissions essays, too. Our experts can show you how to write a great college essay, step by step.

And of course, don’t forget those letters of recommendation! Here’s how to request letters that will really stand out from the crowd.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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