The Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw--I mean...

[reference to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows]

Dorothy is definitely not in Kansas anymore. And by 'Kansas,' I mean 'today's standard educational limits.'

As I read, I took a few notes and put my understand in the common vernacular. However, as we're attempting to not be codfish, I will expound on those thoughts and formulate them in a less crude way: Sayers is very close to comparing modern educational systems to piles of musk ox defecation.

However, it's not simply Dorothy Sayers relieving herself, in turn, in the outhouse of today's "learning." She criticizes, but she also reveals a lost way of learning--one that hasn't been used since medieval times. Since we no longer use those tools (having been 'lost'), students are in school for years longer than they used to be. Some of this, she acknowledges, is because there is more to learn--we've discovered the light bulb, and the duck-billed platypus, and people have made up reasons why we shouldn't use the Oxford comma. Those things (except for the last) are acceptable. Children should learn about them. Dorothy Sayers simply says they don't know how.

She identifies with thoughts readers may have about other people: doesn't it ever appear that others have no idea what they're talking about? or that they can't articulate exactly what they mean, perhaps because they don't know exactly what they mean? that they don't know something, but they don't know how to find out the answer? that they don't know how to talk about two different things at the same time, because they view them as completely separate? Maybe these thoughts aren't about other people. Maybe these things are true about us.

Brief disclaimer: not that everyone's stupid! Some people are very intelligent. (Some people... well.) They may have even learned Sayers' lost tools without knowing it. She's merely suggesting that it should be more openly introduced into schools today, to better learning, because methods today may not cover all that they should. Children may learn facts, but not the methods behind it, why the fact is a fact, or even why they're learning it. Then they move on to a different 'subject,' and become unable to mix the previous with the present.

Sayers dislikes that word--'subject.' She uses it mockingly, and always in quotation marks, showing that she doesn't take it seriously enough to use as a real term. Why is this? It separates too much: one of her examples was chemistry and art. One might think, at first, that there is nothing to relate between the two--and one would be incorrect. Because subjects are taught so stiffly ("This is English class." "This is Math class.") and don't appear to blend, people think that they can't. Students are raised separating everything, and learning facts so differently by 'subject,' that they don't know how they learned them and they don't know how to transfer thoughts from one thing to another. Essentially, they don't know how to think.

Enter Sayers' 'lost tools.' What does this mean? (That we should fear and love God...) That when someone doesn't understand, we should hit them with a screwdriver we found in a box in the basement? Unfortunately, no. This is where Dorothy introduces the Trivium: grammar, dialectic (or logic), and rhetoric. She says it is the method of dealing with subjects (something that, when combined with the trivium, is acceptable), so that we aren't "leaving the method of thinking, arguing, and expressing one's conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along." She speaks of the Trivium as though learning it and having it in one's repertoire is a weapon. Sayers says to send one into the world with merely 'subjects' is to send them undefended: how will they express their opinion? How will they formulate their opinion, if they cannot process everything that's out there?

Sayers states that the Trivium is a preparation for learning. Each stage of the Trivium goes along with stages of childhood, and thus can easily be added into the educational growth of a student. Grammar goes best when they're younger: when they're eager to learn and can do so quickly. Feed them knowledge in the same subjects one would teach without the Trivium. As they grow older, more aware of what they're learning and how they might disagree with it, introduce Dialectic, or Logic. Make the student think about it. This age, Sayers points out, is already so argumentative that asking the child to reason things out instead of blindly accepting them will hardly be difficult. They will learn to discover fallacies and argue correctly. In the grammar stage, they will learn the words, in the dialectic phase, they will learn the syntax and history. (Dorothy Sayers suggests as well that they use the library.) Once they emerge from the Logic age, they enter Rhetoric, where there is more freedom of opinion. Here they learn to articulate everything they've learned so far into writing. Sayers advises that they be allowed to pursue subjects that are more of their interest and talent, although it will be hard to distinguish subjects now that the previous stages have taught them to mingle their thoughts. She doesn't speak much on Rhetoric, because here is where the student flourishes on their own.

Dorothy Sayers says that she is unconcerned with schools, she only wants the preparation of the mind. Her goal is to learn the art of learning through the Trivium, and it will simplify greatly the learning of all other good things.

Becoming narcissistic, I think our own dear mother did a pretty decent job of introducing the Trivium to us, whether or not she meant it. I don't want to sound like we're smarter than everyone else because we know how to learn or something, but we were allowed freedoms that not ordinarily-schooled children were. We ran around with sticks (oh no!) and read books about constellations and watched Schoolhouse Rock to learn about conjunctions. Does that directly relate to the Trivium? Noo! It's not even on the same subject... or is it?

Grammar: we learned and loved it. I can think of specific times when we sat down to have 'learning time,' but there are less memories of those than would seem likely. Yet somehow, I know quite a bit. Again, I'm not trying to sound incredibly vain, and there is so much more to learn, but our family does seem quite gifted with intelligence. My theory of how that happened is that we spent so much time reading--we took in much more than just stories. We also had extra time to do other things, such as building computers or writing stories. We read and we learned from it.

Then we wondered why. So we found out. Dorothy Sayers' acclamation of the library was correct--not only did it supply us with books that fed us stories, imagination, and facts, but it also gave us books to explain why and how things worked. There were histories and cross-sections and biographies and CDs of Mozart and art books to explain techniques. Though we may not have used the age suggestions found in Dorothy's essay, much of the grammar and rhetoric was found in books. The subjects mingled--science was learned and found in art technique, and art was found in history, and we learned history when we read, and when we read we learned English...

However, not everything was learned in dusty (or even new) books. Reasoning? Try talking to any of the maternal-side relatives. As Mom says, "We argue for sport." It must have sifted down through our genes, and even conversation in our house was practice in logic. The opinions are strong in this one.

Rhetoric was, as well, blended with the others. As I mentioned, we had time to write. I wrote stories, and I had them criticized and edited. I remembered surprising Piera when I was six by using the word 'glum' in a fairy tale. "How do you know the word 'glum'?" she asked, surprised. "I don't know," I answered, equally surprised that it was strange to have a large vocabulary. Thinking on it later, I realized I knew the word because I read, and I wrote it because I had unconsciously added it to the thesaurus in my mind.

I had lessons in language with my dad, with Piera, and with Schoolhouse Rock. Conjunction junction, what's your function? Hooking up words and phrases and clauses. Various tidbits of English writing stuck with me, although I couldn't say what. Piera taught us to write papers--formally, concisely, fluidly. I don't know if I can do all of that well, but I know the idea.

In turn, I note when books are written formally, concisely, or fluidly. I point out grammatical errors in scientific writing. I point out scientific errors in grammatical writing. I merge two 'subjects' and come up with knowledge that can be used no matter the topic. Though unaware that we used the Trivium, our family must have been more inclined towards that in our relaxed way of homeschooling. I say this simply because I knew what Dorothy Sayers was talking about. I even vaguely mentioned it in my last post, before I had read about the Trivium. (Although I had heard about it from Keaton.)

However, despite that fact that I think this could be bettered in education today, and doubt that it will be, it hasn't been totally eliminated from schools. I'm sure it does show up from time to time--I refuse to believe that everyone is an untaught imbecile. Over time, perhaps the Trivium became such a habit that it was forgotten to be taught, and now teachers and educational systems expect students to know it. Perhaps some of it is so ingrained in the system that we pass over it in our severe inspection. First graders learn to write. Fourth graders present projects. Sixth graders have debates and write opinions. Tenth graders write essays. It may go unsaid and unnoticed, but hints of the Trivium still remain. The art of learning is sadly overlooked today, but not, I think, lost.

Also, you assumed I would agree without allowing for the possibility that I wouldn't. For the most part, I do, but it appeared that you didn't expect any of my reasoning skills to work against yours. Opinions are opinions, not necessarily the right way of thinking.

On another note, Dorothy Sayers mentioned that many people are governed by Christian ethics that they don't realize are Christian ethics. I've definitely noticed that. Who said killing people way wrong? God. Who says it now? Everyone except a few murderers.

later, bro.