# Looking for classical education models/ideas not associated with Doug Wilson



## RamistThomist (Aug 3, 2018)

I used to be hostile to the classical education model simply because Doug Wilson was stamped all over it at conferences. Having since learned Latin and been to a few conferences, I like the idea. I don't like the Wilson books there, but you can't have everything.

What are some good books, ideals, models that promote classical ideas (trivium, etc) that aren't connected or dominated by Doug Wilson?

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## TylerRay (Aug 3, 2018)

Jacob,

I don't really have anything to recommend--I just want to point out that the paradigm out there is what I call the Sayers-Wilson model, or neoclassical education (they are both my terms, and you can take them or leave them). This is the model that applies the trivium to different stages of learning. This idea was first posited by Dorothy Sayers, and popularized by Doug Wilson.

In the original classical model (classical classical education?) the trivium was simply a collection of disciplines to be mastered in primary school before moving along to the quadrivium in secondary education.

Anything that treats the trivium as a series of learning stages has Wilson's fingerprints all over it, whether they name him or not.

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## Hamalas (Aug 3, 2018)

I think the Genetic Fallacy applies here brother.


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## TylerRay (Aug 3, 2018)

Hamalas said:


> I think the Genetic Fallacy applies here brother.


Are you addressing me or Jacob? I can't see how either of us were making any sort of fallacious argument.

If you were addressing me, my point was simply that there are two schools of thought in classical education, one of which was thought up by Sayers and implemented/popularized by Wilson. If you can find me anyone (other than Sayers in her essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning") who lined the trivium up with learning stages before Wilson published _Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning_, then please do so. The modern classical education movement is based on Wilson's appropriation of Sayers. That's not to say that it is a faulty model; it's simply to say that it's a distinct educational philosophy that can be traced to Wilson.


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## Hamalas (Aug 3, 2018)

I'm talking to Jacob. I should have been clearer; my apologies.


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## TylerRay (Aug 3, 2018)

Hamalas said:


> I'm talking to Jacob. I should have been clearer; my apologies.


Ah. I see it now--you're talking about his old position, right? That he was "hostile to the classical education model simply because Doug Wilson was stamped all over it at conferences." If that's what you're talking about then, I agree, it was a genetic fallacy and an _ad hominem_ fallacy (No offense, Jacob!!), unless what he meant was that he was trying to avoid Wilson, and didn't feel that he could avoid Wilson's writings and still use a classical model.


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## Megs (Aug 3, 2018)

Most classical resources I am aware of seem to follow the three stage division a la Sayers (which is why I tend to use more Charlotte Mason resources instead). 

There is one book I know of that does away with the stages idea but I haven't read it. It is called "Trivium Mastery: The Intersection of Three Roads: How to Give Your Child an Authentic Classical Home Education" by Diane Lockman and can be viewed here:

https://www.christianbook.com/trivi...1432733285/pd/273328?event=Homeschool|1005398

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## RamistThomist (Aug 3, 2018)

Hamalas said:


> I'm talking to Jacob. I should have been clearer; my apologies.



Not exactly. In _Rebuilding the Rooms _Wilson explicitly endorsed nominalism. True, he later retracted that in a blog post, but the average reader won't know that and will come away thinking nominalism might be correct.

So it is not just the genetic fallacy. Bad ideas are involved which are in no way traceable to Sayers (whom I generally like). 

And then everything about Wilson is just a moral and ecclesiastical trainwreck and I would rather not steer unsuspecting people that way.

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## RamistThomist (Aug 3, 2018)

TylerRay said:


> Ah. I see it now--you're talking about his old position, right? That he was "hostile to the classical education model simply because Doug Wilson was stamped all over it at conferences." If that's what you're talking about then, I agree, it was a genetic fallacy and an _ad hominem_ fallacy (No offense, Jacob!!), unless what he meant was that he was trying to avoid Wilson, and didn't feel that he could avoid Wilson's writings and still use a classical model.



Sort of. One of the foundational rules upon which I live my life is to avoid Doug Wilson at all costs. Both for my own soul's sake and for the well-being of any female friends or relatives who might think of going to Moscow, ID. But since I think one can appreciate Sayers and not be tied to Wilson, I think the neo-classical model can be salvaged.

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## Hamalas (Aug 3, 2018)

Here's what you're looking for: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00256Z3RM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

&

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003SHDP54/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1


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## RamistThomist (Aug 3, 2018)

Hamalas said:


> Here's what you're looking for: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00256Z3RM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
> 
> &
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003SHDP54/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1



I might check out The Core. It keeps coming up.

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## LilyG (Aug 3, 2018)

I'm also wondering about the Classical Conversations model. Our local group, at least, seems very good.


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## RamistThomist (Aug 3, 2018)

LilyG said:


> I'm also wondering about the Classical Conversations model. Our local group, at least, seems very good.



Ours too. I went in skeptical because I had been burned by Wilson and the Moscow crowd, but I was impressed.


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## ZackF (Aug 3, 2018)

LilyG said:


> I'm also wondering about the Classical Conversations model. Our local group, at least, seems very good.


Looks cool but pricey. My wife met with a CCer but for now we are taking another path.


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## bookslover (Aug 3, 2018)

Tying Dorothy Sayers to Doug Wilson is an insult to Sayers.

Also, try this book: _The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric: Understanding the Nature and Function of Language_ by Sister Miriam Joseph; edited by Marguerite McGlinn; reprint (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2002). Originally published in 1937.

From the back flap: _Sister Miriam Joseph (1898-1982) [was] a gifted teacher and Shakespeare scholar; [she] influenced a generation of women to think carefully, to read thoughtfully, and to write and speak the right principles eloquently.
_
She earned her Ph.D from Columbia University, and taught English at St. Mary's College from 1931 to 1960. Don't let the fact that she was Catholic put you off. This is a detailed, well-written volume the describes and demonstrates the classical trivium.

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## RamistThomist (Aug 3, 2018)

bookslover said:


> Tying Dorothy Sayers to Doug Wilson is an insult to Sayers.
> 
> Also, try this book: _The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric: Understanding the Nature and Function of Language_ by Sister Miriam Joseph; edited by Marguerite McGlinn; reprint (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2002). Originally published in 1937.
> 
> ...



Many of the good educational resources are going to come from Catholics, since they were always anti-public school because of its perceived Protestant Establishment.

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## Heather (Aug 4, 2018)

These are the books that are on my short list for classic classical education (i.e. non- Sayers):

Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education by David Hicks

The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education by Ravi Jain and Kevin Clark

Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition by Karen Glass 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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## Wayne (Aug 4, 2018)

For a thought provoker, check out William Dennison's article in the OPC's 75th anniversary volume, _Confident of Better Things._

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## bookslover (Aug 4, 2018)

Here's this, from a book I'm now reading:

"The Seven Liberal Arts comprised in the _Trivium_ and the _Quadrivium_ were the basis of all secular education. The _Trivium_ - Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectic - included a smattering of classics and philology, the study of Latin, the reading and writing of prose and verse. It included, probably, the elements of Roman Law. It included, also, the study of logic, which opened the gates of philosophy and metaphysics, the key to a world of mystery which awed and fascinated the medieval mind. The _Quadrivium_, which led to a wider course of study as knowledge expanded and the available materials increased, consisted of Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy, but it taught little, at first, beyond the elements of each. Music gave the rules for plain-song. Arithmetic helped to calculate the date of Easter. Geometry included geography, often, in its details, imaginative enough, and a few incomplete propositions from Euclid. Astronomy explored the movements of the planets and unfolded the wisdom of the stars. . .

"The Seven Liberal Arts of the Middle Ages, which came to be regarded as the foundation of knowledge, may trace their ancestry back to Plato, who furnished the medieval world with so many of its ideas. But we do not know, for certain, who is responsible for the number fixed or the selection made. There is no obvious reason why the list should have excluded arts like architecture and medicine, which were widely acknowledged as liberal studies. . .It can hardly be contended that the Seven Arts at any time represented the sum of human knowledge, all that was thought worth studying by the medieval world. But, they did represent, for many generations, in days when education was still struggling for existence, the framework of the most familiar learning which a greater civilization had adopted and approved."

*From:*_ A History of the University of Oxford: Volume I: The Medieval University and the Colleges Founded in the Middle Ages_ by Charles Edward Mallet (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1924), pp. 5-6.

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## ZackF (Aug 4, 2018)

bookslover said:


> Tying Dorothy Sayers to Doug Wilson is an insult to Sayers.
> 
> Also, try this book: _The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric: Understanding the Nature and Function of Language_ by Sister Miriam Joseph; edited by Marguerite McGlinn; reprint (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2002). Originally published in 1937.
> 
> ...



Sayers wasn't Catholic though not without her sympathies. She was incensed that Rome didn't recognize Anglican orders as valid.

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## Jonathan R (Aug 6, 2018)

Heather said:


> The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education by Ravi Jain and Kevin Clark



This was a pretty good book - especially in showing how the liberal arts are a whole unit of study, not necessarily a method to be followed. 

One other not yet mentioned book is:

The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventheenth Century Cambridge by William T Costello

It was helpful for an actual historical perspective on a true "classical" education.

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## Jeri Tanner (Aug 6, 2018)

This is simply a curriculum, but I was impressed with the Tapestry of Grace material years ago when homeschooling our daughter.


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