The classical education curriculum is called the Trivium. This curriculum is divided into three separate phases. The first phase, or grammar stage, corresponds with elementary grades (1st-6th).

Because children’s physical brain development and cognitive thinking skills are not yet mature, it is important to focus on concrete information. In other words, kids at this age should just learn facts.

Although some kids this young like to know the whys and hows of everything, their minds are really just equipped to absorb the whats. You can of course explains whys and hows to your child, but the focus is elsewhere in the grammar stage.

The whats are important for creating a foundation for the higher-leveled thinking and philosophical questions of the hows and whys later. Children in the grammar stage simply don’t have the ability to process reason.

This is due to the fact that they don’t have the skills to reason, or the background knowledge to process it.

And therein lies the beauty of the grammar stage in classical education curriculum. Because the grammar stage is built up solely of facts, it builds the foundation upon which all other forms of learning will take place in the next two stages.

The next two phrases need this solid foundation in order to be successful.

The second phase in the classical education curriculum is called the dialectic stage. A child usually enters this phase anywhere between 5th and 7th grades.

At this stage in a child’s development, there is a noticeable change in mind development and cognitive abilities, which means the child is maturing from the concrete to the analytical.

The teaching methods don’t abruptly change as the child progresses from one stage to the next. The methods used in classical education curriculum are cumulative. In the next stages, analytical learning is simply added to concrete learning.

Concrete information learned in the grammar stage focuses on the facts, whereas the facts learned in the dialectic stage focus on the whys and hows. In the dialectic stage, the “why things are the way they are” become important.

In this stage, a child begins to test the facts that he/she has learned in the grammar stage to determine if they were in reality true. This self-examination of determining truth is a very important step in the development of thinking skills.

In this stage of classical education curriculum, children are introduced to the importance and the need to ask questions, analyze, judge, and examine in a respectful way. There is no need to be disrespectful when asking questions.

By not getting defensive when children ask questions, parents and teachers can encourage a positive atmosphere. Setting a good example helps children learn that you can be respectful and disagree.

Classical education curriculum’s final phase is the rhetoric stage, which typically begins in the 9th grade and ends in the 12th.

Language, literature, math, history, music, philosophy, oratory, writing, and science are subjects that are all commonly taught. This is the arena where all the phases join as one, putting everything into practice.