Rhetoric
Classical Christian Education is organized according to the “Trivium,” a three-phase approach to education, Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. Each of these three areas is specifically suited to the stages in a child's mental development. Classical Christian education seeks to tailor the curriculum subject matter to a child’s mental development.
Rhetoric stage (grades 10–12): focuses on learning the science of communication and the art of expression. This refines students’ ability to persuasively express the grammar and logic of a subject through written and oral presentations, as well as debate.
During this period the child moves from merely grasping the logical sequence of arguments to learning how to present them in a persuasive, aesthetically pleasing form. Dorothy Sayers also calls this period the Poetic Age, because during this period the student is to develop the skill of organizing the information he has learned into a well reasoned format that will be both pleasing as well as logical.
At this time, students that are more inclined towards mathematics and science or literature and the humanities can pursue the area of their natural abilities. The pursuit of particular subjects is appropriate at this point because they have been given the tools of learning that are necessary for the study of any subject.
By this stage, a student who has been given a classical education would have the thinking skills and mental discipline that are necessary to tackle the difficulties associated with most any area of study.
“...although [schools] often succeed in teaching our students ‘subjects’, [they] fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything except the art of learning.”
