If you have ever yearned to embrace the classical approach to homeschooling; and yet feared what seemed to be an insurmountable task; this new book called Trivium Mastery: The Intersection of Three Roads by Diane Lockman will encourage your socks off! I have always felt like “classical eclectic” was my fit in the various methods of homeschooling, yet I constantly worried that I could never give my children enough to complete a worthy classical education. I know I am not alone in this fear.
From the very beginning, my husband and I have agreed to focus on three things as of the utmost importance in our homeschool. First and foremost we want them to learn to love God. Secondly, we want our children to love reading. Thirdly, we want our children to be able to think. So, we want our children to love God, love reading, and know how to think. We didn’t agree to settle on a specific method of homeschooling and I have studied them all in my quest for the perfect way to meet our goals. Imagine my surprise when I read the following sentence in the first part of Trivium Mastery.
In the midst of all the tweaking, I began to see that the true classical Christian education could be simply reduced to the acquisition of three major skills (language, thought and speech), and that when those skills were substantially mastered, the kids would have the necessary tools to delve deeply in to serious content like the adult classics and higher level sciences. (Preface, Trivium Mastery: The Intersection of Three Roads, by Diane B Lockman)
As you can see, this is slightly different then what I have stated as our goals. But the parallels are significant and certainly the skill of excellent communication would be high on our list as a subset of any of the three stated goals we have. Diane has done an excellent job of presenting the her information with the research to back it up. The book first provides a brief look at the history of classical education, and then breaks it down into the three areas of focus to provide further insight. Finally, several case study “makeovers” were done in real families with real issues to show how different and personalized a true classical education can become. You don’t need to buy classical curriculum, you don’t need to focus “stages of learning”, you need to use whatever method it takes to help your child master each of the three skills of the trivium to the best of their ability. That’s it.
Isn’t that encouraging?
I highly recommend that every home educator read this book, and if you are remotely interested in pursuing a classical education for your crew this book is a must read.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for a blog review of the book. I promised an honest review of the book, not a positive review of the book, and all opinions stated about the book are my own.
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