11.09.2011

Dorothy Sayers on the Trivium


From The Lost Tools of Learning:
For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.
And:
Is the Trivium, then, a sufficient education for life? Properly taught, I believe that it should be. At the end of the Dialectic, the children will probably seem to be far behind their coevals brought up on old-fashioned "modern" methods, so far as detailed knowledge of specific subjects is concerned. But after the age of 14 they should be able to overhaul the others hand over fist. Indeed, I am not at all sure that a pupil thoroughly proficient in the Trivium would not be fit to proceed immediately to the university at the age of 16 ...

2 comments:

  1. Yea. :) Is this my fault?

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  2. Certainly was your "fault," though it turned out to also have been our bookshelf the whole time. I also acquired, by chance, The Latin Centered Curriculum (http://www.amazon.com/Latin-Centered-Curriculum-Educators-Classical-Education/dp/1930953739/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321304684&sr=8-1) at a local book store on a trip this past weekend.

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