Exploring Classical Curriculum

If you have any involvement in education, it’s likely that you’ve heard of the classical curriculum movement. There are a number of different people who have really started to push this sort of education curriculum, and many people have found that it really helps students to learn how to think, and how to learn, which are both important to the educational process. That being said, what is classical curriculum? How does it differ from the models that many schools use nowadays? Let’s take a closer look.

Classical curriculum uses three levels of education – primary education, secondary education, and tertiary education. Primary education is for younger students, secondary education is for older students, and tertiary education is what many of us refer to as college. This model is fairly common, and you will often see it in modern schools. But that’s where similarities stop. Here are some of the differences that you will find in the system.

• Primary education focuses on grammar (language), rhetoric (the ability to argue and debate with others), and logic (the ability to process information and make sense of it). Since many curricula now focus on testing and other educational requirements, primary students do not get as many of these as they used to, and most schools don’t explore some of these ideas until secondary education has begun.
• Secondary education used to be referred to as the "quadrivium." This particular form of education focused on four main areas of thought – geometry, music, arithmetic, and astronomy. These areas of thought are much more abstract, which helps to challenge students used to working with tangible objects and ideas. This coincides with the fact that, as a child grows older, they will be better able to comprehend difficult and abstract ideas. Students that are in secondary education learn how to manipulate ideas better, and to utilize those ideas in order to discover how the world around them was made and how it currently works.
• Tertiary education is what has developed into university or college for many of us. This is where a student would learn the specific skills that they would need in order to succeed in a particular field. Classical curriculum is where the modern idea of "majors" and "minors" have come into play at universities. In some schools that work with classical curriculum, they will also start this sort of teaching methodology during their high school years, in places such as tech schools or by working with colleges to do early start programs for some general education courses.

If you’re looking for a school that uses a primary Classical Curriculum as part of their educational system, then you will want to check out East Lake Academy. East Lake Academy is a private, Roman Catholic school that is supported by the Chicago Archdiocese. If it sounds like something you would like your child to be involved in, you will want to check out their website at http://eastlakeacademy.org, or you can call them at 847.247.0035.

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