Classical, Trivium, Quadrivium, or Just College Prep

What’s the Difference Between Classical and classical?

By Amy Barr at The Lukeion Project

At TheLukeion Project we say we offer “Classical education expertly taught live online.” Our course topics typically relate to subjects stemming from the Classical world of ancient Greece and Rome or related fields. This includes Classical languages, literature, history, rhetoric, logic, and subjects that were dear to the hearts of people like Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. For good measure we toss in Classical archaeology and some classical literature (thanks, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and others). You’ll notice I employed a capital letter C with Classical. This was, at least until recently, the standard way of designating what we meant by the word. Classical with a "C" means, “of or relating to the ancient Greeks and Romans, especially their art, architecture, and literature; conforming to the artistic and literary models of ancient Greece and Rome; versed in the Classics.” We've been told it is now naughty of us to use a capital C but it does help us remain clear about what we mean by the word.

The other day I was discussing course options with a parent who was interested in a classical education for her child whose school program offered no Latin whatsoever. When you see lower case “c” classical (or today, any use of the word classical), what does it mean? Why do we talk about classical music and classical literature that has nothing to do with ancient Greece and Rome, or little to do with Latin or Greek?

If you are new to the world of home education, I invite you to visit any of the many bustling home school conferences available, at least in the U.S., throughout the spring and early summer months. You can’t make it through a vendor-packed isle without somebody touting classical education. In fact, we often attend these conferences as vendors and see that their speakers’ line-up features a “classical track.” We are never invited. We are Classical rather than classical, so we aren’t in the popular kids’ club. What’s the difference?

Lower-case-c-classical education can (not always) refers to an educational approach that was, at least at one point, inspired by the form of Classical education that worked beautifully for both the Greeks and Romans: the Trivium. 

Trivium comes from the same root as the English word trivial because both refer to three (tri) roads (via). Trivia is the sort of information one often gathers at intersections, water coolers, and crossroads where one might get the latest gossip. Trivium is a modern approach to education in which main subjects are graded and geared toward the three main stages of academic development: grammar, logic, and rhetoric.These levels correspond neatly to our traditional elementary, middle, and high school divisions in most U.S. systems. 

School/home education programs that call themselves classical often just refer to how their topics are taught and reviewed differently at the three different academic levels with, presumably, sufficient strength that their students are prepared for college. When classical is used in this fashion (I find it is the most common way you’ll see the term used at conferences), there’s no real relationship to the original tenets of ancient Classicism nor even the medieval concept of a classical education. It has become the modern alternative description for “prep school” which now sounds too stuffy for a good bottom line.

The concept of the classical Trivium, when applied to formal education, first appears in the Middle Ages, and was then further defined in the Renaissance in a work by Martianus Capella referring to Plato’s explanations about how grammar, logic, and rhetoric were essentials in a good early education. Plato would have preferred the world had remembered to include the Quadrivium which added arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Together the Trivium and then the Quadrivium formed the combined “Seven Liberal Arts.”

Today there are hundreds of programs, schools, and groups that maintain they are classical. Some of them truly sustain strong connections to the Trivium and might even toss in parts of the Quadrivium in upper levels. Throwing shade at classical, I can confirm that some schools and programs use the title classical for no reason besides how it spices up the top of a transcript. The term has also come to refer to the normal procession of subjects that were common 30 or 40 years ago in a public education with no connection to anything Classical whatsoever. Rhetoric gets a few hours in English classes while logic is rolled into a variety of math classes. Formal grammar is diminished to workbooks.

Most programs with classical in their title offer either a little Latin or none at all. You’ll not likely find Classical Greek anywhere but The Lukeion Project where we often have Classics majors in college come to take our history and literature courses because their college program stopped offering those types of things years ago.

If you are looking for a true Classical approach, The Lukeion Project is as close as you’ll find but, like many successful Lukeion families, you'll need to add your own strengths to our course offerings. Plato would assure us that we need to augment our program with music, math, and astronomy but we’ve made good starts in that direction. So many of our parents provide such robust alternatives in those subjects that the old philosopher would be proud! For the rest of the classical programs you find out there, caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.