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Not Trivial: How Studying the Traditional Liberal Arts Can Set You Free by Laurie Endicott Thomas
Why phonics and grammar are not trivial. Why have our political discussions in the United States become so ugly and pointless? Why are we suffering from such a breakdown in civility? In Not How Studying the Traditional Liberal Arts Can Set You Free, Laurie Endicott Thomas explains that the problem boils down to education. The word civility originally meant training in the liberal arts. The classical liberal arts were a set of seven disciplines that were developed largely in ancient Athens to promote productive political discussions within Athenian democracy. They included three verbal arts (the trivium): grammar, logic, and rhetoric. They also included four arts of number, space, and time (the quadrivium): mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy. These arts helped students learn to think rationally and to express themselves persuasively. The ancient Romans called these studies the liberal arts because they were considered appropriate for freeborn men, as opposed to slaves. Slaves were taught only the servile and mechanical arts, to make them more productive as workers. During the Renaissance, the classical liberal arts curriculum was supplemented by the humanities, including history, philosophy, literature, and art. Like the liberal arts, the humanities were intended to promote productive and even pleasant discussions among political decision-makers. Today, the sciences would have to be added to that curriculum. Thomas explains that the problems in our political system start in first grade. Our teachers are being trained and often forced to use a method of reading instruction that does not work. As a result, many children suffer from lifelong problems with reading. Our teachers are also being pressured to neglect the teaching of grammar. As a result, many children end up with poor reading comprehension and lifelong problems with logical thinking. Thus, they will have difficulty in making or appreciating reasonable arguments. Thomas argues that we cannot hope to enjoy freedom and equality until all children get the kind of education that is appropriate for free people. She concludes with a clear explanation of what that curriculum would be like.
- GenresNonfictionEducation
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First published September 17, 2013
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September 10, 2013
I wrote this book to help people understand why so many people who grew up in the United States cannot read, and why our political discussions are so often pointless and nasty. The problem starts in first grade.
Many schools use a method of reading instruction that does not work. Instead of being taught to sound words out letter by letter, from left to right, children are taught to memorize whole words as shapes. So instead of scanning a word from left to right, they end up looking at the word from all angles. If they cannot immediately recognize a word, their eyes will dart all over the page for clues to help them figure out what the word says. Unless children break the phonetic code of English spelling on their own, which is difficult because English spelling has so many irregularities, they will end up functionally illiterate. They may even get a diagnosis of dyslexia.
The fact that the use of "sight words" to teach reading is the cause of dyslexia has been known since the 1920s. Rudolf Flesch explained the problem in his 1955 bestseller Why Johnny Can't Read. Yet many of our elementary school teachers are still being trained and forced to use this method, which is often built into the reading textbooks they are forced to use.
To read, a child must decode printed words. But to understand anything that is written at more than a fourth-grade level, children must also know how to analyze sentence structure. To do that, they need to understand some basic principles of grammar. Yet since the early 1960s, the National Council of Teachers of English has been urging grammar school teachers to stop teaching grammar. As the public schools started following that advice, verbal SAT scores began a sharp, prolonged, unexpected decline. Verbal SAT scores have not recovered since.
Besides improving your reading comprehension and making it easier to learn foreign languages, grammar lessons also give you the basic skills that you will need for the study of logic, which is the study of arguments. Logic teaches you how to draw conclusions from evidence, and how to avoid errors in reasoning. People who have never studied logic cannot even begin to study rhetoric, which is the art of persuasive speech and writing. The Greek philosopher Aristotle pointed out that there are three means of persuasion: logos, ethos, and pathos. By logos, he meant logic and evidence. Ethos meant character, and it referred to a person's reputation. Pathos is an appeal to emotion. Thus, if people have never studied logic, the only means of persuasion they can use are name-calling and fear-mongering. That, in a nutshell, is why our political discussions in the United States have become so pointless and ugly. The solution is to teach people grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were the three verbal arts of the classical liberal arts curriculum, which was originally developed in ancient Athens. Together, these three verbal arts were called the trivium, which simply meant three courses. The four numerical arts were called the quadrivium, or four courses. The quadrivium consisted of mathematics, which was the study of number; geometry, which involved number and space; music, which involved number and time; and astronomy, which involved number, space, and time. Together, the trivium and quadrivium give students the basic intellectual framework for thinking rationally and expressing themselves persuasively.
The Greeks called this curriculum a well-rounded education. The Romans called it the liberal arts because they considered it appropriate for freeborn men, as opposed to slaves. Slaves were taught the servile arts, to make them better servants. Other working people were taught only the mechanical arts, to make them more productive as workers. The liberal arts have always been valued in societies with a democratic or republican political structure. However, the liberal arts have generally been reserved for children who were expected to grow up to be somebody. They have always been withheld from people whose participation in political decision-making was unwanted.
During the Renaissance, the wealthy families of northern Italy expanded upon the classical liberal arts curriculum. They developed a curriculum that they called the studia humanitatis, or studies of humanity. The humanities included history, philosophy, languages, literature, and art. The purpose of the humanities was to promote productive and even pleasant conversations among political decision-makers. Today, we would have to add the natural and social sciences to the curriculum that is necessary for people who wish to play a meaningful role in politics. Unfortunately, we are facing a situation where most people in the United States "don't know much about history, don't know much about biology, don't know much about a science book, don't know much about the French I took." This widespread failure to learn in school is no accident.
Before the U.S. Civil War, it was illegal in most of the slave states to teach any black person to read. That's because literate black people, enslaved or free, often used their reading and writing skills for their own purposes, such as organizing slave rebellions. After Emancipation, segregation was used to deprive young black people of education. Today, other methods are used to keep the children of the lower classes from learning too much in school. Many of our public schools use a method of reading instruction that does not work. Thus, many children never really learn to read and therefore cannot read to learn. Children who have not been taught grammar or logic cannot parse or reason. Children who have never learned anything about history or economics or even geography will never understand why political events happen, or what they could do to change the course of history.
As I explain in Not Trivial, various "dumbing down" strategies have been used in public education. These strategies are far more common and far more dangerous in the public schools that serve the poor and disenfranchised. These "dumbing down" strategies do the most harm to the children who have no other educational resources because their parents are uneducated and poor. Educated parents can tutor their children at home. Affluent parents can afford tutors or even private schools. Politically powerful parents can pressure their local school board to improve their local public school.
As I explain in Not Trivial, these problems in public education in the United States are not new. Most of the stories I tell are from the 1840s to the early 20th century. Nor can we depend on wealthy philanthropists to solve them for us. As I explain in the book, wealthy philanthropists actually promoted the dumbing down strategies, which affected the children of working class people but not their own children, who went to elite prep schools. Our problems in education will persist until a broad-based reform movement rises up from the grassroots to solve them.
In the final chapter of Not Trivial, I provide a roadmap for how to improve the curriculum in your neighborhood public schools, and I explain how churches and labor unions or other groups could establish what is in effect their own junior college, by helping teenagers and adults prepare to take the Advanced Placement examinations for college credit.
Many schools use a method of reading instruction that does not work. Instead of being taught to sound words out letter by letter, from left to right, children are taught to memorize whole words as shapes. So instead of scanning a word from left to right, they end up looking at the word from all angles. If they cannot immediately recognize a word, their eyes will dart all over the page for clues to help them figure out what the word says. Unless children break the phonetic code of English spelling on their own, which is difficult because English spelling has so many irregularities, they will end up functionally illiterate. They may even get a diagnosis of dyslexia.
The fact that the use of "sight words" to teach reading is the cause of dyslexia has been known since the 1920s. Rudolf Flesch explained the problem in his 1955 bestseller Why Johnny Can't Read. Yet many of our elementary school teachers are still being trained and forced to use this method, which is often built into the reading textbooks they are forced to use.
To read, a child must decode printed words. But to understand anything that is written at more than a fourth-grade level, children must also know how to analyze sentence structure. To do that, they need to understand some basic principles of grammar. Yet since the early 1960s, the National Council of Teachers of English has been urging grammar school teachers to stop teaching grammar. As the public schools started following that advice, verbal SAT scores began a sharp, prolonged, unexpected decline. Verbal SAT scores have not recovered since.
Besides improving your reading comprehension and making it easier to learn foreign languages, grammar lessons also give you the basic skills that you will need for the study of logic, which is the study of arguments. Logic teaches you how to draw conclusions from evidence, and how to avoid errors in reasoning. People who have never studied logic cannot even begin to study rhetoric, which is the art of persuasive speech and writing. The Greek philosopher Aristotle pointed out that there are three means of persuasion: logos, ethos, and pathos. By logos, he meant logic and evidence. Ethos meant character, and it referred to a person's reputation. Pathos is an appeal to emotion. Thus, if people have never studied logic, the only means of persuasion they can use are name-calling and fear-mongering. That, in a nutshell, is why our political discussions in the United States have become so pointless and ugly. The solution is to teach people grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were the three verbal arts of the classical liberal arts curriculum, which was originally developed in ancient Athens. Together, these three verbal arts were called the trivium, which simply meant three courses. The four numerical arts were called the quadrivium, or four courses. The quadrivium consisted of mathematics, which was the study of number; geometry, which involved number and space; music, which involved number and time; and astronomy, which involved number, space, and time. Together, the trivium and quadrivium give students the basic intellectual framework for thinking rationally and expressing themselves persuasively.
The Greeks called this curriculum a well-rounded education. The Romans called it the liberal arts because they considered it appropriate for freeborn men, as opposed to slaves. Slaves were taught the servile arts, to make them better servants. Other working people were taught only the mechanical arts, to make them more productive as workers. The liberal arts have always been valued in societies with a democratic or republican political structure. However, the liberal arts have generally been reserved for children who were expected to grow up to be somebody. They have always been withheld from people whose participation in political decision-making was unwanted.
During the Renaissance, the wealthy families of northern Italy expanded upon the classical liberal arts curriculum. They developed a curriculum that they called the studia humanitatis, or studies of humanity. The humanities included history, philosophy, languages, literature, and art. The purpose of the humanities was to promote productive and even pleasant conversations among political decision-makers. Today, we would have to add the natural and social sciences to the curriculum that is necessary for people who wish to play a meaningful role in politics. Unfortunately, we are facing a situation where most people in the United States "don't know much about history, don't know much about biology, don't know much about a science book, don't know much about the French I took." This widespread failure to learn in school is no accident.
Before the U.S. Civil War, it was illegal in most of the slave states to teach any black person to read. That's because literate black people, enslaved or free, often used their reading and writing skills for their own purposes, such as organizing slave rebellions. After Emancipation, segregation was used to deprive young black people of education. Today, other methods are used to keep the children of the lower classes from learning too much in school. Many of our public schools use a method of reading instruction that does not work. Thus, many children never really learn to read and therefore cannot read to learn. Children who have not been taught grammar or logic cannot parse or reason. Children who have never learned anything about history or economics or even geography will never understand why political events happen, or what they could do to change the course of history.
As I explain in Not Trivial, various "dumbing down" strategies have been used in public education. These strategies are far more common and far more dangerous in the public schools that serve the poor and disenfranchised. These "dumbing down" strategies do the most harm to the children who have no other educational resources because their parents are uneducated and poor. Educated parents can tutor their children at home. Affluent parents can afford tutors or even private schools. Politically powerful parents can pressure their local school board to improve their local public school.
As I explain in Not Trivial, these problems in public education in the United States are not new. Most of the stories I tell are from the 1840s to the early 20th century. Nor can we depend on wealthy philanthropists to solve them for us. As I explain in the book, wealthy philanthropists actually promoted the dumbing down strategies, which affected the children of working class people but not their own children, who went to elite prep schools. Our problems in education will persist until a broad-based reform movement rises up from the grassroots to solve them.
In the final chapter of Not Trivial, I provide a roadmap for how to improve the curriculum in your neighborhood public schools, and I explain how churches and labor unions or other groups could establish what is in effect their own junior college, by helping teenagers and adults prepare to take the Advanced Placement examinations for college credit.
May 17, 2016
Easy to read and understand, as well, this book makes a case for the liberal education that is seldom offered in today's public schools, but gratefully in religious/private academies. The author also argues persuasively that the current method of teaching reading, whole-word, is a disservice to the student compared to the method previously taught, phonics. She asserts that most education today just trains most of us to usefully serve those who've actually been educated to be leaders. I liked the book, but found the author to be a little too politically passionate. Still, I recommend it.
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