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Distinctive Qualities

We employ the time-proven method of the Trivium in the education of the student. This method includes three stages.

The Grammar stage studies the fundamentals of disciplines in order to build a framework of knowledge on which later information can be hung. Questions of who, what, where, and when are the focus.

The Dialectic stage brings the grammar of disciplines into ordered relationships. The goal is to equip students with the thinking skills necessary to recognize sound arguments and ideas and to detect and correct fallacious ones. This stage addresses the questions of how and why.

The Rhetoric stage seeks to produce students who can use language, both written and spoken, to express their thoughts eloquently and persuasively. The goal of the Trivium is to educate students not in what to think primarily, but in how to think, thoroughly, maturely and biblically.

The Trivium has been used by Christians to train their children for almost two thousand years. The great teachers and poets of the Middle Ages were trained in the Trivium, as were the Reformers and many of America’s founding fathers. Men who were to lead free societies in the past were trained according to this method because it teaches them how to think and how to persuade and lead others.