The Lost Tools of Learning

In 1947, Dorothy Sayers first delivered this speech at Oxford University. It has since been republished countless times due to its sheer eloquence and unanswered articulation of the 3 "lost tools" in classical education: grammar, logic and rhetoric.Ever wonder why writing an essay was so hard? Sayers explains masterfully. Classical education starts with memorization of vast swaths of materials early in life (grammar stage), then students are later taught how to parse sentences and use grammar inside and out in at least 2 languages. Then, after years of training, a teen is asked to use all they learned to 'write creatively." And they can, beautifully. In contrast, what does modern education do? Slash memorization, slash sentence diagramming, skips teaching skills in thinking and learning in favor of subjects. So our students know a lot about lots of things, but they can't tell you the how or why behind it. They are not given the base info for memorization or the ability to really understand grammar. Instead, they are asked to be creative and use grammar well without the foundational learning. So of course writing becomes painful. Kids have to figure it out without any knowledge on the matter by trial and error. They can't debate well or fling back a bad argument. They can't hear logical fallacies, so all the information age has become is a vast amount of words they can't categorize into opinion or factually based info. This is a great call to bring back the lost tools of learning to children through a classical education, i.e. the Trivium.