Thinking Citizen Blog — The Trivium And The Quadrivium — What Were They? Are They Relevant? In What Way?
Thinking Citizen Blog — Friday is Education and Education Policy Day
Today’s Topic: the Trivium and the Quadrivium — what were they? are they relevant? in what way?
In short, the trivium is the “arts of words” (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium the “arts of numbers” (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music). Call them an old-fashioned version of “verbal” and “quantitative” literacy. Without the tools of the trivium and the quadrivium, you are a patsy at the poker table of life in general and of civic life in particular.
Do you know the difference between the Federal budget deficit, the federal debt, and the fiscal gap?
Should you? Should every grade school graduate? high school graduate? college graduate? Why don’t they? What is to be done?
Why is it so tempting to equate statistical disparities with injustice and why is this problematical?
What is your favorite example of quantitative illiteracy? verbal illiteracy?
Have you done a balanced inventory lately of the most common logical fallacies in the arguments of Mr. Trump and Biden? Has anyone? If you know of one, please share.
Today, a few more notes.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE QUADRIVIUM — critical distinctions but all about numbers — ways of knowing the divine. Nature is a book written in the language of mathematics (Galileo).
1. Arithmetic = “number in the abstract.”
2. Geometry = “number in space”
3. Music = “number in time”
NB: Astronomy = “number in space and time”
THE TRIVIUM — grammar, logic, rhetoric — what graphic best captures the relationship between the three?
1. grammar — the mechanics of language
2. logic — the mechanics of thought
3. rhetoric -the mechanics of persuasion
THREE (humanities) PLUS FOUR (sciences) = SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS
1. Harvard has re-jiggered its general education program countless times over the last half century.
2. Was any structure superior to another?
3. Does any other college or high school conceptualize it better?
NB: How about my idea of the Seven Joys and the Seven Issues of Thinking Citizenship? How can you possibly leave out sports? isn’t that the best way to teach physics, math, chemistry, and ethics? and where is ethics by the way? Shouldn’t ethics have a central role? the central role? And am I right that the central player in the ethics curriculum should be gratitude (aka piety, aka positivity)? Isn’t good sportsmanship about ethics in the real world? ethics under pressure? should sports be considered peripheral or central in a liberal arts education? or, on the other hand, should sports be central only K-12? or K-8?
And what about music? Am I right that the best humanities curriculum for the first year of elementary school would consist of the world’s most beloved songs, prayers, and poems — as outlined in the first attachment below?
Understanding the Trivium and Quadrivium
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to education or education policy. Or the coolest thought however half-baked you had.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to education or education policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random education-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something that is dear to your heart.
