The Classical Scholar

As I briefly mentioned in my homeschool article entitled “Could You Define Classical Rhetoric?”, rhetoric is the art of oratory. Today we generally refer to oratory as “public speaking” or “speech;” however, I think you’ll agree that the principles of rhetoric can be appropriately applied to written communication like homeschool essays, homeschool research papers, and even homeschool journalism articles. Other than impromptu speeches, which happen on the spur of the moment with limited preparation time, most contemporary speeches start with a written script or at least an outline of the speaker’s (1) idea or claim, (2) proof or evidence, and (3) call to action. So for our purposes, I’ll define rhetoric as:

a system for gathering, selecting, arranging, and expressing our material whether in oral or written form.

Remember that rhetoric is one of the seven liberal arts of ancient Rome. If you were to examine the other six liberal arts (language, logic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, and arithmetic), you would realize that each of these arts involves a system for gathering, selecting, arranging, and expressing the material.

Let’s modernize this concept. You could probably list a vast number of “arts” that also involve a system for accumulating, organizing, and presenting the material. For instance, the “art of cooking” involves deciding on the recipe, gathering the ingredients, combining the ingredients in a certain measure and order, cooking the mixture, arranging the final presentation, and serving the delightful dish to the audience. In a nutshell, the chef has concocted an idea, presented evidence to prove her idea, and announced a call to action: “eat and enjoy!” The art of gardening, the art sewing, and the art of singing are just three examples which follow a similar pattern of idea, proof, and call to action. Likewise, the master writer or orator develops an idea, presents the evidence, and calls the audience to action.

In other words, rhetoric for the classical homeschool is not a stage of educational progress, but rather a set of procedures and criteria that guide the author or orator in making strategic decisions during the composition process. During ancient and medieval times, this system was tightly defined as three kinds of persuasive discourse:  deliberative, forensic, and epideictic oratory.  Like the ancient orator or the contemporary chef, the homeschool orator crafts a persuasive speech that presents the idea, proves the idea, and calls the audience to act on the idea.

The contemporary classical Christian home schooling model was born in antiquity. Nearly 3500 years ago, Yahweh (The Great “I Am” of Exodus 3:14) chose a special people, Israel, and commanded the fathers to teach their children His Law in both morning and evening, whether they were at home or away. Torah was their primary text of study. As they memorized, recited, narrated, and discussed His Word, they interpreted meaning and applied His Word to their lives. Memorization, recitation, narration, discussion, interpretation, and application (tools of the modern classical Christian home education model) originated in ancient Mesopotamia.

Soon thereafter, the Greek and Roman civilizations arose, and like their predecessors, the Hebrews, they too searched for meaning and purpose in life. They wrote epics, philosophies, histories, and legislation that still impacts us today. The Greeks borrowed the Hebrew method of inductive reasoning (observe, interpret, and apply) which Plato immortalized in the dialogues of the philosopher Socrates. The Romans read the Greek classics and organized education into 7 Liberal Arts.

After the resurrection of Jesus and the birth of His Church, medieval Europeans rediscovered these Hebrew, Greek, and Latin classics and began studying them in depth. They organized their education into two phases: the trivium and the quadrivium. Christian texts were added to the ancient classics as the search for meaning and purpose continued. The 7 Liberal Arts were studied, and around 1300 A.D. three advanced areas of study were added: theology, law, and medicine. It was this “new and improved” classical Christian education paradigm that was carried by colonists across a vast ocean to a young nation, and it is on the shoulders of these past giants that we now gratefully stand.