Homeschool Fever

British native Dorothy L. Sayers was a renown crime and detective author, who’s best known character was Lord Peter Wimsey.  She was very well educated and one of the first women to receive a degree from Oxford College in 1920.  Her literary contemparies - and friends - included the great C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

As a student of medieval literature and modern languages, she devoted her life to writing numerous novels, short stories, and essays.  One of her best known essays, The Lost Tools of Learning, became the launching point for rediscovering the ways of classical education.

Classical Education, used as far back as ancient greece, invoked studying specific subjects based on a particular stages in human development.  During the Trivium stage (up to age 18), pupils would study grammar, logic, and rhetoric.  Then they moved into the Quadrivium (18+, “College”)and pursue the studies of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.  This made up the 7 arts of a liberal (”free thinking”) education and effectively guided students through progressively higher knowledge of the language of life, mathematics behind life, and then finally the science that guides life.

While some schools have now re-embraced this classical method of learning, it has been much more widely received by homeschoolers.