Recently I read an article in which another classical educator offered some defense of Dorothy Sayers and her intention with timelines. It was good and I commend it to you:
The article that Mr. Mosley is responding to is just a recent installment on what has become a trend to bash on Dorothy Sayers who wrote the essay The Lost Tools of Learning. Many of us who have entered into Classical Christian Education read this essay as part of our getting acquainted with the movement. It is, for many, sort of like a brief manifesto on the need for classical education (contra the more “modern” notion of education as vocational training). It is very good. I don’t agree with every point she makes but I think she is right about far more than she is wrong.
It is okay, of course, to disagree with Miss Sayers. Her word is not gospel, it does not bear the weight of canon authority. It is also okay to recognize that she wrote in a specific time and context which may not perfectly suit our own. The British system of education in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s seems completely foreign to the American style of doing things (even apart from the classical pedagogy vs. modern pedagogy discussion). The outward trimmings and vocabulary used to describe education is notably different. Even the expectation for how old a student ought to be when entering into a certain level of education is different. So we must adjust for our own context, no problem.
Sayers may have been wrong about some things, and we may need to tailor her good advice to our own context, but this is not the issue I have with those who are speaking out against Sayers these days. The major problem I have noted with a number of criticisms leveled at Sayers is that these criticisms are largely unfounded in what Sayers actually said. Often the applications classical schools have made from Sayers’ essay have actually failed to grip her point in the first place. I dare say this could be alleviated by taking the time to reread, and read very carefully, this foundational essay once again.
One example where I think Sayers has been abused by her critics is that they object to her doctrine that the Trivium anthropologically connected to human development. Many classical schools therefore talk about “the grammar stage” or the “logic stage” or the “rhetoric stage” of education. They say things like, “When children are in their grammar stage they naturally soak up information so we make them memorize lots of information…” The critics then say, “Dorothy Sayers is wrong to call the Trivium a developmental stage!”
But the problem with this critique, and others like it, is that Sayers never said any such thing!
Sayers notes that people have developmental stages and that the parts of the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric) pair nicely with the three stages of childhood development which she mentions. They are not one and the same and Sayers never claimed they are. Children might have stages of development, but they don’t have grammar stages, logic stages, and rhetoric stages. Rather, she says, there is a kind of parallelism between the trivium and these anthropological developments. But nowhere does Sayers say the trivium is itself three different stages. This idea has come from second and third generation classical school leaders who have read her wrong or uncarefully and have perpetuated a myth.1
Now we have reached a new generation of classical educators who think it is wrong to talk about the Trivium as stages of human development (so far so good) and they say, “Dorothy Sayers is wrong!” (Oops, just blew it). But Sayers is to be declared innocent of these charges and we need to reread her and give her a fair shake.
In the post I referred to above by Mr. Mosley he has linked to another article where someone is speaking out against the value of timelines in classical schools. Whose fault is it anyway that we do these things which don’t work!? Sayers! But, once again, Sayers is not to blame for what has so oft been poorly executed by schools, teachers, and curriculum houses. Failed attempts to teach timelines is not the same thing as timelines being useless, nor does it mean Sayers was wrong (rather she has been abused… again).
Obviously, if you have been reading Study The Great Books for very long, you know I believe in the value of learning a timeline. Indeed I think it is of substantial value as part of the overall educational goals of a classical education and it should be integrated into the entire learning experience. I have written more about this HERE. But if timelines are done poorly, and there are lots of ways to do them poorly, then they are indeed quite worthless. But is it Sayers’ fault if you do timelines poorly?
No.
I think the trend of “Dorothy bashing” is tantamount to the same kind of bravado that leads a new inmate to pick out the largest guy in the prison yard to punch in the face. Nothing makes you look bad like taking on the giant (not quite the lesson we ought to learn from David and Goliath but, hey…). If Sayers is seen as a founder of the classical movement and you best her in “the yard” then you are really somebody! Similarly you have some people who claim C. S. Lewis is a bad philosopher or that J. R. R. Tolkien has poor diction and that he uses “too much description.”
Obviously these claims are usually made by philosophers of the first rank who have sold twice as many books as Lord of the Rings…
So, reread Sayers carefully. By all means disagree with her if you will. But disagree with her and not the version of her produced by someone else who misunderstood her.
I myself would critique this as a bad idea which is prevalent in our movement. The parts of the trivium are not stages. We don’t move beyond the “grammar stage” to enter the “logic stage”, as if we ever move beyond grammar. Nor do we move beyond logic or rhetoric. Nor is it the case that there is no logic or rhetoric in the early years of education associated with “grammar”. There may be a shift in our teaching emphasis as students get older but that is because their is a natural progression to education, there are prerequisites which are needed before certain disciplines are tackled, but this doesn’t make the trivium about stages of development.
I once heard an individual speaking at a conference, who was something of a leader in the classical Christian school movement, refer to the Quadrivium as “college” level studies and I almost died in my chair. He was so committed to the idea that Grammar is K-6, Logic is 7-8, and Rhetoric 9-12 that he couldn’t conceive of the Quadrivium as being part of a K-12 education. This is a gross misunderstanding of the Seven Liberal Arts and it definitely wasn’t Dorothy Sayers’ understanding.