Classical Structure
Liberal Arts
Since ancient times, individual liberty was cultivated through the development of the abilities to learn truth, to reason soundly, and to express truth eloquently through the Trivium—Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric—followed by higher arts including the Quadrivium—Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. These traditional liberal arts expand innate faculties to pursue truth through participating in the Great Conversation.
They liberate a person to discover and understand things as they truly are. Cultivating wisdom and virtue to act on that knowledge ultimately ennobles an individual to love and serve.
The classical model of education teaches first the "grammar" or basic ideas, skills, concepts, language, and methods of a given subject.
Once mastery of the "grammar" of a subject has been achieved, students are taught formal logic and reasoning as they explore the connections and implications of the concepts they have learned.
The final stage of classical education is that of "rhetoric" or the art of persuasively expressing to others the implications of the knowledge they have acquired through the first two stages of learning. It is during the rhetoric stage that pupils in the classical model find and express their own voice in the "great conversation" of the western tradition, and become "scholars" who attempt to ethically influence the world around them through skillful presentation of the knowledge they possess.
While classical learning is intended to progress roughly along this trajectory, the path to "scholarship" is rarely linear. At any given time, the scholars at John Adams Academy are engaged in all three stages of classical learning and are constantly seeking to improve their understanding of the world.
When children are astonished with the human tongue, we teach them language and grammar. When children are ready to challenge every assumption, we teach them logic. When students are yearning to express themselves with passion, we teach them rhetoric.
