When our oldest was a year away from starting school, a friend of mine recommended reading a book outlining classical education called The Well-Trained Mind before we considered schools. We'd pretty much planned on sending our children to our local public school, but learning about the benefits of classical education compelled us to look at the classical schools in our area.
In the classical schools, we really liked that our children would learn using the trivium. In the early years of the grammar stage, students focus on learning facts and figures which young children love to do (think "mom, did you know adjectives describe only nouns and the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD?"). As they develop cognitively, students move into the logic stage where they examine the relationships among all these facts and figures. The logic stage occurs at the age of traditional middle schools. Imagine a middle schooler having the opportunity to learn how to argue all the why's and what about's of an issue in a classroom setting! Finally, as they approach high school age, they use all the tools of grammar and logic to develop and communicate persuasive ideas in both writing and speech.
We also really liked how our children would learn chronologically, beginning with ancient civilizations like Egypt, and progressing all the way up to our current era. They repeat the chronology every four years as they progress through the stages of the trivium. The grammar students might learn about the cyclops or the Trojan Wars in grammar school, then progress to actually reading the Odyssey as they progress through the trivium. Even if a student jumps in late to classical learning, the opportunity to progress even once through the trivium is a far more organized approach than in traditional learning where subjects are taught in isolation.
Providence was the only school in our area that provided both a decade's worth of experience and a full preK-12 program where we witnessed students at all stages of the trivium engaged in learning. Since we've been at Providence, we have been blown away both by the quality of the teachers and their giftedness in guiding our children to love learning. Our family has also grown as life-long learners both through the Mom's and Dad's Book Clubs where we've read and discussed some of the same literature the upper school student read, and through memorizing scripture with our grammar school children to have God's Word instruct us in our daily lives. We have been very encouraged by our children's teachers who we feel are partners with us in bringing up our children. We love the Providence community and look forward to growing together in the years to come.
John and Heather Young, PCS parents since 2008
