Product Description
You may not know it, but you’ve been robbed.
Classical Christian education, your rightful inheritance, has been stolen from you by educational bureaucrats. Generations of well-meaning parents and innocent children never received their intended bequest. However, the “new” method that is being popularized in the homeschooling community looks more like the public school paradigm than the original classical model. In her research, Diane discovered that the primary premise upon which this “neoclassical” method is based has no evidentiary support other than one woman’s personal experience. Speculation and hearsay fuel the rumor that has become an urban legend. Countless home school paren… More >>
#1 by Julia on March 4, 2010 - 7:23 am
Received this book as a gift from a friend, and what a gift! Having home schooled for over 11 years I found this book full of the “how to — what to actually do” details we home schooler’s are always in search of. The 12 Twelve Classical Makeovers offer a real life look at the situations of individual families along with suggestions of how to find/follow a classical home education. I saw myself/family in there! This book set me a little more free from that paranoia all home schoolers feel in not following the pack. A classical home education is the cutting edge within the home schooling movement and that’s what this book is about. Great read for those already home schooling or those considering it.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Diane B. Lockman on March 4, 2010 - 8:21 am
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R291S5KX02WDNB Hi! I’m Diane Lockman, the author of Trivium Mastery: The Intersection of Three Roads: How to Give Your Child an Authentic Classical Home Education. Watch this quick video to learn a little bit more about the book. Hope you enjoy!
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by J. Sanders on March 4, 2010 - 10:10 am
Trivium Mastery is truly the book I’ve been waiting for. I’m looking forward to my ninth year home schooling. If I had had access to a book like this 4-5 years ago, I think I would have saved myself many nights wrestling with a “Classical” curriculum that I knew wasn’t working. I didn’t have the time to figure anything else out, so I felt stuck. I didn’t know what else to do. Diane Lockman has helped me see what else I CAN do.
First, I love the layout of this book. The chapters are short and easily digestible. Diane tackles some pretty heady topics, all with a straight forward, gracious manner that drew me in and encouraged me to keep reading. Succinctly covering the broad history and theory of Classical Christian education in the first 20 pages, she then proceeds to unpack each of the three “roads” of the triuvium: language, thought and speech, which are “true foundational skills [that] are developed in concert with one another.” Taking a clue from the Latin word trivium as the “intersection of three roads”, she uses the metaphor of road maps to help parents assess their child’s level of mastery in each skill. Then the beauty of the book is the second section, where Diane shares case studies of five diverse families, her assessment of the children’s skill levels, and a suggested semester course of action. In this book Diane helpfully blends theory and practical application.
Secondly, this book has shown me how I can truly make a custom classical education a reality for each of my kids. It’s skill driven, not content driven. The case studies provided me with a composite view of myself and each of my kids. I saw sample semester plans that I can imagine incorporating into our school weeks. The self interview and assessment tools in the appendices will give me the means of evaluating each kid and tailor-fitting a course study that will bring them further along toward trivium mastery. I no longer feel that I have to stay tied to a curriculum that won’t perfectly sync with my goals for each kid. We’ve all said it, “There is no perfect curriculum.” Trivium Mastery has released me from trying to find one.
Lastly, I resonate with the tone of this book. Diane is a home schooling mom like me, who wants to educate her kids in “wisdom and truth.” Her sincerity and humility as a fellow traveller endears me to her. And yet, this is also a very intellectual book. Diane makes no apologies about the rigors of Classical education. It is not for the faint of heart. But I admire her sense of mission. She writes with the conviction that the “same old education” will not prepare her kids for the calling on their lives and wants to share what she has discovered so other families can possess this rich heritage. I have been stirred by those same convictions, and Diane has now convinced me that the heritage is accessible.
So now my wait is over. Equipped with Trivium Mastery, I’m ready to dive in, and strive to “raise [my] own classical scholars in wisdom and truth.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Nerka homeschooler on March 4, 2010 - 11:35 am
In short (3 page) chapters, the author gives detailed lists on what is required for a classical home education. Fair enough, the lists are detailed and, although repetitive, easy to follow. That is what I found most helpful about this book.
Things I did not like about this book:
-no footnotes
-no bibliography
-no index
-assumes reader knows who people are and why they are important (one example: on p88, she talks about Andrew Pudewa with no reference or footnotes)
-short chapter on why she disagrees with neo-classical education but does not elaborate on her research; lack of footnotes or bibliography is really felt here (she disagrees with Dorothy Sayer’s breakdown of classical education as “one woman’s theory”)
-does not introduce herself or her children (all personal information is under “About the Author” and not included in the text; her son is not mentioned until p62)
-does not state her qualifications (besides practicing as a CPA for 9 years) as a homeschooler; how long has she homeschooled? How old are her kids? The only date I read was 2006.
-”according to so & so…” with no footnotes or references appears several times
-no instructions on how to use Appendices
I really wanted to like this book, but the lack of footnotes or bibliography makes it inadequate and incomplete.
Rating: 3 / 5
#5 by Susan Hoffmann on March 4, 2010 - 12:58 pm
This new book on classical education gives homeschoolers another point of view on how to train up their children in the way they should go. After 12 years of homeschooling following a traditionally classical approach, Trivium Mastery has inspired me to take a second look at how my children have been learning, and to incorporate some of Trivium Mastery’s ideas into my children’s education (do more memory work and more dictation; resume family read aloud times; more discussions; pose more questions; get the thinking wheels turning!). All the chapters are served up in a very easy to read format, but my favorite chapter is “Top Ten Traits of a Critical Thinker.” This is what we all want, and Trivium Mastery helps us to get there. Equally important is the emphasis placed on speech, the third road, which is the logical outlet subsequent to critical thinking. Teaching homeschooled students public speaking skills should require no special recommendation if homeschoolers are to have a positive impact on our culture, but Trivium Mastery will not only give you practical tips on how to do so, but the motivatation to start, as well. Trivium Mastery makes classical education so doable. I plan to purchase the sequel, Socratic Paideia: Dialogue Leads to Discipline, as soon as it’s available!
Rating: 5 / 5