Chapter 1 



Training your own mind:

The classical Education You Never Had



This chapter concentrate in an introduction of what is going to be the book, it also exemplify how is important to learn this skills of learning in order to have a well educated mind.



• Self education begins where school education ends.
• Readings makes us part of this great conversation.



" Observation limits our learning to our immediate surroundings; conversation and attendance at lectures are valuable, but expose us only to the views of a few nearby persons. Reading alone allows us to reach but beyond the restrictions of the time and space, to take part in what Mortimer Adler has called "The great conversation " of ideas that began in ancient times and has continued unbroken to the present. Reading makes us part of this Great Conversation, no matter where and when we pursue it. "



3 Levels of understanding in the classical education 

1. Tasting: Gain basic knowledge of your subject.

2. Swallowing : Take the knowledge into your own understanding by evaluating it. (It is valid?. It is true? Why ?)

 

3. Digesting: Fold the subject into your own understanding. 



The classical schoolmaster divides learning into three stages: THE TRIVIUM.

 

1. Grammar Satage : means building blocks, the foundational knowledge of each academic subject. (absorb information but not to evaluate it.)



2. Logic Stage: Critical Thinking comes into play. Students begin to exercise their analytical skills , they decide wether information is correct or incorrect, and make connections between:

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-Cause and Effect

-Historical events

-words and their meanings.

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3. Rhetoric Stage: Students learn to express their own opinions about the facts they have accumulated and evaluated. So the final years of education focus on elegant, articulate expression of opinion in speech, writing and study of rhetoric. 



This process has to be lived also when someone is reading. 



 

-- We have to retrain our minds to grasp new ideas by first understanding them, then evaluating them, and finally forming our own opinions. 



Set a time for self-education

Reading Time.