How we write Classical Writing

A lot of people have asked us how we ‘think up’ our lessons and writing projects for Classical Writing. To say we follow the ancient Greek progymnasmata doesn’t ring a bell with most of you. And why should it? Progym… eh… what??

When Tracy and I originally got the idea to create a writing curriculum for homeschoolers we had already spent several years immersing ourselves in grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Yes, believe it or not, Tracy and I have the sort of nerdy friendship where we can spend hours writing back and forth discussing on the ‘loss of invective in modern discourse’ or what the difference is between the ancient and the modern understanding of ‘remembering’ and how that ties in with religious/philosophical ways of remembering Christ in the Lord’s Supper.

Well, anyways, we love reading ancient texts (in translation… just for the record, we’re neither of us well enough versed in Latin or Greek to tackle the originals).

And what we found was that the ancient writers mentioned a set of exercises, the progymnasmata, that go from having kids retell short simple stories to arguing for and against current issues in fourteen steps. The steps made sense to us. They added one little step at a time, letting the kids master each step of the way before adding on new writing techniques. We were sold.

The interesting thing we found as we studied was that the subject of rhetoric was taught inside the exercises of the progymnasmata, that these exercises actually WERE rhetoric, one step at a time and that when the kids were done with all fourteen they would be well versed in the techniques of rhetoric.

When we wrote the first book, we read a lot of Quintilian and Aphthonius (Roman teachers from the early centuries AD) . We studied their approach to working with seven year olds on grammar, on basic copy book, and on retelling fables. We found that they worked primarily with the texts of Aesop and also with snippets from Homer for the early years, hence our two books Aesop (retelling fables) and Homer (retelling longer narratives). As much as posisble we tried to apply what they taught and how they taught it to how we teach students grammar and writing in modern American English. Our goal was to retain their rigor and approach while still remaining as we are, in the twenty-first century, so that students of Classical Writing are able to write in ways and on subjects that are relevant to the needs and issues of current times.

As we have progressed through our series, our junior high books Diogenes: Maxim and Chreia (arguing for the wisdom of a proverb or anecdote) required us to study in addition the progymnasmata handbooks of Theon, Nicolaus, as well as numerous rhetorical ‘gurus’ such as Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and the famous Roman orator Cicero’s treatises on oratory and rhetorical invention. Other names such as Hermogenes, Diogenes, Libanius, and Isocrates are not familiar to most, and they weren’t to us either, but our aim for every writing exercise has been to dig as deep and seek as broadly as we could to find the most exhaustive (and comprehensive) treatment of each skill we teach.

I have just finished writing our 9th grade book Herodotus (the books is named after the Greek father of history). It is about argumentative writing, generating proof for or against a position. It is in beta testing. Most of its rhetorical foundation was drawn from Cicero and even more so from Aristotle, both in terms of logic (his Organon) and rhetoric.

Our next book is Plutarch (Plutarch is a Roman historian, our chief source on many of ancient Rome’s personalities), which deals with praising and blaming persons, places, and events. It is a more descriptive book, which teaches students to write both essays, letters, and speeches in honor of people, or against certain political persons or ideas. It draws heavily on Hermogenes’ On Style as well as on Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

We always tie our books in with the needs of modern writing. As such, our junior high books (Diogenes: Maxim and Chreia) and our high school books (Herodotus [9th], Plutarch [10th], and Demosthenes [11th-12th]) while they start by teaching the ancient disciplines, always tie everything learned in with application to modern essay techniques and needs. Our aim is that your student be well prepared to write for every and any occasion. Our aim is to give your student a thorough foundation for college writing.

Is it worth it?

Once your student has mastered reading, there is nothing more important to teach in school than writing. If your student cannot communicate adequately, he cannot succeed. Do your student the favor of teaching him to write well for every occasion, it will bless him not just in his college and future job, it will help him learn to think, to ponder different viewpoints carefully, to know what he believes and why. Writing is not just to persuade others of our important points of view, it is also our own therapeutic way of processing the things we meditate on. We cannot fully own a point of view until we can articulate it, and writing instruction is an essential part of your student’s path to owning and refining his convictions.

And that is enough ramblings from the Front Range for one morning,

Lene Jaqua