Product reviews for Trivium in Practice

I was very enthusiastic about Martin Robinson's Trivium 21c when it was published in 2013 and I wrote a blog about it. The Trivium in Practice is the follow-up to the big ideas and here we have the experiences of schools and educators who have worked on the Trivium principles. It makes fascinating reading.

What is so encouraging about the active engagement with the Trivium is the way it has energized conversations about the curriculum and the most productive way to make it both demanding and accessible for all students. While it relates experiences of colleagues working mostly in secondary schools, there are some interesting examples of primary schools following the slow education principles which are closely aligned to the Trivium.

Two very good examples from Tom Sherrington at Highbury Grove and Sam Gorse at Turton School show how the principles of the Trivium are not for the quick fix seekers. They both acknowledge that this is a measured process, with careful reading, translating into a local context and bringing everyone on board. This kind of systematic shift does not happen overnight. Both are careful to make sure that colleagues have read the book - in Tom's school it was -˜compulsory' reading for all staff - they were given a ribbon bound copy for their own use. This was followed up by a carousel of workshops, each focusing on one of the three arts, one of these led by Tom himself. Sam set up a leadership reading group shortly after joining the school as head. Interestingly, she came across the Trivium through Tom's blog.

For this to work, it's pretty clear that leaders need to take the ideas seriously and to figure out the implications with colleagues as they go along. What helps is if the school has really, really ambitious aspirations for its students. How about this from the HIghbury Grove School's Framework for Teaching and Learning: -˜We believe that children need to feel they are on an adventure in the pursuit of wisdom-¦we believe in the importance of knowing, exploring and communicating-¦we wish to enable our pupils to become philosopher kids-¦ we challenge all our pupils to become cultural polymaths-¦'

The power of this book is that it examines the tension between the elements of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. Robinson transposes these broadly as subject knowledge, critical analysis and communication. He has produced a series of short sketches for what each of these might mean.

It seems that many of the schools engage quickly with the -˜grammar' element and it is good to see the efforts going in to develop the dialectic and rhetoric. For example Andrew Fitch at Highbury says -˜there is no reason not to have the same high expectations of speech than we do in any other work they do.' And, -˜just because students know how to speak naturally doesn't mean they will naturally know how to speak effectively.'

Similarly, Mike Grenier in showing the similarities between the Trivium and the Slow Education movement says, -˜first, children must learn to love language, to admire its tricksy spirit and to play with it.' And Carl Hendrick writes a marvellous chapter on his take on the Trivium, focusing on dialogue via the work of Mikhail Bakthtin and a particularly neat analysis of the difference between and the importance of monologue and dialogue.

It's a book full of gems and my copy is full of underscores and notes. A final reference to a brilliant description of robust extended project qualifications from Dr John L Taylor: -˜At its best, an EPQ is not just a dry run for a university dissertation, but is also a journey of personal exploration; a means of gaining the Socratic wisdom that comes through having seen a problem or issue through the lens of alternative perspectives.'

Bring on the philosopher kids-¦