The Seven Liberal Arts, Part I

The classic seven liberal arts were the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic [or logic]), and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). These were preparatory studies for the more advanced fields of philosophy and theology.

Are our students well-grounded in these fields? Should they be?

Many of my students claim not to have studied grammar at all. Some students do study grammar at the college level: by studying a foreign language. In classical times, much of grammar was also taught through studying other languages: Greek and Latin. Why is grammar so devalued now? Is there value to understanding that language has structure, and that different languages can be structured very differently?

It seems to me that grammar has been devalued because one can develop a good grasp of grammar without actually acquiring a workable fluency in speaking another language, or without acquiring good writing skills in one's own language. And people raised speaking several languages can speak those languages fluently and can write quite eloquently without consciously knowing grammar. But to use these observations as a critique of the study of grammar is to make a mistake about the purpose of studying grammar. The value of understanding the structure of language has little to do with whether it makes you a fluent speaker or a poetic writer. The latter skills are valuable in their own right, but are not the reasons for studying grammar.

The reason for studying grammar is to learn the different ways that language is structured. It is only when one closely studies the structures of different languages that one begins to understand the difference between language and thought (so closely related that most modestly-educated people think that there is no difference at all).