Dorothy Sayers famously referred to the trivium arts as the Lost Tools of Learning. One of the weaknesses of modern education is its focus on the knowledge-transfer approach to education, teaching students ‘subjects’ rather than apprenticing them into the traditional arts. When modern educators do focus on training in skills, it is often the “abstract intellectual skills” of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
In our series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, we proposed a fivefold division of the arts, to correspond with the intellectual virtue of techne, artistry or craftsmanship. The five broad categories for classical Christian schools today are:
- Athletics, games and sports
- Common and domestic arts
- Professions and trades
- Fine and performing arts
- The liberal arts of language and number
Do you teach something within one of these subjects? Then the Apprenticeship Lesson format is for you!
Where Does the Apprenticeship Lesson Come From?
In developing the Apprenticeship Lesson, we’ve drawn not only from Aristotle’s understanding of the intellectual virtues, but a number of important classical and modern resources:
- John Amos Comenius’ method of teaching an art
- ancient traditions of apprenticeship in the professions and trades, as well as athletics and the fine and performing arts
- modern research by Anders Ericsson on elite performance, including deliberate and purposeful practice
- Doug Lemov’s categorization of the techniques of great teachers in Teach Like a Champion
For further explanation of the Apprenticeship Lesson format, see the article on “Crafting Lessons in Artistry.”
Are There Multiple Types of Lessons?
The Apprenticeship Lesson is the second type of lesson that we have identified on Educational Renaissance. If you haven’t already, check out our free resource on “Charlotte Mason and the Trivium” that details how to plan lessons with the Narration-Trivium Lesson structure.
These two types of lessons complement one another by focusing either on training in artistry or skill (Apprenticeship) or on teaching new content knowledge (Narration-Trivium). In other words, the primary aim of the teacher is either for the student to acquire particular content knowledge in an inspirational subject area (Bible, history, literature, etc.), or the primary aim is for the student to acquire and hone particular skills in a discipline (writing, grammar, art, music, etc.). Actual lessons fall on a spectrum, with some focus placed on new knowledge and some focus placed on the students’ performance of a complex activity or creation of some product. The question of which lesson structure to use depends not on the subject, but the focus of this particular lesson within a broader unit plan. Is the main purpose of this lesson for students to assimilate content or develop and hone new skills?
When you download the Apprenticeship Lesson, you’ll be able to copy and paste a template with instructions that you can then use for planning lessons that train students in an art. Between the Apprenticeship Lesson and the Narration-Trivium lesson, you should have all that you need to plan lessons that embody a classical pedagogy in any subject, with only minor modifications. The process of lesson planning should be inspiring and enriching because of how it assists teachers in embodying classical principles in their teaching. In addition to preparing the teacher with the knowledge and materials necessary to help students learn most effectively, lesson planning should contribute to teachers’ long-term development.
Please reach out to me with questions as you try out the Apprenticeship Lesson, so that I can continue to refine and improve it for teachers!