Critical Analysis Of The Lost Tools Of Learning

“The Lost Tools of Learning”: Critical Thinking

The essence of the quote is that Sayer implies that the community should teach our students and children everything except the concept of actual learning. Education today is only lost if the educator is solely teaching their students with high opinions and not actual subject matter. She is implying that children today need to think on their own but only need to be guided.

In other words, “The Lost Tools of Learning” is a road map to help the understanding of subject and not so much a road map on thinking. Educators need to teach the content but not how to do the content. Sayer explains within her essay three stages, the Trivium, the Dialectic and the Rhetoric in which help children’s thinking

and learning come more naturally.
To explain on these stages a little more I will tell you about the Trivium. This stage is getting ready to learn, preparing yourself. In the essay Sayer declares that this stage is for children at their youngest stage. The basics of learning are in this stage, the structure. This stage you learn how things work and what things are. A lot of learning from this stage comes from observations and memory.
The Dialectic stage is when the child gets a little older.

They start to get ideas and start thinking for themselves. The older and older they get the more questions they begin to wonder about and ask. Asking questioning is good in this stage. Meaning that the child is beginning to think for themselves and wander their minds more and more. Formal Logic also enters into this stage. Arguing becomes a factor. This stage leads the child to their final stage.

Last but not least comes the Rhetoric stage. Students use logical reasoning for arguments during this phase and reasoning. A huge factor in this stage is freedom and expressing yourself through your thoughts. Here the children or much older child has guidelines and the required tools to approach an argument or field of study. This stage’s main idea is your interest in the matter and the work you put towards that interest.

For example, when you are born and put onto this earth by God you are given a clean slate. You have no knowledge of anything. You are simply getting ready for the world. As you get older but still cannot speak all you can do is observe. You look around your surroundings and learn from them. The older the get the wiser you get. You start to develop some ideas of your own and get curious about everything. As a child you ask why, why, why all the time. When you reach the final stage of the three you are ready to get out and explore you interests. You use what you have learnt to discover more on your

own.
Lastly, to better understand the point, consider this metaphor: Sayer’s process is like a road map with a starting and ending point. Throughout this map there are certain pit stops you need to stop and look around at. Observe these pit stops. Then when you are equipped and ready you may pack up and get back on the road to your next destination.