Trivium Academy offers classes and tutoring to homeschool students aged 8-18. Our mission is to educate students, so that they may speak, write, and think well and live free and virtuous lives. The goal of classical education is to transmit the traditions, values, and collective memory of Western civilization by enabling students to read the classics in their original idiom: Latin.

Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are the means of acquiring, understanding, and organizing knowledge. This knowledge is to make a student understand and wish to pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful. In the words of Hugh of Saint Victor, "Grammar is the knowledge of how to speak without error; logic is clear-sighted argument which separates true from false; rhetoric is the discipline of persuading to every suitable thing." Aristotle wrote that the purpose of education is to teach a student to like or dislike what he ought. This is summarized in our motto. Cognoscere optanda: to know what ought to be wanted.

In classical education, a student learns how to relate facts into a unified, organic whole. But facts cannot be unified into conceptual frameworks unless they are first known and understood. Therefore, a good education requires knowledge and understanding of facts and a focus on content. Many schools fail precisely because they try to teach concepts without knowledge. The solution is a content-based curriculum aimed at mastery.

Our educational philosophy is based on the concept of cultural literacy: the ability to understand and participate in a culture which aims to develop minds and abilities through shared knowledge. Culture does not merely entertain or amuse; it elevates and improves. To preserve a culture and be its beneficiary, it must be shared and understood.