Trivium

The basis of education.

In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects that were taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word is a Latin term meaning “the three ways” or “the three roads” forming the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education. This study was preparatory for the quadrivium.

Grammar is concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized (the art of expression),Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known (the art of thinking), andRhetoric is concerned with the thing as-it-is-communicated (the adaption of language to circumstance, to communicate thought from one mind to another).