Not Trivial: How Studying the Traditional Liberal Arts Can Set You Free

This book is a must-read for any parent, any teacher, and anyone who wants to live in a free and democratic society.

Back in colonial days, young women who had little more than a primary school education themselves had great success in teaching reading, even though they had nothing but the New England Primer and the Holy Bible. In contrast, about a fifth of schoolchildren today are failing to learn to read, even though their schools are staffed by college graduates who have an extensive library at their disposal. What has gone wrong? In Not Trivial, Laurie Endicott Thomas explains that there is nothing wrong with today's children. The problem is that our schools are using a teaching method that does not work. Instead of teaching children to sound words out letter by letter, children are asked to memorize whole words as shapes. This  "sight word" method has been known for generations to be the cause of dyslexia, and yet it is still being heavily used.

In Not Trivial, Laurie Endicott Thomas explains how the suppression of education has been a matter of deliberate policy. These policies used to be obvious. Before the Civil War, it used to be illegal to teach any black people to read. Today, the teachers in our public schools are trained and even forced to use teaching methods that do not work. The result has been a suppression of the basic academic disciplines that are essential for democracy. These disciplines were called the liberal arts because they were originally considered to be appropriate for freeborn men, as opposed to slaves.

Fortunately, this problem is easily solved. Thomas explains how parents can take charge of their own child's education, and how teachers can work together to reform their schools. She even describes how a church or labor union could serve as a junior college, by preparing people to take the Advanced Placement examinations.