Classical education differs from progressive and conventional education in that it works with the natural developmental stages of the child. Rather than a goal of producing the next generation of workers while attempting to predict the nature of future job markets, the goals of a Classical curriculum are to

• provide a foundation of knowledge in the early years when children are able to absorb facts with ease;
• build understanding on that foundation in the middle years as students begin to think through arguments;
• teach older students wisdom as they learn to reason and effectively express themselves.

At every stage, the Classical educator is intentional about instilling wisdom and virtue in each student.

• In primary classes (grammar school), learning is almost exclusively focused on knowledge acquisition, using mostly didactic teaching methods and memorization. Chants, jingles, and songs make that memorization and learning fun.
• In the preteen and early teen years (the logic stage), instruction becomes more analytical, as children learn the arts of debate and critique along with a continuation of knowledge learning. These students are given the tools to develop sound reasoning through courses in informal and formal logic.
• In the secondary years (the rhetoric stage), students are trained to write and speak with eloquence and originality, learning to persuade and to apply the knowledge and understanding.