Modern Education In Dorothy Sayers's The Lost Tools Of Learning

It is ironic to think that the modern education system is not set up to help children learn. Dorothy Sayers, a former teacher and author, argues that, unfortunately, this is the case. In her article, The Lost Tools of Learning, Sayers argues that if we are to produce individuals that are intellectually equipped to learn and think on their own, then we should adopt a style of teaching that is modified from the style used in the middle ages. Sayers is concerned that while people are learning things in schools, they are not truly learning, because they did not establish tools that would help them think on their own. In her essay, Sayer references the Trivium, a part to the medieval syllabus of teaching, throughout her essay. She uses the Trivium to show that there is a logical order to learning and what it looks like in an academic setting. Furthermore, Sayers references book passages and a person’s speech to give examples to how the trivium can make people think. …show more content…
Therefore, they forget a lot of things they learn, and do not have the tools to learn something on their own. Sayers uses the example of teaching a child how to play the song “The Harmonious Blacksmith” on the piano. While it is good for the child to learn how to play a song on the piano, learning the song is of no use to the child, because they were not taught how to read a piano scale. Consequently, the child can’t really play the piano, they just have one song memorized (3). Thus, Sayers is arguing that our current education system leaves the student on their own to figure out the fundamentals of learning something. They don’t teach these fundamentals directly, but rather try to have the student to pick them up as they