The trivium model of education matches three educational goals with three stages of natural human development.

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The three educational goals are to impart knowledge, understanding, and wisdom and can loosely be associated with the grammar, logic, and rhetoric stages of education.

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-Knowledge is a collection of facts like; "KNO3 is gunpowder and KNO3 can explode".

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-Understanding is knowing about oxidation and WHY gunpowder explodes.

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-Wisdom is the ability to clearly consider and discern the appropriate uses of gunpowder and the dangers of its abuse.  Wisdom is often concerned with the difference between right and wrong and requires moral clarity.  Psalm 111:10 NIV "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding..."

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The three stages of human development identified by Dorothy Sayers in the context of education are the poll-parrot stage, the pert stage, and the poetic stage which she suggests are a natural match for the three stages of education; grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

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-Poll-Parrot:  Young children are like parrots and will repeat what you say.  This is a good time to impart KNOWLEDGE such as times-tables, grammar rules, and such. 

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-Pert Stage: Middle school children want to understand WHY things are so, and this is a good time to revisit the knowledge that you have already imparted to the child and start to teach them WHY these things are true and why other things are false, and teach them how to use LOGIC to test, discern and understand the difference between the two. 

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-Poetic Stage:  Older students start to identify and explore their own interests and form their own philosophy.  This is a good time to develop the students ability to exchange ideas both verbally and in writing.  They must be able to dissect and skeptically examine what others are saying and pull out the nuggets of truth or expose fallacies, errors, and deceptions.  This is done through pattern recognition and  RHETORIC.  Any student who learns these skills has truly learned to learn.  They are prepared to express themselves and make a difference in the world.