Liberal arts

The seven liberal arts - Picture from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad von Landsberg (12th century)

The term liberal arts denotes a curriculum that imparts general knowledge and develops the student’s rational thought and intellectual capabilities, unlike the professional, vocational and technical curricula emphasizing specialization. The contemporary liberal arts comprise studying literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science.[1]

Contents

History

In classical antiquity, the liberal arts denoted the education proper to a free person (Latin: liber, “free”)--contrary to popular opinion, freeborn girls were as likely to receive formal education as boys, especially during the Roman Empire--unlike the lack-of-education, or purely manual/technical skills, proper to a slave. The "liberal arts" or "liberal pursuits" (Latin liberalia studia) were already so called in formal education during the Roman Empire; for example, Seneca the Younger discusses liberal arts in education from a critical Stoic point of view in Moral Epistle 88.[2] The subjects that would become the standard "Liberal Arts" in Roman and Medieval times already comprised the basic curriculum in the enkuklios paideia or "education in a circle" of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece.

In the 5th century AD, Martianus Capella defined the seven Liberal Arts as: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. In the medieval Western university, the seven liberal arts were:

  1. grammar
  2. rhetoric
  3. logic
  1. arithmetic
  2. astronomy
  3. music
  4. geometry

Liberal arts colleges in the United States

In the United States, Liberal arts colleges are schools emphasizing undergraduate study in the liberal arts. Traditionally earned over four years of full-time study, the student earned either a Bachelor of Arts degree or a Bachelor of Science degree; on completing undergraduate study, students might progress to either a graduate school or a professional school (public administration, business, law, medicine, theology). The teaching is Socratic, to small classes, and at a greater teacher-to-student ratio than at universities; professors teaching classes are allowed to concentrate more on their teaching responsibilities than primary research professors or graduate student teaching assistants, in contrast to the instruction common in universities. Modern liberal arts colleges accommodate the non-traditional student, which allows for - among other things - part-time study. Despite the European origin of the liberal arts college,[3] the term liberal arts college usually denotes liberal arts colleges in the United States.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Liberal Arts: Encyclopedia Britannica Concise". Encyclopedia Britannica. http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9370154/liberal-arts. 
  2. ↑ Seneca Epistle 88 at Stoics.com
  3. ↑ Harriman, Philip (1935). "Antecedents of the Liberal Arts College". The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1935), pp. 63-71. http://www.jstor.org/view/00221546/di962074/96p0148k/0. 

Further reading

External links