liberal arts

Definition:

(1) In medieval education, the standard way of depicting the realms of higher learning. The liberal arts were divided into the trivium (the "three roads" of grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy).
(2) Academic studies intended to develop general intellectual abilities as opposed to occupational skills.

Etymology:

From the Latin (artes liberales) for the education proper to a free man

Observations:

• "[The purpose of a liberal arts education is to] open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address, [and] eloquent expression."
  (John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 1854)



• "More than anything else, being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways. Every one of the qualities I have described here--listening, reading, talking, writing, puzzle solving, truth seeking, seeing through other people's eyes, leading, working in a community--is finally about connecting. A liberal education is about gaining the power and the wisdom, the generosity and the freedom to connect."
  (William Cronon, "Only Connect: The Goals of a Liberal Education," The American Scholar, Autumn 1998)



• "[L]iberal education at the undergraduate level is an endangered species and likely to face extinction in another generation or so, at all but the wealthiest and most protective institutions. If recent trends continue, the liberal arts will be replaced by some form of vocationalism, in disguise perhaps, or migrate into other environments."
  (W. R. Connor, "Liberal Arts Education in the 21st Century," meeting of the American Academy for Liberal Education, May 1998)