Liberal arts are the skills derived from the Classical education curriculum.
History
Definition
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, technical curricula emphasizing specialization. The contemporary liberal arts comprise studying literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science.1 In classical antiquity, the liberal arts denoted the education proper to a free man (Latin: liberus, “free”), unlike the education proper to a slave. In the 5th century AD, Martianus Capella academically defined the seven Liberal Arts as: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. In the medieval Western university, the seven liberal arts were:
- grammar
- rhetoric
- logic
- geometry
- arithmetic
- music
- astronomy
Liberal arts colleges in the United States
In the United States, Liberal arts colleges are schools emphasising 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,2 the term liberal arts college usually denotes liberal arts colleges in the United States.
Liberal arts universities and colleges in India
Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University (PDPU) Gandhinagar, Gujarat is one of the Indian universities which has begun a liberal arts program, a Bachelor of Liberal Studies, through its new School of Libaral Studies. Inaugurated in 2009, the course follows the USA system of liberal studies with some changes. The Foundation for Liberal And Management Education (FLAME) in Pune is also promoting the study of liberal arts in India.
See also
References
Further reading
- Blaich, Charles, Anne Bost, Ed Chan, and Richard Lynch. Defining Liberal Arts Education. Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, 2004.
- Blanshard, Brand. The Uses of a Liberal Education: And Other Talks to Students. (Open Court, 1973. ISBN 0-8126-9429-5)
- Friedlander, Jack. Measuring the Benefits of Liberal Arts Education in Washington's Community Colleges. Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Community Colleges, 1982a. (ED 217 918)
- Joseph, Sister Miriam. The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Paul Dry Books Inc, 2002.
- Pfnister, Allen O. "The Role of the Liberal Arts College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 55, No. 2 (March/April 1984): 145-170.
- Reeves, Floyd W. "The Liberal-Arts College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 1, No. 7 (1930): 373-380.
- Seidel, George. "Saving the Small College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 39, No. 6 (1968): 339-342.
- Winterer, Caroline.The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
- Wriston, Henry M. The Nature of a Liberal College. Lawrence University Press, 1937.
- T. Kaori Kitao, William R. Kenan, Jr."The Usefulness Of Uselessness" [1] Keynote Address, The 1999 Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth's Odyssey at Swarthmore College, 27 March 1999
External links
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