What Is a Liberal Arts College Define Liberal Arts

Final Updated on Jan 27, 2022 by

What is liberal arts? In modern usage, the definition of liberal arts are those studies at the college or university level that are intended to offering general knowledge and build a foundation of logic and reasoning rather than to provide professional or vocational skills.

Your definition of liberal arts may depend on what you are asking the question near. The field of liberal arts is very old, and the concepts it covers are some of the deepest and strongest foundations of our civilisation. In one case yous beginning looking for a liberal arts definition, you lot'll find the concept popping up in all kinds of aspects of mod life, from education to equality.

The answer to the questionwhat is liberal arts has changed over the years. Originally, the term would have been phrased in Latin: liberalis ars, or "costless art or principled do" assorted to artes mechanicae, the mechanical or servile arts that would accept been taught to the laboring classes. And information technology would have been further divers in Latin every bit the combination of the triviumand quadrivium, categories of report that comprised the seven traditional liberal arts:

Trivium – The Arts of the Word

• Grammer
• Logic
• Rhetoric

Quadrivium – Arts of Numbers

• Arithmetic
• Astronomy
• Music
• Geometry

In classical medieval universities, students would have get-go taken upwards the trivium, honing their speaking, writing, and disquisitional thinking skills in the showtime years of their education before moving on to the science and cognition of the quadrivium subjects.

Pythagoras' willingness to teach women likewise as men prefigured modern liberal arts grooming by thousands of years.

In that sense, the two topics worked hand in hand. I focused on the ability to learn and reason; the other offered the cognition and skills to exist absorbed through the other.

And so Then, Exactly What is Liberal Studies?

When you get downward to information technology, today's definition of liberal arts, or liberal studies every bit information technology's more frequently being referred to in modern parlance, isn't actually all that different than those original definitions. The logic and reasoning skills that liberal arts colleges teach today are there to prime number students to absorb scientific and technical knowledge in a wide variety of fields, everything from physics to history.

And so what practise liberal studies mean in the modern context? Nosotros take to talk more than about a liberal arts definition when we look at how it is actually used by people today.

For starters, when liberal arts is used in the broadest sense, talking nearly education in general, it just means the kind of broad-based, comprehensive studies in a variety of subjects similar history, math, and language arts that pretty much every curriculum follows from kindergarten on up. In that sense, most Western-manner education follows the model of liberal arts, encouraging a broad range of cognition that fuel discussion, advice, inquiry, and discovery.

But liberal studies today can refer non merely to the general tradition of arts and sciences in education, but too to dedicated liberal arts or liberal studies degree programs, namely the Bachelor of Liberal Studies (BLS), Principal of Liberal Studies (MLS), amidst other similar degree titles.

What is the Definition of Liberal Arts? – It Largely Comes Down to How Universities Construction Liberal Studies Curriculum

If liberal studies can be just almost everything you study, then what does it mean to call a degree a liberal arts degree?

In that location are actually two different liberal arts meanings when it comes to college degrees:

1) A caste in the liberal arts and sciences isn't necessarily exclusively focused on those seven pillars of ancient study. Today, the meaning of liberal arts has shifted to cover only nigh any caste program that isn't purely vocational or professional in nature. That tin can include degrees such as:

• History
• Biology
• Psychology
• Economic science
• Literature

Liberal arts colleges typically plant a series of general instruction requirements that accept to exist filled by all graduates, regardless of their caste. These are usually split into categories such as science, literature, diversity, quantitative and symbolic reasoning, and the like. You tin fulfill them by picking constituent courses in a wide variety of subjects in those categories, so no ii degree plans are exactly alike. But every graduate has a like ground of wide-based training in communication, arts, and sciences.

2) Dedicated liberal studies degrees, similar the BLS or MLS , that focus on liberal arts first, and other areas of report merely secondarily. You can find them at different schools under unlike names:

• General Studies
• Humanities
• Liberal Arts/Liberal Studies
• Individualized Studies

They are offered at every level, from associates to doctorates, and in all cases offering a diverse curriculum in the classic tradition, designed to develop students who are well-rounded critical thinkers, problem solvers, and global citizens. And in keeping with the times, today'due south liberal arts degrees offer an array of concentrations, including all the humanities and sciences options you lot would expect, along with more than gimmicky and technologically oriented topics similar data science.

How the Liberal Arts are Defined in a Defended Liberal Studies Program

Liberal arts degrees often come in the same concentration areas as other arts degrees (AA, BA, MA), just like those listed to a higher place. You tin earn a available of liberal arts with a concentration in economics, or in history, for example. And, yous'll probably take many of the aforementioned classes that you would find in a traditional major in that subject.

The difference is 1 of focus. A liberal arts degree will teach you thinking skills first, and the subject matter second. Your principal goal volition non be to acquire the details of today'southward theories of economics and wealth, merely rather to accept in information and gain the skills to evaluate historical, modern, and future theories besides. It's a way to futurity-proof your pedagogy in whatever subject field, likewise every bit setting yous up for cross-disciplinary pursuits.

Put another way, liberal arts is an arroyo to learning and education that bets that the enquiry and thinking skills of a general studies curriculum volition put you lot way ahead of the narrow, specific topics you learn in a professional or vocational degree.

How the Liberal Arts Give Significant to Every Aspect of Society, From Politics to Business concern

The influence of liberal arts in modern American order is so pervasive that it can exist hard to spot. But it's hard to separate the history of Western society from the liberal arts-based educational fashion that has grown up with it.

Pythagoras, Aristotle, Socrates, and the other forefathers of Western civilization came to the subjects and methods of enquiry of liberal arts out of a hunger for universal agreement. They believed that the universe was rational, that humans could make sense of it, and that a democratic society required spirited and informed argue based on established facts in order to function.

Those beliefs are ones that nosotros accept built on today as the cornerstone of our civilization. The scientific method rose from that line of thinking. Ideas of freedom and justice emerge from universal equality. And democracy itself continues to rely on informed and active citizens dealing with common facts.

The written report of liberal arts today fuels new advances in equality and science alike. What are the qualities of liberal studies that can power such patently unrelated fields? You might boil them down to these:

• Inventiveness – The free access to information and the dialectic model of coming to sympathise information technology helps students recall exterior the box. General knowledge studies in a broad variety of fields requite you the power to see patterns in history and science and allow yous to make connections intuitively.
• Critical Thinking – Rote learning is a way to pack a great deal of data into the human brain, simply it doesn't requite students the power to truly sympathise knowledge, but to regurgitate information technology. The dialectic style of education that dominates liberal arts courses pushes students to evaluate and formulate different arguments. You learn to see whatever idea from multiple perspectives, to find the weak points, and to come upward with better solutions when you practice.
• Collaboration – Communication is such a key piece of liberal arts training that information technology's baked into the very style of teaching well-nigh often used in the field. Dialectic means the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions. That discussion is disquisitional, and the very human action of learning other subjects is also teaching you lot how to communicate with boyfriend students and professors in club to heighten questions or go your own point across.

Liberal arts is a field that is both constant and constantly evolving. The long lineage of rational thinkers shares that heritage of logic, communication, and the value of cognition. Yet every new graduate in the field adds to that heritage in their ain way.

With a liberal arts degree, yous have the opportunity to brand your own mark on the liberal arts definition.

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Source: https://liberalartsedu.org/what-is-liberal-arts-degree/

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