Editing Liberal arts education (section)

==History==
Before they became known by their Latin variations ({{lang|la|artes liberales}}, {{lang|la|septem artes liberales}}, {{lang|la|studia liberalia}}),<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kimball |first=Bruce A. |title=Orators & philosophers: a history of the idea of liberal education |date=1995|publisher=College Entrance Examination Board|isbn=0-87447-514-7|edition=Expanded|location=New York|oclc=32776486}}</ref> the '''liberal arts''' were the continuation of [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greek]] methods of inquiry that began with a "desire for a universal understanding."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Tubbs|first=Nigel|title=Philosophy and Modern Liberal Arts Education: Freedom is to Learn |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2014|isbn=978-1-137-35891-2|location=Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire|page=1|oclc=882530818}}</ref> [[Pythagoras]] argued that there was a mathematical (and geometric) harmony to the cosmos or the universe; his followers linked the four arts of [[astronomy]], [[arithmetic]], [[geometry]], and [[music]] into one area of study to form the "disciplines of the [[mediaeval]] [[quadrivium]]".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Tubbs|first=Nigel|title=Philosophy and Modern Liberal Arts Education: Freedom is to Learn |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2014|isbn=978-1-137-35891-2|location=Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire|pages=17|oclc=882530818}}</ref> In the 4th-century-BC Athens, the government of the [[polis]], or city-state, respected the ability of [[rhetoric]] or public speaking above almost everything else.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://liberalarts.online/trivium-and-quadrivium/|title=Trivium and Quadrivium {{!}} The Seven Liberal Arts {{!}} Study Liberal Arts|website=Liberal Arts|language=en-GB|access-date=2020-04-25}}</ref> Eventually rhetoric, [[grammar]], and [[dialectic]] ([[logic]]) became the educational programme of the [[trivium]]. Together they came to be known as the '''seven liberal arts'''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.liberalarts.org.uk/philosophy-and-the-liberal-arts/|title=Philosophy and the Liberal Arts {{!}} Essays|date=2020-01-25|website=Liberal Arts|language=en-GB|access-date=2020-04-25}}</ref> Originally these subjects or skills were held by [[classical antiquity]] to be essential for a free person ({{lang|la|liberalis}}, "worthy of a free person")<ref>{{cite book |author=Curtius, Ernst Robert |title=European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages |url=https://archive.org/details/europeanliteratu0000curt |url-access=registration |orig-year=1948 |translator=Trask, Willard R. |location=Princeton |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1973 |page=[https://archive.org/details/europeanliteratu0000curt/page/37 37] |isbn=9780691097398 |quote=The classical sources include Cicero, ''De Oratore'', I.72–73, III.127, and ''De re publica'', I.30.}}</ref> to acquire in order to take an active part in civic life, something that included among other things participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and participating in military service. While the arts of the quadrivium might have appeared prior to the arts of the trivium, by the Middle Ages educational programmes taught the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) first while the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) were the following stage of education.<ref>{{cite book |author=Castle, E.B. |title=Ancient Education and Today |year=1969 |page=59}}</ref>

[[File:Maerten de Vos - Allegory of the liberal arts.jpg|thumb|''Allegory of the seven liberal arts,'' [[The Phoebus Foundation]]]]
Rooted in the basic curriculum – the {{transliteration|grc|eukuklios paideia}} or "well-rounded education" – of late [[Classical Greece|Classical]] and [[Hellenistic Greece]], the "liberal arts" or "liberal pursuits" (Latin {{lang|la|liberalia studia}}) were already called so in formal education during the [[Roman Empire]]. The first recorded use of the term "liberal arts" ({{lang|la|artes liberales}}) occurs in {{lang|la|[[De Inventione]]}} by [[Marcus Tullius Cicero]], but it is unclear if he created the term.<ref>Kimball, Bruce (1995). ''Orators and Philosophers''. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. p. 13</ref><ref>Cicero. ''De Inventione''. Book 1, Section 35</ref> [[Seneca the Younger]] discusses liberal arts in education from a critical [[Stoicism|Stoic]] point of view in ''[[Moral Epistles]]''.<ref>{{cite web |editor-first=Ben |editor-last=Schneider |url=http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_2.html#%E2%80%98LXXXVIII1 |author=Seneca |title=Epistle |id=88 |publisher=Stoics.com |access-date=26 August 2013}}</ref> The exact classification of the liberal arts varied however in Roman times,<ref name="H. Lausberg, 1998 p. 10">{{cite book |author=Lausberg, H. |title=Handbook of Literary Rhetoric |year=1998 |page=10}}</ref> and it was only after [[Martianus Capella]] in the 5th century influentially brought the seven liberal arts as bridesmaids to the ''[[De nuptiis|Marriage of Mercury and Philology]]'',<ref>{{cite book |author=Waddell, Helen |title=The Wandering Scholars |year=1968 |page=25}}</ref> that they took on canonical form.{{Citation needed|date=January 2021}}

{{anchor|Seven liberal arts|The seven liberal arts}}

The four "scientific" {{lang|la|artes}} – music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy – were known from the time of [[Boethius]] onwards as the ''[[quadrivium]]''. After the 9th century, the remaining three arts of the "[[humanities]]" – grammar, logic, and rhetoric – were grouped as the [[trivium (education)|''trivium'']].<ref name="H. Lausberg, 1998 p. 10" /> It was in that two-fold form that the seven liberal arts were studied in the [[Medieval university|medieval Western university]].<ref>{{cite web | title = James Burke: The Day the Universe Changed ''In the Light Of the Above''|website = [[YouTube]]|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgXzwOV-WNI&t=02m26s| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120523083401/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgXzwOV-WNI&gl=US&hl=en| archive-date=2012-05-23}}</ref><ref name="Wagner1983">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XfQ2AAAAIAAJ|title=The Seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages |last=Wagner |first=David Leslie |publisher=Indiana University Press|year=1983 |isbn=978-0-253-35185-2 |access-date=5 January 2013}}</ref> During the [[Middle Ages]], logic gradually came to take predominance over the other parts of the ''trivium''.<ref>{{cite book |author=Waddell, Helen |title=The Wandering Scholars |year=1968 |pages=141–143}}</ref>

In the 12th century the iconic image – {{Lang|la|Philosophia et septem artes liberales}} (Philosophy and seven liberal arts) ''–'' was produced by an [[Alsace|Alsatian]] nun and abbess [[Herrad of Landsberg]] with her community of women as part of the {{lang|la|Hortus deliciarum}}.<ref name="Tidbury">{{Cite web|url=https://www.liberalarts.org.uk/liberal-arts-education-by-and-for-women/|title=Liberal Arts Education by and for Women|last=Tidbury|first=Iain|date=5 August 2019|website=Liberal Arts|access-date=5 August 2019}}</ref> Their encyclopedia compiled ideas drawn from philosophy, theology, literature, music, arts, and sciences and was intended as a teaching tool for women of the abbey.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G9dIt61QpOoC&q=The+Garden+of+Delights:+Reform+and+Renaissance+for+Women+in+the+Twelfth+Century|title=The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century|last=Griffiths|first=Fiona J.|date=3 June 2011|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|isbn=9780812202113|language=en}}</ref> The image ''Philosophy and seven liberal arts'' represents the circle of philosophy, and is presented as a rosette of a cathedral: a central circle and a series of semicircles arranged all around. It shows learning and knowledge organised into seven relations, the {{Lang|la|Septem Artes Liberales}} or Seven Liberal Arts. Each of these arts find their source in the Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally "love of wisdom".<ref name="Tidbury"/> St. Albert the Great, a doctor of the Catholic Church, asserted that the seven liberal arts were referred to in Sacred Scripture, saying: "It is written, 'Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars' (Proverbs 9:1). This house is the Blessed Virgin; the seven pillars are the seven liberal arts."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Michael|first=William|date=2020|title=The Virgin Mary and the Classical Liberal Arts|url=https://classicalliberalarts.com/blog/the-virgin-mary-and-the-classical-liberal-arts/|website=Classical Liberal Arts Academy}}{{Dead link|date=June 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> [[File:Gherardo di giovannid el fora, musica, in marziano capella de nuptiis philologiae et mercurii, ms. urb lat 329 f 149v bibl ap vat.jpg|thumb|Page, with illustration of Music, from ''[[De nuptiis|Marriage of Mercury and Philology]]'']]

In the [[Renaissance]], the Italian humanists and their Northern counterparts, despite in many respects continuing the traditions of the Middle Ages, reversed that process.<ref>G. Norton ed., ''The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Vol 3'' (1999)p. 46 and pp. 601–4</ref> Re-christening the old trivium with a new and more ambitious name: {{lang|la|[[Humanitas|Studia humanitatis]]}}, and also increasing its scope, they downplayed logic as opposed to the traditional Latin grammar and rhetoric, and added to them history, Greek, and moral philosophy (ethics), with a new emphasis on poetry as well.<ref>Paul Oskar Kristeller, ''Renaissance Thought II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts'' (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), p. 178.</ref> The [[Humanities|educational curriculum of humanism]] spread throughout Europe during the sixteenth century and became the educational foundation for the schooling of European elites, the functionaries of political administration, the clergy of the various legally recognized churches, and the learned professions of law and medicine.<ref>Charles G. Nauert, ''Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (New Approaches to European History)'' (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 172–173.</ref> The ideal of a liberal arts, or humanistic education grounded in [[Classics|classical languages and literature]], persisted in Europe until the middle of the twentieth century; in the United States, it had come under increasingly successful attack in the late 19th century by academics interested in reshaping American higher education around the natural and social sciences.<ref>Bod, Rens; ''A New History of the Humanities'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014.</ref><ref>Adler, Eric; ''The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2020, p. 59.</ref>

Similarly, [[Wilhelm von Humboldt]]'s [[Humboldtian model of higher education|educational model]] in [[Prussia]] (now Germany), which later became the role model for higher education also in North America, went beyond vocational training. In a letter to the Prussian king, he wrote:
{{blockquote|There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life.<ref>As quoted in Profiles of educators: Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) by Karl-Heinz Günther (1988), {{doi|10.1007/BF02192965}}</ref>}}
The philosopher [[Julian Nida-Rümelin]] has criticized discrepancies between Humboldt's ideals and the contemporary European education policy, which narrowly understands education as a preparation for the labor market, arguing that we need to decide between "[[James Oscar McKinsey|McKinsey]] and Humboldt".<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.zeit.de/2009/45/Bachelor-Kritik|title=Bologna-Prozess: Die Chance zum Kompromiss ist da|last=Nida-Rümelin|first=Julian|date=29 October 2009|work=[[Die Zeit]]|language=de|access-date=29 November 2015}}</ref>