What is a Liberal Arts Education?

And Why Should Everyone Have one?

“Then let us not leave the meaning of education ambiguous or ill-defined. At present, when we speak in terms of praise or blame about the bringing-up of each person, we call one man educated and another uneducated, although the uneducated man may be sometimes very well educated for the calling of a retail trader, or of a captain of a ship, and the like. For we are not speaking of education in this narrower sense, but of that other education in virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and how to obey. This is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name; that other sort of training, which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all.”

-Plato

There are seven liberal arts and these are divided between the language arts of the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric) and the mathematical arts of the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy). In the medieval system of education a complete Liberal Arts education was considered preliminary to the highest areas of study, namely, Philosophy and Theology. This idea of needing a complete education prior to studying the highest things is actually much older than the Middle Ages. It is said that above the door of Plato’s school in Athens it was written “Let none but geometers enter here.”¹ Throughout the classical and medieval world the language and mathematical arts were taught together, equally valued as indispensable preparation for questions concerning truth, justice, the nature of reality, and the nature of God (or the gods). Without a liberal arts education one would simply lack the tools necessary to attempt to climb to the summit of such matters.

A brief word on the Trivium:

The trivium’s purpose is to make students into masters of language. The purpose of Grammar is to teach students how to fit words together in sentences so as to clearly convey ideas from one person to another. The purpose of Logic is to teach students how to combine various propositions (statements) into sets in order to draw new conclusions or demonstrate the truth of an assertion (claim). The purpose of Rhetoric is to teach students the art of persuasion by means of the written and spoken word.²

A brief Word on the Quadrivium:

The quadrivium accounts for what moderns typically call the maths and sciences. The purpose of Arithmetic is to acquaint students with the concept of numbers in the abstract. Arithmetic teaches numbers and their relationships to one another, the notion that numbers may represent material things, that numbers are themselves represented materially by symbols (e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc.) and words (e.g. one, two, three, or uno, dose, tres, etc.), but that they are actually immaterial ideas built into the universe because they are. Geometry moves from numbers as abstract concept and applies numbers extending into three-dimensional space. As such matters of measurement, angles and their relations, and theorems for drawing conclusions based upon previously established facts³, are all considered. To modern thinkers Music may seem out of place in this list. Nevertheless, music is the measurement of number in time. Numbers need not be thought of as static things but things which may move through time, speeding up and slowing down. Finally Astronomy is the study of number in space and time together. The calculation of distances between heavenly bodies and the orbits of the same in relation to one another shows us how bodies simultaneously traverse distances and time.

The seven liberal arts together show a kind of unity in the diversity of human learning. The interconnectedness of each of these separate disciplines, which turn out not to be very separate at all, points to the unity of the mind of the maker. Each of these arts explores God’s creation. The Trivium explores man himself, inwardly, as image bearers who think and speak and who do so, in real respect, because they are like the God who spoke the universe into being and manifested his Word in the person of Jesus Christ. The world external to man is explored in the Quadrivium. God made the universe to be searchable, knowable, mathematically quantifiable, and logical because it reflects himself, the source of all truth. The master of the liberal arts is already doing philosophy and theology long before they realize it and long before those are taken up as additional disciplines in the proper sense.

Not only were the liberal arts historically considered preparatory for the study of philosophy and theology but they were also considered the kind of studies which liberated (made free) those who studied them. One who learned the liberal arts had actually acquired the tools of learning themselves. A liberally educated person could go on to teach themselves anything else he or she might wish to know and therefore take up any number of professions in private or public life.

The liberal arts are to be contrasted with the servile arts. Servile arts are things which we may call trades (e.g. bricklaying, house building, farming, etc.). At this point lies danger and misunderstanding (the mother of offense). It is not that learning a trade is somehow lowly, demeaning, unworthy, or unimportant in itself. As Luther talks about concerning vocation all work done for God’s glory is good. Tradesmen are incredibly important to a strong and healthy society. We need those who specialize in numerous different areas. Further we might reasonably hope that our surgeon spends the better part of his time perfecting his technique in removing cancer over and against his interest in stamp collecting. We need specialists who are doctors, electricians, barbers, road layers, I.T. professionals, etc.

No, there is nothing bad or wrong about being a tradesman or specialist of any sort. The only problem with highly specialized training is when it is the only kind of education a person receives. A person who only knows one thing (e.g. how to lay brick properly) is a slave to his trade. Throughout history (ancient to modern) slaves have been taught to be highly skilled laborers (quite incredible craftsmanship can still be seen thousands of years hence) in certain areas and this was very productive and useful to society. It was not, of course, particularly great for the dignity of those image bearers who deserved better treatment. There are numerous stories throughout history (ancient to modern) of slaves who gained a liberal arts education and who became free. In some cases they became free in the fullest and legal sense of the term, in other cases they at least became free of mind and elevated in dignity despite their continued slavery of body. Fredrick Douglas is a relatively recent historical example whereas Aesop would be a more classical example and many other examples could be cited. A liberal arts education makes a person capable of reading and writing well, thinking clearly, and persuasively expressing their ideas and arguments. A people thus educated are hard to enslave and slaves who gain this education are hard to keep enslaved.

There is, of course, absolutely nothing keeping a liberally educated person from learning useful technical trades (nor is there anything lowly or servile about doing so). It does not, however, work equally the other direction. With this in mind it bears the question, “What kind of education should be offered to those who bear the image of God?”

The answer should be obvious. We should give our children (all of our children) a liberal arts education. The modern craze towards technical training in the lower forms of school is merely a recipe for slavery. Many parents, understandably, want their children to get gainful employment that pays well and the modern world tends to value professions centered around S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and so there is an ever growing movement to make specialized training the primary offering in K-12 schools.

But consider the pitfalls of this approach. First, what if the specific trade a person learns becomes outmoded or no longer in demand? If that is all a person knows how to do then they face a dire situation. Second, what if an injury results in inability to perform a necessary function of the given trade a person has learned? Again, a dire situation. Yet these are not the most disastrous effects of moving towards highly technical training instead of liberal education.

The most tragic effects of highly specialized training, to the exclusion of a liberal education, is the effect it will have on the soul of the students and of our nation as a whole. What good is life, even a life with lots of money, if our only purpose is to work, produce a good or service, and then come home, watch television, and start over? Indeed, what good is a person who finds themselves no longer able to produce or be profitable if production rather than people is what is ultimately valued in the world? A liberal arts education feeds the soul with “unnecessary things” like art, music, literature, history, philosophy, and theology. These, in turn, inspire the imagination and create a desire to know and understand and thank God for the true, good, and beautiful things in this world (and to fight for their preservation).

Narrow training in a single skill makes for one dimensional people. People who have nothing in common with anyone except those who do exactly what they do. This kind of specialization makes for a broken people who cannot speak to one another because they have no common vocabulary, no common stories, no common assumptions. It makes a people who hole up in their houses and never talk to their neighbors (and maybe even makes them fearful of one another). A liberally educated people is a united people who share in common a certain core which allows for the meaningful exchange of ideas. One person might be a school teacher, another a grocery store manager, another a construction worker, another a pastor, an accountant, or a homeschool mom, but all of them would be able to speak meaningfully to each other. They could know something about what the others also know. They would draw from the same well even while pouring out their work into different streams.

We should manfully resist the push towards the modern sort of education which has displaced liberal learning for increasingly narrow technical training. We should certainly resist the underlying assumptions of modern education that suggest people are only to be valued based upon their ability to produce useful goods (survival value for the species) rather than recognizing people as intrinsically valuable. We should seek to offer a liberal education to all children. Those children may grow up to pursue any kind of work or trade they like thereafter. There is no shame in working with your hands, it is good honest work. There is much shame in giving people no choice what they do with their lives because they are pigeonholed into a trade and have no ability to do otherwise.

Such narrowly trained people are those who are easily controlled by those who are not. This point should not go unnoticed.

Many of the same people pushing for public education to become job training are themselves benefitting from being more liberally educated. We should not allow our citizenry to walk down the primrose path to slavery. Every child should be offered the chance to master the arts of language and mathematics so that they may pursue whatever course they please. We need those who will go on to more advanced liberal educations in the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels, becoming politicians, historians, lawyers, philosophers, pastors, etc. We need those who will gain specialized technical training and work in construction, I.T., food production, performing arts, various medical fields, etc. Most of all, we need a free people. We need image bearers who can think for themselves and separate truth from falsehood. We need people who can appreciate what is true, good, and beautiful, live life, enjoy friendships, love their neighbors, pursue hobbies, and who can speak to their neighbors with love, understanding, and sympathy.

Such a people will be a prosperous people. Such a people will not be easily enslaved to anyone.

1. For those who hate Math this might as well read the same as Dante’s inscription above the gates of hell, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

2. In each case it would be fair to say Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric are more than these simple definitions but they are certainly not less. These definitions are also meant to serve the reader’s understanding as to how they relate and differ from one another.

3. Hence geometry and logic go hand and hand. Geometrical theorems are basically just syllogism of logic in mathematics terms. Logic plays a unique middle ground between language and mathematics and depending on what area of logic you are studying it variously feels more like the study of grammar and language or the study of mathematical equations.