Bachelor of
Liberal Studies

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Liberal Studies & the Liberal Arts

"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 multi-disciplinary Liberal Studies Program at AASU is dedicated to fostering the ideals of a liberal education.  Such ideals include the ability to think critically, to communicate effectively, to become aware of the vast extent and variety of our accumulated experience and knowledge, and to study at least one subject well enough to appreciate its subtlety and complexity. 

A liberal education is commonly associated with education in the liberal arts.  What, then, are the liberal arts, and what is the relation of the liberal arts disciplines to one another and to higher education as a whole?  Consider Mortimer Adler's response to these questions:

Let us first be clear about the meaning of the liberal arts and liberal educations. The liberal arts are traditionally intended to develop the faculties of the human mind, those powers of intelligence and imagination without which no intellectual work can be accomplished. 

The liberal-arts tradition goes back to the medieval curriculum. It consisted of two parts. The first part, trivium, comprised grammar, rhetoric, and logic.  It taught the arts of reading and writing, of listening and speaking, and of sound thinking. The other part, the quadrivium, consisted of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (not audible music, but music conceived as a mathematical science).  It taught the arts of observation, calculation, and measurement, how to apprehend the quantitative aspect of things.   Nowadays, of course, we would add many more sciences, natural and social. . . .   

The aim of liberal education, however, is not to produce scientists.  It seeks to develop free human beings who know how to use their minds and are able to think for themselves.  Its primary aim is not the development of professional competence, although a liberal education is indispensable for any intellectual profession.  It produces citizens who can exercise their political liberty responsibly. 

Though it is the most wide-ranging undergraduate major at Armstrong Atlantic, Liberal Studies is not, of course, the only major concerned with fostering the values of a liberal education.  Students who wish to focus their upper-division studies in a particular academic area are strongly encouraged to do so.     However, if you are still trying to decide whether the Liberal Studies program suits your particular goals and interests, consider the ideas and arguments discussed in the following online article:


"On the Purpose of a Liberal Education,"
      by Robert Harris (March 1991)

Further discussions of the meaning and purpose of a liberal education can be found at the AASU Faculty Forum Archives: The Idea of a University--Here and Now.




e-mail: richard_nordquist@armstrong.edu  03 Jul 2008