The liberal arts (Artes Liberales) are a curriculum that imparts general knowledge and develops the student’s rational thought and intellectual capabilities, unlike the professional, vocational, and technical curricula emphasizing specialization. The contemporary liberal arts comprise studying literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science.
However, in classical antiquity, it denoted the education worthy of a free person (Latin: liber, ‘free’). Contrary to popular belief, freeborn girls were as likely to receive formal education as boys, especially during the Roman Empire—unlike the lack-of-education, or purely manual/technical skills, proper to a slave. The ‘liberal arts’ or ‘liberal pursuits’ were already so called in formal education during the Roman Empire.
The subjects that would become the standard “Liberal Arts” in Roman and Medieval times already comprised the basic curriculum in the enkuklios paideia or ‘education in a circle’ of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece. In the 5th century CE, Martianus Capella defined the seven Liberal Arts as: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In the medieval Western university, the seven liberal arts were divided in two parts: the Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy).
Mathematics, science, arts, and language are all parts of the liberal arts. In the middle ages, the liberal arts were synonymous with introductory courses in branches of the sciences, mathematics, and in the study of writing. Some subsections of the liberal arts are trivium-the verbal arts- logic, grammar, and rhetoric, and quadrivium-the numerical arts- mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy. Analyzing and interpreting information is also studied. Experience in Liberal Arts gives experience forming and expressing well rounded opinions.
In the United States, Liberal arts colleges are schools emphasizing 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, Engineering, business, law, medicine, theology). The teaching is Socratic, typically with small classes, and often boasts a lower teacher-to-student ratio than at large 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.
The Daily Omnivore 
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