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What is a Liberal Education?

The first part of the Lyceum curriculum addresses students as men distinguished from all other animals by their reason. To perfect the reason, The Lyceum teaches the seven liberal arts of classical antiquity. These arts are divided into two groups; the Trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the Quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

The Lyceum places special emphasis upon the first three liberal arts, by which we are taught how to use words well. The Grammar course treats of the construction of a correct sentence, (either a statement, question, command, prayer, or exhortation,) the Rhetoric course gives students both the theory and the weekly practice of the use of words to persuade others, especially a political assembly or a jury; and the Logic course treats of the use of words in order to learn, especially to define things and to reason correctly about them. In addition to these arts, The Lyceum offers courses in Latin, Greek, the Sciences and the Humanities.

Although it is possible to learn the content of these subjects by simple instruction, it is precisely in the way these subjects are learned that the perfection of one's reason is achieved. At The Lyceum, the "Socratic seminar" method is adopted in all classes. To a great extent, and whenever the subject matter is within their capacity, students read either original texts or excerpts from original texts. These texts, written by the greatest minds of Western Civilization, teach both by content and example. As students of these original teachers sit around tables, (rather than at desks,) they are encouraged to take part in class discussions. Lyceum tutors do not lecture, but carefully guide and coach these discussions. In this way, students at The Lyceum learn to think for themselves and to adopt the tools of learning that will last them throughout their lives.

The usefulness of such an education might be questioned, but The Lyceum and thousands of schools over thousands of years have held that it is precisely by the study of these 'impractical' arts that the student acquires a skill which proves to be most useful to him throughout his life. The student of the liberal arts learns how to learn. Any education may give students knowledge, but a liberal education gives students the tools needed to acquire knowledge. The student who is unable to acquire knowledge for himself is perpetually enslaved by his own ignorance, but the man who knows how to know is liberated from it. The necessity of such an education is perhaps best explained by Robert M. Hutchins, the co-founder of the Great Books movement:

The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one, or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining. The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal artist or a good one.

The liberal artist learns to read, write, speak, listen, understand, and think. He learns to reckon, measure, and manipulate matter, quantity, and motion in order to predict, produce and exchange. As we live in the tradition, whether we know it or not, so we are all liberal artists, whether we know it or not. We all practice the liberal arts, well or badly, all the time every day. As we should understand the [Western] tradition as well as we can in order to understand ourselves, so we should be as good liberal artists as we can in order to become as fully human as we can.

"I came that you might have life, and have it to the full."
The liberal arts, when learned in lively discussion of the Great Books, help to perfect man's intellect by teaching him how to think. The proper use of reason, however, is not sufficient for the fulfillment of our nature. We may, by use of reason alone, come to know many truths, i.e. that God exists, the soul is immortal, and that effects proceed from their causes. But the sure guide to learning what to think, and indeed the fullness of truth, is found in Christ. To be fully human we must look to the person of Jesus Christ, who is not only the greatest teacher of truth, but who is Truth itself.

The Lyceum Mission, Part II: The Lyceum in the Light of Christ
The Lyceum Mission, Part III: Goodness,Truth and Beauty - Building a Culture of Life