The True Liberal Arts Education

Dwight Hunter,
Library Assistant at Chattanooga State
Technical Community College, TN

o what are "liberal arts" supposed to be? Unfortunately, for so many people in college learning how to apply writing skills, the traditional liberal arts programs are ignored for other programs. Instead, liberal arts has become to mean core required courses for freshmen. The traditional liberal arts were grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.

The first three were called the trivium. All writers and other communicators should receive a fundamental training in the trivium. Few writers today get a solid foundation in the trivium, and it shows in menus, advertisements, essays, research papers, and the list could continue. Grammar, logic and rhetoric can be applied every day; the trivium is truly a good, solid liberal arts education.