What subjects are considered liberal arts?
I’m going to school for my career as a journalist and photographer, also to minor in philosophy, religion, world culture, creative writing, japanese linguistics and hopefully russian linguistics
anyways, could you tell me if I would go to a liberal arts college for these? I’m talking about either a branch of a college as the liberal arts or should the whole school is considered liberal arts.
thanks. it’s important.
Most good colleges offer both BA (Bachelor of Arts) and BS (Bachelor of Science) degrees. If journalism is your goal, you might want to check out which schools have the best journalism or english departments. Univ of Chicago and Columbia U. come to mind, but you really need top grades for those. Anyway, best of luck.
The traditional liberal arts are: grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy.
The term is used in a modern sense to refer to all of the arts and sciences but not the professions (business, education, engineering, etc..)
A liberal arts college is one that has a philosophy that college students should receive a well rounded education that includes what most of us call “general education” as a significant component as opposed to a vocational or occupational education.
It doesn’t mean that they only teach the traditional or modern liberal arts – it means that every student will receive a strong education in those subjects in addition to their major.
The liberal arts college of a university is simply the arm of that university that teaches courses in the liberal arts to all students of that university.
Journalism is a professional field though often found in the English department. The others you mention would be among the liberal arts.
If you think that every college graduate should have taken several courses in composition, math, sciences, social sciences, history, language, etc… in addition to his major then you support a liberal arts education. If you think all of those are “Mickey Mouse courses” or a waste of time that would be better spent learning to do a job then you support vocational/professional education.
You can get a liberal arts education in either a liberal arts college or at a university. You don’t generally get the vocational/professional education at a liberal arts college.
In your case, just about every college of both types will offer the majors/minors you’re considering.
I’d say though – at a good liberal arts program you’d be taking those “minor” courses you have listed as part of your general education whether you wanted to learn them or not.
Note: “Liberal” in this use has nothing at all to do with the Liberal-Conservative political spectrum. In this use, ‘liberal’ means that the intent is to impart general knowledge and teach you to think. ‘Professional’ is used to mean the intent is to teach you the specifics of how to do a job.
It is just the opposite of traditional art. If you take a brush and paint in anything and show it to others with a topic or title with everyone coming with different ideas then you can boast that is liberal for the sake of an example otherwise if there is rule what is the canvas what sort of ink you use or what is the genre then it may not be considered liberal. There is a literal and figurative answer also like if you draw a nude picture which is not acceptable to your religious friend he may not consider it a liberal one due to his or her conservative nature. When you show the same to a person who is jaded with pornography s/he too won’t consider it liberal! Ironic?