At Saint Constantine College, we follow the classical Liberal Arts model of education in a robust and intentional way. When people hear the term Liberal Arts, they might pause and wonder about that word liberal: isn't that a political term? Are colleges that focus on the liberal arts trying to make all their students vote a certain way? Well, "liberal" can be used as a political term, and some colleges do try to influence their students to vote in a certain way, but that's not how we use the word "liberal" at Saint Constantine College. Maybe it would be more helpful to call the kind of education we do "Liberating Arts." For, as Professor Zena Hitz says, the Liberal Arts are those arts which make men free.

Which arts are the liberal arts, and how do they liberate us? It might be helpful to distinguish the liberal arts from what are sometimes called the mechanical arts. The mechanical arts include agriculture, architecture, hunting, cooking, and blacksmithing. These are very practical, even necessary arts for the material needs of a culture. But the liberal arts are of another order. There are, traditionally, seven liberal arts: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. It is the practice of these seven arts which fit a human being to fully and freely participate in human culture in all its dimensions, especially the political and religious dimensions. We find these arts listed as essential human studies all the way back in Plato's Republic. And study of the liberal arts went on to be seen as necessary for the Roman senator, the member of Parliament, and the American Congressman. The liberal arts have also been seen, since the early Christian period, as a necessary preparation for the study of theology, or, even, the priesthood. 

But why these arts, and how do they free us? The first three liberal arts are often called the Trivium: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, and they are necessary arts to study in order to use words well. Grammar gives us the fundamental meanings and usages of words. Logic provides us with rules and structures for ordered thinking and argumentation, and Rhetoric apprentices us in those techniques of beauty and persuasion which put a crown on the fundamentals gained in the study of Grammar and Logic. At Saint Constantine, we see the most important texts to study for the acquisition of the Trivium as the Great Books, particularly those classic works of Literature, Philosophy, History, and Politics that have proven foundational to the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. It is through reading, discussing, and imitating in their own writing the works of Homer, Cicero, Augustine, and others that the student is apprenticed in Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric at the undergraduate level. Through this apprenticeship they are freed from ignorance in their mind, error in their reasoning, and ugliness in their speech. 

As for the last four Liberal Arts, often called the Quadrivium, they are united around the proper understanding and usage of number. Arithmetic is analogous to Grammar in the Trivium in that one learns the basic meanings and usages of number. In Geometry the student encounters number in space; in Music the student studies number in time; and in Astronomy, highest of the liberal arts, the student explores number in space and time. Just as the arts of the Trivium free students from ignorance, error, and disorder in regards to words, so the Quadrivium frees them from these downfalls in regards to number. In astronomy especially, students are given the liberty of a vast vision of the heavens, the stars, and the universe itself; and such vision, such contemplation is not possible without the building blocks of arithmetic and geometry. 

It is the liberally educated human who is, most of all, fit to live in, thrive in, and lead a free society. There is a reason that dictators and tyrants throughout history have stripped their people of a liberal education and put in its place simple indoctrination. The human whose soul has been equipped by the great models of the ages to reason, to reckon, and to know is not someone who is easily easily duped or imprisoned. They have been liberated by a liberating education.