General Education Reform General Education Terms
General education
The part of a liberal education curriculum shared by all students. It provides broad exposure to multiple disciplines and forms the basis for developing important intellectual and civic capacities.
Liberal education
A philosophy of education that empowers individuals, liberates the mind from ignorance, and cultivates social responsibility. Characterized by challenging encounters with important issues, and more a way of studying than specific content, liberal education can occur at all types of colleges and universities. General Education and
an expectation of in-depth study in at least one field normally comprise liberal education.
Liberal arts
Specific disciplines (the humanities, social sciences, and sciences).
Liberal arts colleges
A particular institutional type-often small, often residential-that facilitates close interaction between faculty and students, while grounding its curriculum in the liberal arts disciplines.
Artes Liberales
Historically, the basis for the modern liberal arts; the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric).