>The distinction between the liberal arts and philosophy thus contains in germ the distinction between what we now mean by gymnasial and university education. It is of course true that the liberal arts were not always spoken of consistently, and that the practice of Greek writers may be compared in general with the varying modern use of the word “education,” but it is no less true that to the Greeks the liberal arts primarily meant the circle of school studies.

In fact they are often identical with school education itself, so that the saying of Pythagoras, “Education must come before philosophy,” meant to the Greeks that training in the liberal arts must precede the higher culture. Philosophy also, as the goal of the earlier studies, is not infrequently styled a liberal art, sometimes the only truly liberal art. Thus Aristotle affirms, “It alone of the sciences is liberal, because it exists solely for its own sake and is not to be pursued for any extraneous advantage.” The studies which came to be regarded as liberal arts were grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. It is not clearly known when each of these began to be considered as a school study, or how many of them were commonly so pursued, or that they were the only liberal arts. The Greeks did not formulate an unalterably fixed body of studies, seven in number. No list of seven arts nor any mention of seven as the number of liberal arts is to be found in the Greek writers. However there was an order which they were pursued, and the first three, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, were preparatory studies which were generally pursued in the order stated. The other four disciplines usually came later, and it is probable that only a portion of those who had com- pleted their grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics passed on to the music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy

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Public schools should teach kids how to draw from observation at the very least. People are visually illiterate. Same goes for music.