True Freedom and the Liberal Arts



How does one rise above a society which believes liberty to be license and MTV to be the ultimate art? The liberal arts set students on the path of true freedom within the absolutes of the arts. Ave Maria University has taken the liberal arts as its patron and has established a two-year core curriculum for students to follow before entering into their major-specific courses. The core curriculum lays a foundation upon which all disciplines are built. Much more than mere job training that tends to be fragmentary, Ave Maria hopes to provide for students the formation to find the ultimate truth which governs all. The unity of the curriculum provides students, by virtue of the liberal arts, a sense of wholeness.

It is not that any one university has created a curriculum such that the courses will relate to one another by means of human endeavor. It is simply that within each class, students seek universal truth. That truth is bound to be taken up in all that is studied. Jesus told us that the truth will set us free. So ultimately, it is the search for truth that will give people the freedom for which they are longing.

From a student’s perspective the liberal arts are exactly what young people are looking for and what they need. Patience DeMasi, a junior at Ave Maria, said that the liberal arts “take all different aspects of learning and brings them together so you can see and experience learning as a whole. This shows the truth about life. You cannot take one thing and over emphasize it. You have to take it all together, each thing in its proper place, so that you get the whole view of the human person. Seeing the human person in their entirety is so important in our day and age, in the modern world, which tends more to break the person down into different parts: how smart, how healthy, how active you are. Whereas in order to understand the dignity of the human person you have to be able to see the person as a whole as God created him and as God intended him to be seen.”

The 350+ students at Ave Maria are excited to be a part of this renewal of the liberal arts education. This is the University’s third year in Naples, Florida and is continuing to steadily grow and develop. The Admissions Office would like to invite prospective students to visit our campus experience the vibrant academic, spiritual, and social life. This November 4-6 the Admissions Office is hosting an Open House for high school students who are interested in Ave Maria. Contact Ave Maria University or call toll free 1-877-AVE-UNIV for more information or register for this event. Individual visits are also encouraged at any time.

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