Webster Defines Education

Noah Webster, remembered for his dictionary, was one of the Founding Fathers. "Liberal," of course, had a different meaning back then.

"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should
be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge
of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American
youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them
with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable
attachment to their own country."

-- Noah Webster (On Education of Youth in America, 1790)

Reference: The Learning of Liberty, Prangle and Prangle (126);
original Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, Harry Warfel (42)