Six basic abilities that China ancient Confucianism required students to master: courtesy, music, shooting, command, calligraphy and number. From "Zhou Li? Bao said: "To educate the son of the country by Tao is to teach six arts: one is five rites, the other is six music, the third is five shots, the fourth is five orders, the fifth is six books, and the sixth is nine numbers. "This is the six arts of the Five Classics and Six Arts. The modern interpretation of the six arts includes six skills, such as "courtesy, music, shooting, imperial, calligraphy and number".

The liberal arts in universities include seven courses: logic, grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, astronomy and music, which are called "seven arts" internationally.

The origin of the Seven Arts can be traced back to ancient Greece. Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, divided subjects into two categories: primary and advanced according to the principle of "exercising with gymnastics and cultivating the mind with music". Primary school physical education class includes games and several sports; In addition to music and dance in a narrow sense, music in primary school subjects also includes cultural subjects such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Advanced subjects mainly include arithmetic, geometry, music theory and astronomy.