Martin Cothran

Martin Cothran

Contributor

Martin Cothran is the editor of Classical Teacher magazine, published by Memoria Press, and the director of the Classical Latin School Association.

Recent blog posts by this author

The Electoral College Is No Accident

The Electoral College has now done its work and confirmed the results of the presidential election. But not before another election in which the candidate who received the most votes lost and caused it to become the object of a debate about the...

The Best Writing Program? Math and Latin

In her recent article at Intellectual Takeout, Annie Holmquist gives three reasons why college freshman can't write, a problem that is the topic of constant complaint of college professors. Her reasons are good: They are not receiving good...

Kellyanne Conway and the Brave New Feminist World

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, children are raised collectively in institutions rather than nurtured by their mothers. In fact, motherhood is frowned upon. I was reminded of this last week, when Kellyanne Conway announced her decision not...

Why Students Need the Books Schools Don't Want Them to Read

When I was in school, we had to hide the trashy literature inside the classic books we were supposed to be reading. Now kids have to hide the classic books inside the trashy ones. Not only are schools now increasingly willing to replace classic...

Why School Choice Won't Fix Education

President-Elect Donald Trump has announced Betsy DeVos as his choice to head the U.S. Department of Education. The pick is a clear signal that the Trump administration is intent on pursuing school choice, a fact that the wailing and gnashing of...

Schools Shouldn't Replace Classic Lit with 'Young Adult' Fiction

In his homily last Sunday—the first Sunday of Advent—my pastor brought up Charles Dickens' classic Christmas story, A Christmas Carol. He looked around at the young people in the congregation and said, "I'm sure you all read that in school, right...

The Real Reason for the Anti-Trump Demonstrations

The anti-Trump demonstrations we now see in the streets are not just examples of the immaturity of many modern secular liberals, who seem to think that everyone else is somehow obligated to agree with them. They’re also a symptom of the distorted...

How an Ancient Philosopher Predicted the 2016 Election

Many people depend upon polls to predict the outcome of elections. What pollsters do appeals to all the prejudices of the post-Enlightenment modern mind: They employ a distinctive technique (thank you Rene Descartes), they focus on empirical...

'You Want Racial Politics? We’ll Give You Racial Politics!'

Get out the Doritos. Pop the top on your Bud Light. Go down to your man cave, plop down on your La-Z-Boy, invite your friends over and turn on the Packers game. Here come the White people. CNN commentator Van Jones, clearly upset by the...

Why Our Culture is So Fascinated by Monsters

I have always wondered why our culture our culture is so fascinated by evil and darkness. When Dante appears on high school reading lists it is always in the form of his Inferno, but never his Purgatorio or Paradiso. One of the biggest...