Author: Martin Cothran

Martin Cothran is the Director of the Classical Latin School Association and the editor of Memoria Press's Classical Teacher magazine. He is the author of several books for private and home schools, including Memoria Press's Traditional Logic, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric programs, as well as Lingua Biblica: Old Testament Stories in Latin. He is a former Latin, Logic, and Rhetoric Instructor at Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds a B.A. in philosophy and economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an M.A. in Christian Apologetics from the Simon Greenleaf School (now part of Trinity University). He is widely-quoted on educational issues and other issues of public importance, and is a frequent guest on Kentucky Educational Television's "Kentucky Tonight," a weekly public affairs program. His articles on current events have appeared in numerous newspapers, including the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Scientific Hubris: Why Science Can’t Answer All the Big Questions

Big Think has printed another of a class of essays written by scientists, common these days, announcing in triumphant tones all the things that science can do outside its particular and limited domain. Almost without exception, these essays, which implicitly aspire to philosophical eloquence, fly too close to the sun. The only difference being that, while Icarus …

By Martin Cothran October 8, 2018 Classical Education No Comments

Plant Blindness: Why Scientists Who Know Nature Are Becoming an Endangered Species

“The U.S. is running short of people who can tell the forest from the trees.” So says a recent Wall Street Journal article that is at least partly indicative of the fate of science education in the U.S. in recent years. It tells of the growing problem of “plant blindness,” the term used among botanists …

By Martin Cothran September 5, 2018 Science No Comments

3 Classical Terms

I have given many speeches and written many articles on the subject of what classical education is. One of the things I have realized in doing so is that, among the many impediments to understanding what classical education is, there is the simple problem of the lack of clarity in the words we use to …

By Martin Cothran July 18, 2018 Classical Education, Late Summer 2018 1 Comment

Science’s Useful Fallacy

The expression “the science is settled” has been invoked as a way to end numerous discussions of scientific importance. On issues involving evolution, dietary science, or exercise physiology, it is not uncommon for one side to claim that the research has settled the issue. But, however much evidence there may be for any particular scientific …

By Martin Cothran July 17, 2018 Classical Education No Comments

Letter from the Editor: Late Summer 2018

I was talking with a homeschool mother recently and she told me that she had visited Britain. She was particularly impressed with Hadrian’s Wall, which was built during the Roman occupation of the island. Hadrian’s Wall is made of stone and runs some 84 miles, from Wallsend on the River Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway in the …

By Martin Cothran July 16, 2018 Late Summer 2018, Letter from the Editor No Comments

Humanism Is Not the Problem

What precisely is Western culture? In a nutshell, it is the civilization that derives from the cultures of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, that was conquered and transformed by Christianity, and which has been handed down through the centuries by an education system which in more recent times has been referred to as “classical education.” These …

By Martin Cothran June 1, 2018 Classical Education, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher 2 Comments

Stephen Hawking’s Many Universes

Stephen Hawking once pronounced that he thought his brain was little more than a computer and that, because of this, he was unafraid to die: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story …

By Martin Cothran May 30, 2018 Logic, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Letter from the Editor: Summer 2018

What does reason have to do with faith? What does the intellectual have to do with the spiritual? What does philosophy have to do with Christianity? These are questions that Tertullian, one of the early fathers of the Church, summed up when he asked, “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s question seems to …

By Martin Cothran May 29, 2018 Letter from the Editor, Summer 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

Classical Education is More Than a Method

If you were to ask most classical educators what classical education is, you would find them hard-pressed to give a short, coherent answer. That is the way with a lot of movements: It’s easy to get swept up in the enthusiasm, but when asked to formulate what it is that excites you, it’s hard to …

By Martin Cothran April 1, 2018 Classical Education, Spring 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments

The Four Questions You Can Ask About Anything

The most basic thing we can ask about anything is “What is it?” Young children explicitly ask this question all the time. But even adults do it, although they may not do it explicitly, or even think about doing it at all. We ask this about words we don’t know, and things we encounter for …

By Martin Cothran March 30, 2018 Logic, Spring 2018, The Classical Teacher No Comments