Martin Cothran's Classical Rhetoric Course - anyone used this?

[LisaNY]

I was just reading through the latest MP catalog, and read about the Classical Rhetoric course. I'd love to use this for my own self-study. I like how it incorporates the Rhetorics and Poetics of Aristotle.

Has anyone used this program?

[Faithr]

I have not used it, but I own it and I was thinking of using it next year with my 11th grader. I'm a little intimdated by it but I think it would a great thing to work through. It looks very well organized.

[lwilliams1922]

bumping for more replies

[Faithr]

I'll update my response! We gave up. To our little brains it was unintelligible! Everything was very choppy and very dry. After a month we gave up.

I have decided that the only things I've ever liked from Memoria Press are the copybooks and their editions of Famous Men. Every other darn thing I've tried from them (Latina Christiana, workbooks that go with FM, Traditional Logic and now Rhetoric) has fallen flat as a pancake.

Sorry to not be more helpful!

[MomsintheGarden]

I used Classical Rhetoric with my oldest. Poor kid - he was always the guinea pig for my curriculum guesses. We both thought it was boring, and neither of us liked How to Read a Book (used in the course). We liked Aristotle's Rhetoric and Figures of Speech, though (the other two books used in the course).

On the plus side, we found Classical Rhetoric much easier to understand (though still difficult) than Material Logic. We thought ML was incomprehensible, even after Intro & Intermediate Logic from Canon Press.

I think the MP courses are geared more toward language-arts-type-thinking folks. We are more math-and-science-type folks here, and prefer Introductory and Intermediate Logic from Canon Press to the MP Logic courses. I wish CP had a Rhetoric course (with DVDS!). For Rhetoric, my second-oldest self-studied for the AP English Language and Composition exam. She learned and practiced using many rhetorical devices in the essays she wrote last year for that course. She also read works by C.S. Lewis, who was classically educated, and Darwin's Black Box, which uses many persuasive rhetorical techniques. This study was a good fit for her.

For my younger children, I am waiting to see how the Classical Writing upper levels turn out to see if they will work for us when teaching rhetoric. I also looked at the IEW Rhetoric book, but it wasn't what I wanted. The book basically tried to fit rhetoric into the IEW structure and style, but we've used so much IEW in our school that I felt it would just be more of the same.

Sorry to not be of more help!
GardenMom

[Kathy in Richmond]

I think the MP courses are geared more toward language-arts-type-thinking folks. We are more math-and-science-type folks here, and prefer Introductory and Intermediate Logic from Canon Press to the MP Logic courses.
GardenMom

:iagree: Same experience here! We are also a math/science family. My ds and I made it through How To Read a Book and about half of Classical Rhetoric. We finally gave up...didn't do it at all with my dd. She learned about rhetorical devices in AP Language instead; much more effective!

~Kathy

[Martha in NM]

Hello Lisa,

We used this in a small co-op with one other family, and while we liked it it's easy to see how it could be perceived as dry. The core of the Cothran text is a guide to reading and applying Aristotle's Rhetoric to several literary examples. There are, of course, other ways to approach reading Aristotle. Prior to using the curriculum our co-op had also done Traditional Logic I & II, Material Logic, and then read Mortimer Adler's Aristotle for Everybody. That last book is helpful in establishing the context and IMO ought to be a prerequisite for Cothran's text for anyone who's not already familiar with Aristotle's works.

If you're looking at this as a self-ed project and want some structure then I'd give it a thumbs-up! It wouldn't even be necessary to do all the extras, but we enjoyed the Quinn book on figures of speech.

Martha

I have not seen the latest Memoria Press publication and it may be that they've made changes which might make my comments obsolete!

[LisaNY]

Hello Lisa,

We used this in a small co-op with one other family, and while we liked it it's easy to see how it could be perceived as dry. The core of the Cothran text is a guide to reading and applying Aristotle's Rhetoric to several literary examples. There are, of course, other ways to approach reading Aristotle. Prior to using the curriculum our co-op had also done Traditional Logic I & II, Material Logic, and then read Mortimer Adler's Aristotle for Everybody. That last book is helpful in establishing the context and IMO ought to be a prerequisite for Cothran's text for anyone who's not already familiar with Aristotle's works.

If you're looking at this as a self-ed project and want some structure then I'd give it a thumbs-up! It wouldn't even be necessary to do all the extras, but we enjoyed the Quinn book on figures of speech.

Martha

I have not seen the latest Memoria Press publication and it may be that they've made changes which might make my comments obsolete!

Hey, Martha! So nice to see you! Thank you for your input. Yes, I would be using it for self-ed. I'm retired from hs'ing as of this year.

(And, thank you to the other posters for sharing their experiences!)

[Martha in NM]

"Hey, Martha! So nice to see you! Thank you for your input. Yes, I would be using it for self-ed. I'm retired from hs'ing as of this year."

I'm retiring too, but keeping up my self-ed projects. My son is enrolled full-time at the CC this fall, so I'm mostly a sounding-board at this point. We are continuing to read aloud together from Lingua Latina. He won't be taking foreign language until after he transfers to the parent university and wants to do something to keep from losing all he's learned.

It seems to me that an adult using Cothran's text will probably be able to draw on life experiences to enliven the subject matter. For example, the section where Aristotle talks about how audiences of different ages can be expected to look political questions from quite different perspectives seemed dry and theoretical until my co-teacher (who is a far better teacher than I) used the example of their neighborhood association's lively debate over whether or not to build a pocket park to illustrate that section of the text. My son found the text a bit dry at first, too, but I assigned field trips designed to allow him to observe the different types of rhetoric in real-life situations and that made a big difference in his enjoyment of the work.

IMO, Cothran's text provides a framework that some folks might not need, but it was helpful to me. I also like Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. I did not use it specifically with ds, but it was useful to help me modify and expand the Cothran assignments. [I gave two credits for the course; one language arts and one civics.]

Martha

[LisaNY]

"Hey, Martha! So nice to see you! Thank you for your input. Yes, I would be using it for self-ed. I'm retired from hs'ing as of this year."

I'm retiring too, but keeping up my self-ed projects. My son is enrolled full-time at the CC this fall, so I'm mostly a sounding-board at this point. We are continuing to read aloud together from Lingua Latina. He won't be taking foreign language until after he transfers to the parent university and wants to do something to keep from losing all he's learned.

It seems to me that an adult using Cothran's text will probably be able to draw on life experiences to enliven the subject matter. For example, the section where Aristotle talks about how audiences of different ages can be expected to look political questions from quite different perspectives seemed dry and theoretical until my co-teacher (who is a far better teacher than I) used the example of their neighborhood association's lively debate over whether or not to build a pocket park to illustrate that section of the text. My son found the text a bit dry at first, too, but I assigned field trips designed to allow him to observe the different types of rhetoric in real-life situations and that made a big difference in his enjoyment of the work.

IMO, Cothran's text provides a framework that some folks might not need, but it was helpful to me. I also like Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. I did not use it specifically with ds, but it was useful to help me modify and expand the Cothran assignments. [I gave two credits for the course; one language arts and one civics.]

Martha

Thank you, Martha! I like the Corbett text as well.