Classical Writing

Classical Writing is the full progymnasmata-based writing curriculum co-authored by Tracy Davis Gustilo, Lene Mahler Jaqua, and Kathy Weitz. It is the most methodologically serious progymnasmata sequence available in English-language homeschool materials, and also the most teacher-intensive, a program families adopt out of conviction rather than convenience.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical, progymnasmata-based, teacher-led
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (the materials themselves are nondenominational)
Grades	3-12 (Primer and Aesop in grammar stage through Plutarch and Demosthenes in late logic/rhetoric stage)
Formats	Print textbook, student workbooks, instructor guides, free video tutorials
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	4 (the parent is actively teaching every exercise and reading every draft)
ESA-common	Varies (religious-adjacent; state-dependent)
Accredited	No
Established	Early-2000s (exact first-publication year varies by level); current editions maintained at classicalwriting.com
Website	classicalwriting.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Full progymnasmata progression rare in homeschool writing curricula.
Ease of teaching	1	The parent is required to understand and grade each stage of each exercise.
Content quality	5	Texts are scholarly, historically grounded, and unusually serious for the homeschool market.
Flexibility	3	Sequenced progression; skipping levels is possible but reduces coherence.
Value for money	4	Individual level sets run $30-$60; total spend across the sequence is moderate.
Worldview scope	4	Nondenominational Christian in tone; used across Christian traditions and by some secular families.
Visual/design	2	Utilitarian typesetting; the materials feel like university supplements rather than consumer workbooks.
Support resources	3	Free video tutorials and an author-moderated community; no commercial help desk.

Who the publisher is

Classical Writing is a small-press classical education publisher run cooperatively by the curriculum's co-authors. The program originated in the homeschool classical-education revival of the late 1990s and early 2000s, with early materials developed in consultation with the Bluedorn family of Trivium Pursuit and subsequently expanded and rewritten by Tracy Davis Gustilo, Lene Mahler Jaqua (who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, 1993), and Kathy Weitz. The authorial and publishing model is distinctive in the homeschool market: the program is not a corporate publisher's product line but a set of scholarly materials maintained by the authors themselves through classicalwriting.com.

Kathy Weitz later founded Cottage Press, which publishes her own progymnasmata-adjacent materials including Primer for Writers and Bards and Poets. Classical Writing and Cottage Press are related but distinct enterprises; a family choosing between them is choosing between Weitz's solo work (Cottage Press, slightly more streamlined and elementary-oriented) and the Gustilo-Jaqua-Weitz full progression (Classical Writing, more demanding and rigorous through high school).

Classical Writing is not widely known outside classical-education circles. Its adoption is concentrated in families deeply committed to the full classical trivium and in classical schools that want serious progymnasmata instruction rather than a single-stage writing program. The materials are carried by Rainbow Resource, Amazon, and a handful of classical-education specialty retailers.

The core pedagogy

Classical Writing implements the ancient Greek progymnasmata, the fourteen preparatory rhetorical exercises traditionally used in classical education, as a full writing progression. Students move through the exercises in sequence: fable (Aesop), narrative (Homer), chreia and maxim (Diogenes), refutation and confirmation (Herodotus), common-topic (Plutarch), encomium and invective, and on to the advanced exercises of description, comparison, and thesis. Each level has a core text explaining the exercise with historical and theoretical background, a student workbook with graduated assignments and model compositions, and an instructor guide with teaching notes and sample responses.

The levels are organized across three tiers. Grade school (Primer, Aesop, Homer, Poetry for Beginners, plus Harvey's Grammar for the grammar instruction that Classical Writing assumes rather than teaches). Middle school (Diogenes, Intermediate Poetry, Older Beginners, for students joining the sequence late). High school (Herodotus, Plutarch, Demosthenes, Advanced Poetry, Rhetoric Handbook). A student beginning Classical Writing in third grade with Primer and Aesop and completing through Demosthenes in late high school has worked the full historical progymnasmata sequence, an unusual achievement in any educational context.

Signature mechanics are three. (1) Stage-by-stage imitation-and-variation. Students read a model fable or narrative, analyze its structure, and then produce their own version first by imitation and then with increasing variation. (2) Integration with grammar and literature. Classical Writing assumes the student is concurrently studying Latin grammar (via Harvey's or similar) and reading classical literature; assignments draw on that reading. (3) Full authorial explanation. The core texts at each level include extensive theoretical explanation of the rhetorical tradition and its pedagogy, the student and parent are learning progymnasmata, not just executing exercises.

A day in the life

A sixth-grader using Classical Writing Diogenes runs a four-day-per-week rhythm across approximately forty-five minutes per day. Monday opens a new chreia exercise, the student reads the model chreia (a brief anecdote illustrating a virtue or saying) from the workbook and analyzes its structure with the parent. Tuesday drafts the imitation stage of the exercise. Wednesday revises and expands, attending to the specific elements the lesson teaches. Thursday finalizes and submits to the parent for a graded response against the instructor guide's rubric. The assignment advances approximately one chreia per week; a year of Diogenes covers roughly thirty exercises.

The parent's role is unusually active. Classical Writing is not parent-light material. The parent reads the instructor guide, learns the rhetorical stage alongside the student, grades the drafts against the instructor-guide rubric, and provides substantive written feedback on each piece of writing. For a parent without prior exposure to progymnasmata, the first semester is as much the parent's training as the student's. Families who run Classical Writing successfully routinely report that they themselves became stronger writers in the process.

What they do exceptionally well

Full progymnasmata progression. Our editorial view is that Classical Writing is the most complete implementation of the historical progymnasmata available in English-language homeschool materials. Most competitor programs. Classical Academic Press's Writing and Rhetoric, Memoria Press's Classical Composition, cover the early and middle exercises well but thin out before the advanced stages. Classical Writing continues into thesis and proposal-of-law with comparable seriousness. For a family committed to the full classical trivium, this is the decisive feature.

Scholarly depth of the core texts. The theoretical explanations in the Aesop, Homer, and Diogenes core texts are written to educate the teaching parent as well as the student. A parent who has worked through the Aesop core text understands why fable comes first, how the ancient rhetoricians used it, and what pedagogical purposes each stage serves. Few homeschool writing programs respect their reader enough to explain the theory of the curriculum in this much depth.

Integration with classical reading and grammar. Classical Writing assumes, and rewards, concurrent Latin grammar study and classical literature reading. Students in Homer-level exercises work with Iliad and Odyssey material; Herodotus-level students work with selected histories. The writing program is coherent with the rest of a classical curriculum rather than sitting next to it as a separate subject.

What they do poorly

Parent workload is prohibitive for many families. Classical Writing is not a program that runs with light supervision. The parent must understand the rhetorical stage, grade drafts, and provide substantive feedback. A family with multiple children, a working parent, or limited formal-writing experience will struggle to execute the program at the level the materials require. Many families who adopt Classical Writing drop to a lighter alternative within a year; a smaller number commit and stay.

Utilitarian design reflects small-press economics. The materials are typeset cleanly but without the visual investment of major publishers. There is no full-color production, no glossy illustration, and no modern digital platform. Families coming from Classical Academic Press's Writing and Rhetoric or Memoria Press's Classical Composition will notice the production-value gap immediately.

No video or live-class delivery. Classical Writing is print-and-teacher only. There is no video course, no streaming platform, and no Classical Writing Scholars Academy. Families who cannot or will not run the program themselves have no official video or live option; they must adapt to a different progymnasmata program entirely or to another writing approach altogether.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Classical Writing if: you want the most complete progymnasmata progression available in homeschool materials; you are committed to a full classical trivium education through high school; you have the teaching bandwidth to learn the program alongside your student and grade substantively; you value scholarly depth in curriculum over production polish; you are a classical educator or homeschool parent with prior writing experience.

• Skip Classical Writing if: you want a video-delivered or teacher-led alternative; you are new to classical education and want a more accessible on-ramp (consider CAP Writing and Rhetoric instead); you have limited teaching bandwidth and cannot commit to grading substantive writing weekly; you prefer consumer-polished materials; you want progress tracking, auto-grading, or digital feedback.

Cost honest assessment

Per retailer listings (Rainbow Resource, Amazon) in April 2026, Classical Writing student workbooks run $20-$35 per level; instructor guides run $30-$45; core texts run $25-$40. A full level set, core text, student workbook, and instructor guide, runs approximately $60-$100. A family running the full sequence from Primer through Demosthenes across ten years of instruction spends $400-$700 in materials total, which amortizes to $40-$70 per year.

Compared to Classical Academic Press Writing and Rhetoric (approximately $100-$130 per book-pair with optional video at $60-$80 more) and to Memoria Press Classical Composition (approximately $50-$70 per level), Classical Writing sits in the middle of the progymnasmata pricing band. The value proposition is not price. CAP and Memoria are comparable, it is the depth and rigor of the implementation. Families who will use the full progression extract real value; families who treat it as a comparison pick against the alternatives usually find the lighter programs easier to execute.

ESA eligibility notes

Classical Writing materials are print books distributed through retailers rather than directly via an ESA vendor portal. ESA eligibility depends on the state program's treatment of print curriculum and on whether the program permits materials with broadly Christian content. In programs that approve print curriculum broadly, Arizona ESA, Florida Step Up, Utah Fits All, Classical Writing books purchased through approved vendors (Rainbow Resource, classical-education specialty retailers) are typically approved without issue. Families in programs with strict "secular-only" rules should confirm; while the materials are not overtly sectarian, the examples and literary references sometimes draw from Judeo-Christian sources.

Alternatives

• Classical Academic Press Writing and Rhetoric, a family would choose CAP Writing and Rhetoric over Classical Writing for a more accessible progymnasmata on-ramp with optional author-taught video, better production values, and a lighter teaching load at the cost of shallower rigorous-progression depth.
• Memoria Press Classical Composition (Jim Selby), a family would choose Memoria Press Classical Composition for a progymnasmata program with optional video instruction, Memoria's well-known teacher support, and tighter integration with the Memoria core curriculum.
• Cottage Press (Kathy Weitz solo), a family would choose Cottage Press over Classical Writing for a streamlined elementary-through-middle progymnasmata program by one of Classical Writing's co-authors, with lighter parent load and a more consumer-accessible format.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Classical Writing site, including the Homer page and the Introduction-to-Classical-Writing PDF, the publisher's free video tutorials, and retailer listings at Rainbow Resource and Amazon. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy Reviews, classical-education forum discussions comparing Classical Writing with CAP Writing and Rhetoric and Memoria Classical Composition, and the Cottage Press site for the connection to Kathy Weitz's solo work. Prices and program details verified April 2026.