Traditional Logic (Memoria Press)

Memoria Press's two-year Aristotelian logic sequence by Martin Cothran is the de facto standard formal-logic course in the classical Christian school world, a textbook that quietly teaches more middle-school and high-school students how to spot a fallacy than any of its competitors combined.

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

At a glance

Method	Classical / formal logic
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (Aristotelian; Memoria Press is broadly Reformed-Protestant in editorial posture)
Grades	7-12 (most commonly grades 8-10)
Formats	Print student text, workbook, quizzes/tests, DVD lecture set, optional online live class
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3 (with DVDs) / 4 (without)
ESA-common	Yes (on most marketplaces that include Memoria Press)
Accredited	No (curriculum only; Memoria Press Online Academy classes carry Cognia accreditation)
Established	1999, with Book I first published 2000
Website	memoriapress.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Genuine Aristotelian formal logic at a college-introductory level, sequenced for adolescents
Ease of teaching	4	DVD lectures effectively replace a teacher; without them, parent intensity rises
Content quality	5	A well-built textbook in a category most homeschool publishers handle thinly
Flexibility	3	Designed as a two-year sequence; either book stands alone but II depends on I
Value for money	4	Roughly $100-$150 per book with DVDs; comparable to a community-college elective
Worldview scope	4	Christian-ecumenical posture; the logic itself is religiously neutral and portable
Visual/design	3	Plain, classical-textbook layout; no full-color spreads or modern design
Support resources	4	Quizzes, tests, DVD lectures, online classes, and a dedicated curriculum guide

Who the publisher is

Memoria Press is a classical Christian publisher founded in 1994 by Cheryl and Cheryl Lowe in Louisville, Kentucky, and built around the idea of recovering the Western liberal-arts tradition for both school and home use. Cheryl Lowe is the author of the Latina Christiana series; her son and successor Brian Lowe now leads the publisher. The company's flagship is Memoria Press Online Academy, a Cognia-accredited online classical school that uses the publisher's own curriculum, and Highlands Latin School, the brick-and-mortar campus in Louisville.

Traditional Logic was written by Martin Cothran, a Memoria Press author who is also the Family Foundation of Kentucky's Senior Policy Analyst and a frequent commentator on classical-education topics. Cothran has written all of Memoria Press's logic and rhetoric titles. Traditional Logic I and II, Material Logic, Classical Rhetoric, and the Memoria Press Logic of English derivative materials. The two-volume Traditional Logic course is his best-known work and has been in continuous print since 2000.

The audience is specific: classical Christian schools that follow the Andrew Kern / Andrew Pudewa / Susan Wise Bauer circuit of classical recovery, classical homeschool families using Memoria Press's full grammar-school sequence, and homeschoolers from other backgrounds (Charlotte Mason, eclectic, even secular classical) who add Traditional Logic to a high-school sequence as a stand-alone formal-logic credit. The course appears on the Association of Classical Christian Schools recommended curriculum lists and is used inside Logos School, Veritas Press, Kepler Education, and Wilson Hill Academy sequences.

The core pedagogy

Traditional Logic is Aristotelian categorical logic taught in the classical sequence: definition, the four logical statements (A, E, I, O), the square of opposition, the categorical syllogism, and the formal validity rules. Book I covers everything through the four moods and figures of the categorical syllogism with an introduction to enthymemes. Book II covers hypothetical and disjunctive syllogisms, the sorites, and oblique reasoning; it concludes with a treatment of the polysyllogism and an extended exercise set in formal proof.

The pedagogy is direct and deliberately old-fashioned. Each chapter opens with a definition or rule, presents three to five worked examples, and closes with a workbook exercise set of fifteen to thirty problems. Cothran's prose is conversational without being chatty, closer to a precise high-school history textbook than to the design-heavy modern logic primers. The DVD lectures (Cothran teaching from a chalkboard in the Highlands Latin School classroom) follow the textbook chapter by chapter and run roughly twenty to forty minutes per chapter. A student who watches the lecture, reads the chapter, and completes the exercises has spent ninety minutes to two hours per chapter, with one chapter per week as the standard pace.

Signature mechanics: (1) Categorical-first sequence. The course teaches the categorical syllogism in full before introducing hypotheticals and disjunctives, which preserves the medieval-Aristotelian order rather than the modern symbolic-logic order. (2) Workbook density. The exercise sets are large and require working out, a student translates English sentences into syllogistic form, identifies moods and figures, and applies the validity rules to determine validity. (3) Cothran on DVD. The lecture series is the program's distinguishing feature; classical schools and Online Academy classes follow the same lecture sequence the homeschool family receives. (4) Two-year integration. Book II repeatedly references Book I material, making the sequence essentially indivisible after the first volume.

A day in the life

An eighth- or ninth-grade student working Traditional Logic I sits down for logic three to four times a week, fifty minutes per session. On day one of a chapter, the student watches the Cothran DVD lecture, twenty to forty minutes, taking notes in the workbook margins. On day two, the student reads the corresponding textbook chapter (eight to fifteen pages of dense but clear prose) and completes the first half of the exercise set. On day three, the student finishes the exercise set and takes the chapter quiz. On day four, the parent or teacher reviews the quiz, corrects errors, and walks through any missed problems before the next chapter begins. The semester closes with a cumulative test administered in one sitting.

A family using the course without DVDs replaces the lecture with parent presentation, which adds roughly two to three hours per week to parent prep time and is most successfully handled by parents who have read the book themselves first. A family using the course through Memoria Press Online Academy attends a weekly live class with a teacher, with the textbook and workbook assigned as outside-of-class reading and homework. The Online Academy track is the most teacher-supported path; the DVD path is the most common; the parent-led path is the cheapest.

What they do exceptionally well

The treatment of the categorical syllogism. Cothran's chapter sequence on the four logical statements, the square of opposition, and the moods and figures is the clearest middle-school-readable treatment of Aristotelian logic in print. The textbook walks a student through translating English sentences into A, E, I, and O form, drawing the square, and applying the validity rules step by step. By the end of Book I, a diligent student can identify a syllogism's mood and figure on sight and determine its validity using the rules from memory. This is not a small achievement at the eighth-grade level.

The DVD instruction. Cothran is a working teacher rather than a video personality, and the lectures show it, they are crisp, well-paced, occasionally dryly funny, and structured around the textbook chapter rather than around video production. A homeschool parent who does not feel competent to teach syllogistic logic from scratch can hand the DVDs to the student and intervene only at quiz time. This is uncommon in the homeschool logic-and-rhetoric category, where most options are textbook-only.

Coherence with the broader Memoria Press sequence. A student using Latina Christiana, First Form Latin, and the Memoria Press literature guides will find Traditional Logic uses the same pedagogical posture, the same clean textbook design, and the same expectation of memorized definitions and worked examples. For families committed to the full Memoria Press sequence, the program slots in without friction.

What they do poorly

Formal logic only. Traditional Logic is not informal logic, not fallacy-spotting, not argumentation, and not modern symbolic logic. A student who finishes Book II will know Aristotelian categorical and hypothetical syllogisms thoroughly and will know almost nothing about Bayesian reasoning, predicate calculus, statistical inference, or rhetorical fallacies. Memoria Press addresses this gap by selling Material Logic (terms and definitions) and Classical Rhetoric (Aristotle's Rhetoric) as separate sequels. Families who want a single comprehensive logic-and-critical-thinking course should look at The Art of Argument or The Fallacy Detective instead.

Plain visual presentation. The textbook is black-and-white print on standard textbook paper, with charts and diagrams drawn in line art. Students who have come up through illustrated curricula like The Good and the Beautiful or full-color modern math programs may find the design austere. The workbook is similarly utilitarian. None of this affects the pedagogy; it does affect first impressions.

The pace can outrun a younger student. Memoria Press recommends Traditional Logic for grades seven and up, but the workbook density and the abstraction of categorical-statement translation can frustrate a strong sixth-grader and a typical seventh-grader. Families piloting the course early often find the second half of Book I genuinely hard for a twelve-year-old. The course works best when started in eighth or ninth grade with a student who is reading at or above grade level.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Traditional Logic if: you want a real formal-logic course as part of a classical sequence; your student is in grades eight through eleven and ready for abstract reasoning; you want DVD lecture support so the parent does not have to teach syllogistic from scratch; you are already using Memoria Press materials elsewhere and want continuity; you want the course to count as a stand-alone high-school logic credit.

• Skip Traditional Logic if: you want informal logic, fallacy identification, or modern symbolic logic, this is Aristotelian categorical only; your student is younger than seventh grade or struggles with abstraction; you want a full-color, design-rich modern textbook; you do not need a formal logic sequence and would prefer to integrate critical thinking into history and literature.

Cost honest assessment

The Traditional Logic I Complete Set with DVDs retails at $115 on the Memoria Press site as of April 2026, including the student textbook, workbook, quizzes and tests, teacher key, and the four-DVD lecture set. The Traditional Logic II Complete Set with DVDs retails at $125 with the same configuration. A two-year run with DVDs runs approximately $240, plus shipping; without DVDs, the textbook-and-workbook configuration runs approximately $40-$50 per book, or roughly $90 for the full sequence.

Memoria Press Online Academy offers Traditional Logic I and II as one-semester or full-year live online courses at approximately $325-$425 per semester per course depending on the schedule, which adds an instructor and weekly live class to the textbook-and-workbook investment. Compared to Classical Academic Press's Discovery of Deduction at roughly $50 per text, Canon Press's Logic curriculum at roughly $30-$70 per book, and a community-college Introduction to Logic course at roughly $300-$700 per credit hour, Traditional Logic with DVDs sits in the middle of the formal-logic market.

A realistic family budget for the full two-year sequence with DVDs and Online Academy enrollment for one student runs approximately $900-$1,200; with DVDs and self-study, approximately $240; with self-study alone, approximately $90.

ESA eligibility notes

Memoria Press is approved on most state ESA marketplaces that include classical Christian publishers, including ClassWallet (which serves Arizona, Iowa, and other state programs), Step Up For Students for Florida, the West Virginia Hope Scholarship, and Utah Fits All. Memoria Press Online Academy live courses are also typically approved for ESA-funded enrollment when the marketplace includes online accredited classes. Families should verify current marketplace listings before ordering, as Memoria Press's status on individual marketplaces shifts with vendor agreements. Because the publisher's curriculum is broadly Christian without sectarian-specific content, the religious-materials restrictions in some state programs (notably some uses of the Tennessee Education Freedom Scholarship) typically permit Memoria Press logic and Latin titles even when they restrict denominationally explicit materials.

Alternatives

• The Art of Argument (Classical Academic Press), a family would choose The Art of Argument over Traditional Logic because Aaron Larsen and Joelle Hodge's text focuses on informal logic and the twenty-eight common fallacies in everyday rhetoric rather than formal Aristotelian syllogistic, which fits families who want fallacy-spotting more than they want formal proof.
• The Fallacy Detective (Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn), a family would choose The Fallacy Detective over Traditional Logic because the Bluedorn brothers' workbook is approachable for grades seven and up, costs roughly $25-$30, and uses cartoons and conversational examples to teach critical thinking rather than formal categorical logic.
• Introductory Logic (Canon Press), a family would choose Introductory Logic by James Nance over Traditional Logic because Canon Press's text is similarly Aristotelian but offers integrated DVD instruction by Roman Roads' James Nance, a different teaching style some students find brisker than Cothran's.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Memoria Press Traditional Logic I product page, the Traditional Logic II product page, the Memoria Press Online Academy course catalog, and the publicly available scope-and-sequence summaries on the publisher site. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy's published review of Traditional Logic, the Association of Classical Christian Schools curriculum recommendations, and contributor-page biographical information for Martin Cothran. Prices and program details verified April 2026.