Your child's school offers no Latin.
That is where we begin.

The Record

The Magister writes on Latin, classical education, and their bearing on the present. Results and student milestones are recorded here as they come in.

One Teacher, One Method

I teach every course at Emerson Latin myself, from a ten-year-old's first Latin sentence, through the AP Latin examination, to a graduating senior's advanced literature seminar, under one method: systematic, comprehensive, accelerated, and rigorous, whichever pedagogical tradition a given course happens to draw on. There is no second instructor, no rotating staff: I am the one teaching it, live, over Zoom, in English.

Emerson Latin students have earned medals and distinctions in the international competitions in Latin and classical humanities every year since 2015. The record is kept as it happens. See the Results →

"It is better to teach the child Latin grammar than rhetoric or moral philosophy, because it requires exactitude of performance." Ralph Waldo Emerson, Education

When Your Child's School Offers No Latin

This describes most schools. Latin is one of the rarest subjects a student can study, and the AP Latin examination one of the rarest a student can sit for. That makes the absence of a school course the ordinary starting condition here, not an obstacle.

Most Emerson Latin students begin with no Latin background at all, many from international schools that do not offer the language, let alone the AP course. They stay with me for the whole path: from a first Latin sentence, through Latin literature, to the AP Latin examination itself, which they sit independently at an approved testing center, since their own school was never the one offering it. Along the way, most take part in nearly every major international Latin and classical humanities competition open to them and earn real prizes, building the kind of academic record that top universities notice.

Latin is not a dead language. It is the one that lasts.

Every discipline the serious mind will ever enter, law, medicine, philosophy, science, was built in Latin, and still speaks it. Latin trains a mind to do one specific thing: read a sentence and refuse to guess at it. That habit, once built, carries into everything a student does afterward. The rest, the AP score, the medal, the university that notices, follows from that, not the other way around.

Read the Full Argument →

The Curriculum

Every stage is built on the Emerson Method: systematic, comprehensive, accelerated, and rigorous. The curriculum is arranged in the order the logic of the language itself demands, not the order a textbook happens to follow.

Beginning Winter Term, November 21, Humane Letters (five courses in English reading and writing) joins the path alongside Latin. Learn More →

See the Full Curriculum

Enrolling Now

Fall Term runs September 12 to November 20. Winter Term begins November 21. A course opens once four students are ready to begin, so new sections form throughout the year, including mid-term. Winter section times will be posted here as they are set.

Not seeing your child's course this term? New sections open throughout the year as enrollment fills. Term dates are on Our Calendar, and tuition is answered in the FAQs. Get in Touch →

The International Competitions

Separately from the regular curriculum, I run short contest-preparation courses, typically five sessions in the weeks before a competition's deadline, for students who want to take part. The Latin curriculum itself is the real foundation for the Latin competitions: there is no substitute for the grammar and reading ability these competitions actually test. The wider classical humanities competitions are a different case. Some require Latin directly. For the rest, a student who knows the language still tends to have an edge over one who does not.

Students who reach the top tier of these competitions, and stay there, tend to be admitted to the universities of their choice.

From Parents