Something like 9 years of Latin for me, between elementary school and college... The only thing I might have traded it for was Chinese, and even then I'd have l

Something like 9 years of Latin for me, between elementary school and college... The only thing I might have traded it for was Chinese, and even then I'd have liked to take both (ended up doing Japanese instead because there was a class for it) before dropping Latin. I'm saddened to hear "Still had Latin" in the context that schools are dropping it. I'm hard pressed to think of another concentration that benefited me so much later in life. (Across public speaking/oratory skills, Vocabulary/flexibility of speech, and ability to parse/extrapolate novel content in both my own and similar languages) The article entirely misses the point of why it was beneficial to me. It gave me a framework and practice using said framework for parsing and constructing natural language content, in a way that no english/grammer class ever came close (and we were crammed into those classes for FAR longer than I took latin). Bluntly, I reject their entire hypothesis. The US needs to improve our education system broadly, not axe yet another area in which we already fall behind our international peers. (My wife speaks 2 languages fluently, 2 more near-fluently, I am perpetually embarrassed by my own lack of worldliness next to her.)