Do you grok this? [Spirituality & Religion]

@april50 I think Latin should be taught in schools. It helps people to understand etymology a little better.
The education system is doing away with cursive also. No more 'signatures' This is stupid!!!!!!

@puck61 Not just etymology, but perhaps more valuably, grammar, syntax and noun gender. Having been taught Latin, i found it much easier to understand the stricter rules of French and German, and the "simple" concepts of conjugation and declension - something almost alien to anglophones such as myself. In life, I have found those years of Latin far more valuable than the same length i spent studying school biology, chemistry and even maths!

@april50 Oh my gosh! I'm in love! (Just exaggeration for the sake of emphasis!) It's so nice to find a mind!

@april50 They should teach rhetoric also, Latin and rhetoric go hand in hand.

You flatter me. But again I wholly agree with you. An understanding of rhetoric, in its classical meaning, can be one of the greatest areas of knowledge an individual can possess. Even for the sheer joy of that understanding alone, but enormously valuable if you pursue a career which includes public speaking, or internal debate, where you need to effectively persuade and convince others, and bring them round to your point of view.

It is startling and sad that two subjects, latin and rhetoric, which were de rigueur in a complete education less than a 150 years ago, are now largely forgotten.

By coincidence, my current reading is a book 'deconstructing' great speeches in history. It has the unfortunate title of "When they go low, we go high" based on the hypocritical words of the egregious Michelle Obama - the very opposite of what the Obamas did in reality. It's by Phillip Collins, who writes for The Times, and was Tony Blair's (yuk) speechwriter.

Worth a read if the practical application of rhetoric is of interest.