I was going to continue responding to that New York Times article on the resurgence of Latin from last week. Then an old student of mine read the blog post right before this one. His/her assessment (all tongue in cheek/sarcastic) was so right on, so funny, so much better than anything I could say - this is a student, you see, someone in the system, as opposed to yours truly, who writes, shall we say, against the system - that I reproduce it here verbatim.
And no, none of this is mine.
Except the quotation marks, the bold, and one bracketed pointer.
The rest is hers/his.
And here it is:
"Ha. In a Latin LANGUAGE class, culture and history are the only things that matter, not to mention the spells in Harry Potter. Who are these people actually teaching Latin grammar and vocabulary? Someone should give them a good talking to....
I thought school was about having fun! I only go to school to see my friends and gab about American Idol. Everyone who is under the impression that school isn't for that, well, their students should show them a thing or two about the true meaning of school.
Kids know everything.
And while I'm on that topic, who really needs teachers?
The only reason that schools waste money on teachers is so we, the students, can get the answers for the standardized tests. After the last bubble is filled, we can go on our merry way, push all of that superfluous knowledge out of our heads, and fill them with useful things, like the lyrics to the latest Jonas Brothers song. Now that I think of it, learning itself is superfluous! Give us the standardized tests already and we can guess our way though them! After about the twenty-fifth retake, most of us should pass, right? Process of elimination works sixty one percent of the time....
Knowledge? Does it come in a file that I can download onto my iPod?
And writing! That's sooooooooo much work!
Multiple choice is so easy;
I don't have to use the precious few brain cells I have!
For example:
C,A,B,C,C,D,E,D,A,A,A,C,B,D,D,B,C,B,C,B,A,E,D,E,A,C,E,D.
I answered a lot of the world's problems right there!
Adults really should pay attention to these valuable suggestions.
Life experience can now be Googled, so wisdom is obsolete too!
And to use that lovely metaphor of yours [see the post just before this one], window dressing is okay, but without the window of language to put it on, it is oh so much more enticing."