Day 5 - Your Favorite Quote

Si hoc comprehendere potes, gratias age magistro Latinae.

This quote used to be in my email signature. If, for some inexplicable reason, you can't read that, it says "If you can understand this, thank a Latin teacher."

I freely confess to being a dork of the highest order. I am the only person I know who actual took Latin in high school. I picked it because I thought it would help me on the SAT. I was only able to take it for one year because there was only one section of Latin II the next year and it was at the same time as symphonic band (told you I was a dork). I switched to Spanish and took two years of that, which is neither here nor there.

This is one of my favorite quotes because I think it says something about the state of education. Not that I think everyone should take Latin, because, honestly, it doesn't have much of any practical use. I think it reflects a lack of focus on learning for the sake of learning. So much time is spent on passing standardized tests that it's rare that anyone learns anything just for the fun of learning something. And as the arts, languages and other elective course vanish from public schools, it's going to become even more rare.

My high school no longer offers German or Russian, but I am happy to say that you can still take Latin.