I remember being forced to learn latin. I remember the hours of sitting there like a parrot, repeating over and over the same rubbish, with no interest by any of us teenage boys to learn it. It was forced on us by adults who thought they knew better.

We would sit in class passing notes to one another, about the new raft we planned to build after school to sail down the river, or about the sports we were playing.

This thread has shown me why kids rebel at school and why so many fall off the rails. I had hoped that adults would have learned something in the 40 years since I went to school. Seemingly not. Next those same adults will be surprised when a whole lot of kids tell them to stick their education. You and your compulsion are the problem, not the solution.

Yabby,

I loved Latin and studied it voluntarily, our Latin class was held after normal school hours and as a consequence only those who were interested attended.
From my Latin studies a whole new world of Ancient History opened up, an interest that I have maintained to this day.
I am totally against compulsion in learning apart from the 3Rs.

As everybody knows, I'm a 'dumb bum' ? But if I could master another language in which I could speak and write effectively, it would have to be the most beautiful of all languages...the French !

and;

Because of long periods being exposed to the criminal law, understanding and writing Latin would have to be high on my list, essentially for vocational reasons. Further, there's a certain 'romance' ensconced deeply, within Latin also I believe ?

The only language that should be mandatory in our schools should be English.
Im all for teaching Asian languages in our schools but it should be an optional subject.
Lets face it...unless you use these languages regularly at home or in business you quickly forget what you have learnt so mandatory lessons are better used increasing our kids knowledge of maths and science.

It is rather old hat and narrow-minded to imagine that Australia is part of Asia so take any (?!) Asian language - or Japanese, the once very hip LOTE amongst educators -who never go near the business world, but heard that Australia trades with Japan.

The test of the worth of such advice is whether the persons who are giving it have heeded their own 'sage' opinion and are now fluent themselves and presumably benefiting in the career from it. As might be expected, free advice is not usually worth that much anyhow.

Then there are those cringing leftists who aren't that keen on English and the traditions that might come with it.

Students must pay their way in education so it is high time that the 'experts', politicians and educators, strove to consult directly with them on what THEY want and then put their hearts and backs into ensuring effective, efficient delivery - value for money in fact.

This is the sort of information that students are aware of (guess how) and use:

http://news.sciencemag.org/social-sciences/2014/12/want-influence-world-map-reveals-best-languages-speak

Students do not need to listen to politicians. The reverse is true and the gap in understanding is enormous, and reprehensible too.

So true Crowie, use it or lose it is a real fact.

When I did my flying training, we had to get to the best part of second year university aerodynamics & physics in 14 weeks. At just 19 I was fresh out of school, & a year of BSc, so my math was OK, but some new intake were late 20s, & 2 never really had enough math anyway.

We also had 3 Lieutenants join us. They had the necessary, but almost a decade out of date. One of the other younger ones & I ran remedial math/physics classes 3 or 4 nights a week to help these people get back what they forgotten.

Looking back now it seems ridiculous that the RAAF flying school, [where the navy sent us to learn a bit about flying], didn't run enough straight math classes, but perhaps they wanted to see who could handle problems, & how they did so as part of the process of training their officers.

What ever it was, almost a third, who had no trouble with the flying, were put off course, because they couldn't get up to speed with the math involved, quickly enough.