I have always considered three things I learned in high school to have been more important by far than anything else I ever learned (well except in Ms. Letourneau's class perhaps.)

And I am pretty much unable to rank them, so this is merely a list, not a ranking:

typing

diagramming sentences

Latin.

All three of these come in handy every day of my life, and while I don't actually diagram sentences the rigorous instruction and analysis involved come into play constantly. Everything I read I read critically, and diagramming helps me to understand what the writer was trying to say, even if he wasn't too sure how to put a sentence together.

Thanks to parsing I can build complex sentences with complete confidence that my thoughts get put onto paper properly and confidently. If I fail to communicate it's because the thoughts weren't coherent!

TEd


TEd