I just followed a link in another forum discussing the Pope's ending of restriction on a Latin Mass and I'm simultaneously reading my mail regarding Judge Seyla's educational background.

I just read the latter, too! I hope Father Steve reads his message, since they both say they use "high-falutin' " words in court!

I love the judge's mention of his Latin. It is now very rare to find a High School that offers Latin. When I went to college it was a requirement for most colleges and even my small South Carolina High School offered it. I think that the results of this is part of the decay of education that we now see everywhere. Someone should have given aposematic advice years ago.
tio@cableonda.net

It is now very rare to find a High School that offers Latin.

There are a couple of high schools in my area which offer Latin. I tutored one student in Latin I and II at an after-school program. A friend's son took four years of Latin at his high school.

I took 2 years of Latin in HS. That was 30 years ago, but they only offered 2 years. I wanted to take more, but there weren't enough kids sufficiently interested to make an offering. Our teacher's name was "Swigert Hockensmith."

>That was 30 years ago, but they only offered 2 years.

likewise for me, 45 years ago. I can't remember our first-year teacher's name, only that we drove her directly into retirement.

-joe (not everyone can lay claim to hitting their Latin teacher in the back of the head with a paper airplane) friday

Thank God for judges like the honorable Bruce M. Selya; those of us who read their decisions find them refreshingly welcome! Speaking of Latin (we were, weren't we?), I never did, but the years of Spanish I studied in both high school and college benefited me enormously, and made me wish I had studied Latin too.

Here in Zild, the fastest-growing immigrant group is from the subcontinent, so I would say that teaching Sanskrit would be a nice twofer strategy - give the sort of advanced grammatical instruction associated with Latin, AND give students a familiarity with what might be considered the grandmother tongue for a growing population here.