Thanks for your response.

>  There areall kinds of cool techniques, such as TPR, that make learning low-
risk >and fun, at least at the beginning

Can you give me any citations for elementary school techniques?


>  I think Latin is extremely useful for handling English latinate
>  vocabulary. But what about the borrowings from Greek, and the thousands
>  from French? I'm not saying we need to teach Greek and French also, but
>  they ought not be left out as contributors to Modern English.

We definitely deal with these.  It's really a course on Latin and Greek roots
and affixes.  French comes too for obvious reasons.

>  Here's another suggestion I've made before: if the goal is not to make
>  students fluent in Latin, but to help them appreciate structure in
>  language and in the world in general, how about bringing in -- as is
>  age-appropriate -- languages that, like Latin, express the same meanings
>  as English in 'exotic' ways, or languages that mark meanings that English
>  does not mark? We could relate this to students' lives by featuring
>  languages that are directly or indirectly related to their heritage, or
>  are reflected in immigrant communities in their environment. For example,
>  we could use Hausa or Swahili as major African languages; Native American
>  languages; Asian languages. Many of these languages have also contributed
>  words to English, so that could be another point of contact.
>
>  As useful as Latin is in dealing with technical vocabulary in English, I
>  believe that we should work towards diluting the notion of Latin as the
>  only model around for a language that marks more categories in more ways
>  than English does. Teaching about Latin alone risks continuing the elitist
>  (and false) notion that Latin is more logical or more likely to cultivate
>  analytical thinking habits than other languages.
>
>  I don't have concrete suggestions for lessons or languages to choose,
>  because I"m not expert in what K-8 kids can handle when. But if Latin can
>  be handled, so can other 'exotic' languages.
>