America's long slow grind towards mediocrity for all has unnecessarily precluded certain subjects from commonly being taught in school. For instance, the language skills for native born Americans are absolutely abysmal, in which, not only do many Americans know no other language other than English, that aren't even proficient at that. Fortunately, for Americans, English is the international language of business and because America is the largest economic force the world has ever known, the fact that Americans sort of know English makes them valuable, despite their limitation to just knowing the English language.
For many people, to even consider taking any time whatsoever to learn a "dead" language such as Latin, seems absolutely pointless, and it most definitely would be, if Latin had not been in its own time the language of the Roman empire which still has influence today in sports (i.e. Super bowl numbering), medicine, legal, religion (Catholicism), history, literature, mottos, and species names, to cite a few of their common day relevancies. All of the above, would definitely signify, that at least at a minimum, Latin should be considered to be taught for motivated students in middle and/or high school, and it is, but at a far reduced effort, in far fewer classes, in today's schools, of which many of these schools, do not offer any Latin courses, whatsoever.
One of the fundamental reasons for learning Latin and the structure of it, is that doing so, will invariably improve the grammar and linguistic skills of those speaking and writing English, because a significant amount of English words such as corpus, homo, finis, and so forth all have their roots in the Latin language, and thereby the learning of Latin will help significantly in comprehending English words at their most foundational root. Additionally, if we do not challenge our youth to tackle languages outside of their own native language, they will, almost for a certainty, never fall in love with language and its variety, poetry, beauty, and harmony, nor will they ever be able to read, let alone comprehend, any of the classic literature in its own native language, as it was first written.
There has never been a better time to bring forth a renewed emphasis on learning Latin, because the teaching and learning of such can be augmented by computer programs written specifically to aid and validate the learning of Latin. In an era in which so many have a strong desire for specific university placement, those that comprehend Latin have demonstrated time and time again superior SAT scores, most notably because their comprehension and usage of English has improved as a result of the solid foundation that Latin provides.
So too, the working knowledge of Latin, helps to separate the wheat from the chaff, those that are motivated and disciplined, from those that feel entitled by being born into this country into believing that having a somewhat working knowledge of English is somehow good enough. For parents and for their children this is surely the time for a renewed emphasis on Latin being taught in the schools, so as to bring us out of darkness and be able to proclaim: fiat lux.