Latin Still Being Taught in School

I will be arguing as opposition, that Latin should not be taught in schools. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ First of all, I concede that I have never studied Latin. The only thing about language that I can offer is that I am bilingual and that other than reading alphabets, I can read another type of writing as well. Therefore, with regard to Latin, my opponent has more experience but it doesn't mean my opponent has more experience with regard to learning languages. Now on to rebuttals. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ My opponent started off by saying that Latin while tiresome to learn and translate, proved incredibly useful to him throughout the years mainly because it has helped him in his English and also that it 'can be very useful' in certain fields. I would argue that naturally since English and other languages branched out from Latin, this goes without saying. However, it does not mean one should spend a considerable amount of time (4 years in my opponent's example) learning it. There are thousands of English-as-a-Second-Language speakers who do not ever learn Latin but learn English from a young age who are still able to grasp and utilise the language in everyday life. These people learn primarily through actually speaking English and also through media like books and movies. Most impressively, they can communicate at par with those from pure English speaking backgrounds. Don't forget that they also speak in their mother tongue and easily switch language mid-sentence. Such is their ability to master two or more languages. My point is that the extra advantage that Latin supposedly brings about seems diluted in contrast to these people. What is the point of mastering Latin when you can almost never write it into your resume as a language mastered, except perhaps when you are applying for certain history or classical courses which arguably, not many people are interested in nowadays. With the time that the student has, it would be wise to actually learn another language like maybe Mandarin or Japanese or Arabic or any of the other languages which do not share the same branch with English. In 4 years, you would become a master in that language already. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The point about how Latin is a good base to master other languages like Spanish, French and Italian is only so if you were to learn European languages, but not for languages like Japanese or Arabic as previously mentioned since they do not share the same 'branch of origin'. It would be more time-efficient to actually dive into speaking and learning any language actively because, at the end of the day, I think all languages share some logic of thought between each other. When you learn a new language, automatically your brain will start connecting the dots between the language you already know and the one starting to be acquired. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The final point about how translating Latin makes you more appreciative of history is I think, only true for people who want to actively learn history in that way. But some people are just not too bothered with the 'historical language' part of it and just want to learn the story and the series of events. They are not too interested with the whole romantic side of apprectiating lingustics and all that. I would like to reaffirm that my stand as opposition is that Latin should not be taught in schools, rather students should immediately dive into whichever language they would like to learn. Thank you.