part of the point I wanted to get at, is that plenty of the people who say things like that, actually have a fine education - just in an unrelated field. Ben Carson is the textbook example, but I also noticed it with a HS friend I met the other day for the first time in years - he's embarking on a career in cutting-edge biomedical research, but the little he said about the Middle East was deeply depressing in its ignorance.

I suppose that would if anything support your point about high schools, though - people may get a fine education in college, but if they didn't get a well-rounded education in HS first, they can be successful college graduates while still being clueless about politics or international affairs.

I don't doubt it.

Wouldn't Russian do that anyway? I mean, not consciously if one learns it as a native language, but if you want to teach cases / other aspects of grammar, couldn't you use Russian as well as Latin? Not to criticize you or anything, just curious.

My mother teaches Latin, as it happens - and sadly she's also seeing that seventh grade Latin class is apparently the first place students are taught certain basic aspects of grammar nowadays.