The lessons we learn without realising it

For the second time in only a few days I find myself inspired to put fingers to keyboard by Cheri’s blog.
Today’s post (Planting Seeds) relates to the sowing of wisdom into the minds of the young.
In Cheri’s case she is talking about making a difference to children’s lives by showing them ways that they can think about starting their own businesses, but the same could be said about everything that we try to instill into the young; good manners, a sense of respect, the difference between right and wrong. We may not see the fruits immediately but we have laid the seeds and can do no more than that, except perhaps the occasional watering.
I always remember an old school master from my senior school who I just did not get while I was at school. The two of us seemed to have an unspoken understanding about this which actually helped us to have a rather humourous, and sometimes comical, master/pupil relationship.
Over the years things happened in my life and situations occurred where I found that I already had some unseen, inside knowledge of how to react to events, how to behave, or what was expected of me. From somewhere in my early twenties onwards I began to realise where this knowledge had come from and grew to have a deep and lasting respect for him and all that he had taught me (except for the Latin, which never stuck).
I knew where he lived and at one point, long after he had retired and when my career was at it’s peak, I even felt that I would like to visit him and relay my gratitude but, alas, never got around to it before I heard that he had passed away.
S. G. Timms, I may not remember much Latin but you taught me a lot. Thank you.

Why learn a language which is “too stressful” to speak ?

I happened upon a headline over the weekend, on Yahoo I think, which said that the Oral part of GCSE language exams for school children in the UK learning foreign languages may be phased out because it was considered to be “too stressful” for them.