A Slippery Slope from Latin Lesson Avoidance to a Life of Crime

Benjamin Rush (From: Wikipedia)

"Many sprightly boys of excellent capacities for useful knowledge, have been so disgusted with the dead languages, as to retreat from the drudgery of schools, to low company, whereby they have become bad members of society, and entailed misery upon all who have been connected with them." (24)
--Benjamin Rush, "Observations Upon the Study of the Latin and Greek Languages..." Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical

Benjamin Rush, you will recall, is one of the founding fathers, having signed the Declaration of Independence. He was a physician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His entire essay on the dead languages, published in the above collection in 1798, is an argument for why students up to the age of eighteen should not study Latin and Greek. The crux of his argument is that knowledge of these languages is not "useful." The only time when Greek was useful, he says, was when Greek children were learning it in their ancient schools. He brings all the argumentative ammunition he can summon to his task, including more unlikely propositions such as the one above.