Grammar

I appreciate that I have mentioned grammar before in these pages. The reason for grammar being poor among today's populace at large appears to reside with the schools. Outside private schools (of which I have no experience but more later), English grammar is simply not formally taught. The only grammar rules I know come from learning foreign languages (French, German) rather than English. Recently, I have been taking courses in Italian and Greek, and there was a clear source of frustration to the teachers of both subjects that they were having to explain basic English grammar (subject and object of sentences, the difference between the nominative and accusative, concepts of verb tenses and participles, and even the difference between the first, second and third persons of verbs, and the second person singular and plural) before they could explain the foreign grammar. In past times, much grammar was taught through learning the rigid rules of Latin. However, I know of only one person who took Latin at my school, and that was extra-curricular.