At our school, we teach Latin from 3-8th grades. There are many excellent reasons, and I assume that I will cover them here later, but here is a some of what Dorothy Sayers said about the advantages of knowing Latin.
"I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this, not because Latin is traditional and mediaeval, but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least fifty percent."
Two semesters ago I told some of my college friends I was taking something much deader than Latin: Sumerian. Then I wondered: how must one define a “dead” language?