Should Latin Be Offered as a Secondary School Elective?

[Hovik]

Well, the future of the English language is somewhat pitiful. From experience through the means of observation, it seems that the average student's vocabulary has been and still is decreasing, with spelling and grammar going down the gutter thanks to "text language" and other ridiculous nonsense resulted from pure laziness.
But, here's my solution:
Teach Latin and Ancient Greek.
What mechanism is more efficient to boost the understanding of our own language, along with increasing vocabulary, than to teach students the two languages that most of the English Language's multi-syllabary words are based upon?
From what many of my peers and educators, I have a rather advanced vocabulary for my age. I have the ability to "dissect" words and understand their definitions without difficulty. But why?
Simply because I have somewhat of a command of the Latin language.
Of these words that I know, they include tyrannis (tyrant), uni (I hope to G-d that every one knows that), homo (man, as in Homo Habilis, which translates to "Handy man"), trans (cross), and conserve (keep).
My Ancient Greek vocabulary (which is quite meager) consists of the words saurous (lizard), homo (same), atom, and ped (foot).
Well, that's my idea.

Would any of you guys care to share yours?

Your experience is rather limited, I'm afraid. The truth of the matter is, literacy in the United States is some of the highest in the world. As others have pointed out, language is not some stiff, impermeable, static thing; it changes and evolves through time. Texting (and internet writing) are simplifications to economize. People have always done this sort of thing, but you only notice it so much now because we have a means to transfer information between huge groups of people more quickly than we ever have in the past.

While much of our vocabulary does come from French, that doesn't necessitate the teaching of Latin and Greek. People seem to think that these languages are somehow better than our modern languages. In actuality, they're no better and no worse, and learning them wouldn't really help with our modern language.

In short, the future of our language isn't pitiful at all. It's just as bright as any others. You want to see a language with a pitiful future? Look at any one of the thousands of languages that are on the verge of dying out every day due to lack of speakers; these languages offer countless insights into linguistic theory, yet we're more interested in enforcing arbitrary, prescriptivist notions of how English ought to be used (which is utterly pointless) than we are in preserving languages that are truly in danger.