[x]

Teachers and students start off from a position of reverence for the material. French is a glorious thing. You want to learn to speak French. Everybody’s on board, with the same goal, the same love, the same seriousness. We want French and more French. We expect to make progress; and if we don’t, we feel cheated.

Not at all my experience. Probably not the experience of most students of high school French in North America. You took it because a language was required and your school started you out in French, and once they started conducting the class in French, it was hard to understand exactly what was going on.

I've had some happier experiences with other languages since then, but I wouldn't want to relive high school French, and I suspect many other people who took French in high school wouldn't either.

[dfwgator]

I just remember the movie “Dead Poets’ Society” where the student had to get up in front of the class and recite a whole passage in French.