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I’ve wondered about diagramming sentences. I haven’t diagrammed one since fourth grade (1964 or so), so why did I learn it?

Maybe it taught me the parts of speech. Knowing the diagramming is not important, knowing the parts of speech is.

Hard to say.

I’m a huge fan of diagramming sentences because if you can diagram them you know your parts of speech. Of course, once the Education Depts. in colleges and universities began to posture themselves in the role of “preparing teachers of the future”, and anyone wanting to teach had to go through their programs —those tried and true methods went out the window. I’ll never forget hitting 9th grade and being told by my English teacher (when I asked her how a specific sentence would look in a diagram) that she had no idea how to diagram.....It was surreal.

my grammar and spelling are rather good but i’m 60 and couldn't deconstruct a sentence beyond basic subject noun and verb. i do say “i am well” (adv modifying a verb) instead of “i am good” (adj which can only modify a noun.). i had a high school english teacher (Mr. Karl Yount 1967-69) who hated teaching grammar but recognized the importance of clear communication. he broke down all the grammar and punctuation rules we needed to know into 3 class periods the first week of the semester. no parsing per se just “you need a comma here because....” and you lost points for spelling and grammar.
obviously my quirk is all lower case and i am very forgiving about typos, maybe even a there for their because i can think faster than (not then) i type. this probably comes from my K-12 instruction and having worked as a technical illustrator with technical writers and editors for the past 22 years. and i rarely text, don't even have a smart phone