What I got from taking languages at school

Many years ago now, I attended Kaikorai Valley High School. It was a large school in those days (the early 70s). The roll stood at around 1300 students. Ten new third form classes started in my year (1970). Then, classes were streamed, and categorized as either Academic (2 of them) or General (8).

In both 3A1 and 3A2, French and Latin were compulsory, and I believe that some of the General-level classes had French too. I was obliged to take the two languages for two years, but was able to drop them in the 5th form by taking Art (Drawing & Design) as French and Latin were my worst subjects.

A year or two later, Japanese was offered at the school, and German thereafter. However, too late for me.

What I learned from the experience is that I am adverse to being schooled in a language. I'm allergic to the conventional, academic approach. 

I once read that only 1 in 20 English speakers who try to learn another language fail. If that's so, then it's not a good success rate.

If, for whatever reason, a person is resistant to something about a foreign language, or how it's presented, then he or she simply won't learn.