Not to say the results weren't incredible, but certainly required sacrifice.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10378/10378-h/10378-h.htm#li...
Most people who learn three languages as a kid are surrounded by other speakers, not books.
Especially when you actually know the language these kinds of people claim to speak and you realize they actually don't speak 7 languages but maybe know 2 or 3 fluently and know 'kitchen' versions of all the others. I'm not going to name names because I don't want an argument and don't have the spoons for it, but lots of these international luminaries and leaders and such with "speaks 7 language" are often little more than conmen or simply enjoy building their own little hagiographies for their own PR goals.
There's this wonderful deep-dive on youtube on Feynman's high-questionable personal mythology that is a great example of this kind of self-promotion and how easy it is to sell one's self, especially in academic and techie circles, if you have a certain amount of charisma and drive.
Also as a lefty, I'm also not impressed by breathless ambidextrous tales either as most lefties are forced to be ambidextrous and its not actually exceptional at all. I can write with both hands, play musical instruments either way, play sports either way, etc. The left hand is better at these things, but my right-hand is okay-ish at almost all these things and I use a right-hand dominant near everything in my life anyway. I even like to switch it up to keep wear and tear down. At work the mouse is on the left, but at home for gaming its on the right. This is all boring everyday stuff for lefties.
There's a toxic 'great man' mythology that humanity still can't get over and its weird seeing it taken seriously when so many 'great men' have been debunked or seen as recipients of the system they were under (Mills' father pushing him so hard and being in the privileged class that would allow all this instead of back-breaking farm labor all day). Personal talent is important but its vastly played up in dishonest ways for dishonest gains. We probably pass many highly talented people a day on the street, but only some had the opportunity to grow those gifts into something they can use.
The famous quote comes to mind. "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
And this is utterly unremarkable where I live.
When we visit my family (who are all monolingual), they think she is a prodigy.
She’s not. She’s just a normal kid.
Latin was required for philosophy, law, rhetoric, and the classics. Greek skewing more towards the sciences, logic and also philosophy. One would be constantly encounter Latin/Greek in their materials and not just as a obtuse code to memorize like how a modern biology student typically views e.g. binomial nomenclature today.
So when viewed through the 21st century lens of English dominance throughout education, it loses the context that makes it much more understandable why and how a young student, especially a precocious one, would pick up those languages specifically in the course of their tutoring, reading, etc. (And not as some kind of genius parlor trick as modern retellings tend to portray it).
Hence that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Still fun today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mip30YF1iuo
But if you imply that philosophy as such isn’t useful, it’s simply wrong, if not arrogant. Everyone needs philosophy.
"“However, by being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell—a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great—was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing—namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis."
Even better if you can do both!
Your final sentence seems a bit odd in that context though: Churchill's point is that Latin and Greek actually isn't useful at all, so it would follow that it isn't better to do both (i.e. study the classics as well as English), especially as time to learn them would have a huge opportunity cost, e.g. you could use that time to study more English composition instead.
(If you think they're worth learning just for their own sake then that's another matter, but the quote seems to imply that Churchill wouldn't agree.)
I was lucky, I had two or three excellent English teachers. Very inspiring and helpful. I wish I could say the same about mathematics (most of my teachers were terrible and one didn't even teach us how to do the problems)... Or my French teacher. I think we spoke better French than he did at the end. Since I spent a lot of my childhood in rural Scotland I was effectively bilingual anyway.