I remember quite a lot of what I was taught, but my memory is limited to what I was taught. Case in point: reading the Pro Caelio one sentence at a time, taking 8 weeks to do it, and never being allowed to look at the text in English, means that by the end of the 8 weeks, I no longer remembered what the speech said at the beginning. I never had a holistic picture of the case: what was at stake, what they were arguing about, who was involved, etc.

I wrote a post a while back comparing this experience to playing a piece on the piano, one note at a time, over the course of 8 weeks, never hearing it, never playing it again, never building up proficiency in it, and then saying that you've "played that piece." It is technically true that I "read the Pro Caelio." But did I understand it as a work? No. Did I learn the Latin language in a way that enabled me to read other speeches? No.

This is why I phrase it as, "We were required to do everything the hardest possible way, otherwise we might accidentally learn something."

See also: what I am not doing in salon!