Why does no one bother to teach the classical languages any more?

This is not a post bemoaning how you can major in something other than Greats at university. That ship, she has sailed. And that's all right. We have physics now, and stuff. This is a post that hates almost every textbook that purports to teach either Latin or Greek, because they either do nothing of the sort or they make a go of it, but in the most convoluted and counter-intuitive way possible.

In the first category I place Ecce Romani for Latin and Athenaze for Greek. These books do not teach students how to read the languages; they instead teach students how to read the textbook's mongrel creation. They try to instruct without forms, which doesn't work. Perhaps we are sad that there is no way to have an organic, immersive learning experience for classical Latin or Greek. That's nice and all for our feelings, but it won't pay the rent.

In the second category I place everything else (except Wheelock or Jenney for Latin and Hansen & Quinn for Greek). These myriad others, at least, have forms, but they come in a mystifying and inconsistent welter that acts as a complete impediment to understanding. Why learn iste before ille (indeed, why learn iste for itself at all)? Why introduce the subjunctive before the fourth and fifth declensions? Why introduce conditionals before purpose clauses? What are you even doing?

So maybe whoever taught you Latin or Greek with a real textbook did it badly, and you felt insufficiently coddled. Well, the solution is to use a real textbook and teach it well, not to use a lousy one. Hell, give the kid De Bello Gallico and a grammar, and see how it goes.

More forms. Less hand-holding.