Elementary Grade Latin Programs: Macrons

I agree that macrons are useful, but I can also see some reasons why others might oppose them. Here are some possible reasons to leave macrons out (with my comments):

1. Real-life Latin texts typically do not contain macrons. A student should learn to read a text without their aid. (This is a valid point, but not so much for elementary courses.)
2. Adding the macrons to the text manually is a good exercise. This is something they will eventually have to do mentally when encountering real-life texts. (This I actually agree with. This assumes that the word lists provided in the textbook contain macrons even if the texts don't. And if morphology or vocabulary is taught without macrons, there is no way to learn the correct lengths.)
3. Macrons can make the text harder and slower to read. The text looks less cluttered in the absence of macrons. (A foreign language is slow and hard to read anyway. Macrons make parsing some things easier and can actually speed up the process. When you become more fluent, macrons can slow you down by visual cluttering, but this will not happen in an introductory course.)
4. Macrons might not be seen as relevant enough. Perhaps it's better for students to focus on something else. (Personally I disagree! Learning vowel lengths correctly from the start is important. I would really hate someone telling me that every vowel actually has a specific length, but nobody had told me before my third year of Latin. At least I would like to make the choice to omit them myself.)
5. Macrons can be technically hard to produce in print. (When it comes to producing a textbook, complaining that it takes effort to make the book more useful comes across unprofessional. It takes some work, but it's not really that hard. This may not have been so in all eras in the past, though.)
6. Perhaps some see Latin with macrons as somehow impure. If you were taught that the only correct Latin is the kind without any such decorations, wouldn't you want to pass it on in its proper and high form? (I disagree. Learning with macrons help get a better grip of texts written without them. Purity arguments are not pedagogically convincing.)
7. There is no point in pronouncing Latin in the first place. If you learn to read old texts, why bother? (Some students might want to speak as well, and the teacher or the textbook author shouldn't make the decision on their behalf. The written and spoken forms also support each other, even if the eventual goal is reading skill. Moreover, classical literature was originally enjoyed by reading it out loud. For the genuine experience you need to be able to pronounce.)