The short story "The Last Class" by Alfonse Daudet tells of a French boy running through his village in Alsace, France, because he is late for school. When he arrives at the schoolroom, he finds the teacher dressed in his Sunday finest. The teacher solemnly informs the students that this will be the last class taught in French. The Prussians have taken over the village, and a new teacher would now teach the classes only in German.

The boy is crestfallen as he realizes that he has not applied himself well to his lessons and can barely write in his own language. The teacher explains that too often the parents of the students kept them home to help with work or he himself made excuses to tend his garden or go fishing—but now it's too late to remedy those errors. The teacher gives the final lesson, and the classroom falls silent as everyone applies themselves to the study of the language as they never have done before.

The best answer to the multiple-choice question that you have posed is 1: Sometimes you don't fully appreciate something until it is too late. Nobody in the village could have foreseen that the freedom to learn in the French language would be taken away from them, and so they all gave it low priority. Only when this freedom is about to be stripped away do they understand the value of conducting the lessons in their own language.