Do language learners need grammar?

Of course most speakers of a given language became proficient in that language as children - without conscious knowledge of grammar (and never learnt much grammar after that!).

When teaching young children a foreign language teachers would probably sing, recite and play games and never talk about grammar in the early stages.

But couldn't there be educational (pedagogical) reasons for getting even young children (at a certain stage in their language learning process) to discover and become aware of the structural elements in the language they are learning?

Doesn't conscious awareness of Grammar imply conscious awareness of one's ability to think? And doesn't that in turn lead to awareness of being a 'person'? And then, eventually, to the concept of taking responsibility for one's actions?

Steiner-Waldorf foreign language teaching tries to work with this idea.

Let us assume for a moment that we are working with children who already have a certain command of the language but without conscious awareness of grammar rules. "If as teachers we can devise ways for these children to be become consciously aware of the inherent grammatical structures of the language they have been using, this could provide an important stepping-stone towards these children developing a healthy self-confidence. The teaching of grammar awareness would have to be lively (not just system-oriented, theoretical or scientific) and we would have to find the right moment to start (usually somewhere between 9 and 10)."

(See Rudolf Steiner GA 294 30.08.1919).