When I was a kid in public school, everybody had to take a foreign language, the elective part was that we had a choice as to which language we took. Some chose French. Some chose Spanish. If you came from money, you also had the option to take foreign language courses at participating colleges, which opened up a lot of other options like German, Japanese, and Latin, amongst others.

Has that changed? Or perhaps it’s different in different jurisdictions?

For me personally, I wish Latin had been an option for me, as it’s used extensively in biology and it would have been incredibly helpful. In terms of foreign language courses I’ve taken, I’ve had Spanish, French, and German. I don’t use any of them, except on rare occasion I’ll hear/see something in Spanish that I can vaguely understand the highlights of given enough time. French is pretty much 100% useless in my day to day life. German has been helpful once or twice when watching a movie or listening to music, but otherwise, useless as well.

Keep in mind, however smart you are, most people are not that smart. They’ll never be curious enough or smart enough to learn another language. They don’t have enough exposure to another language to really remember it. It’s basically of waste of their time and educational money. I’m all for teaching these things in schools as electives, but forcing kids to learn multiple different languages? I think we should have universal/single payer healthcare, better medicare/medicaid, free school lunches (and breakfasts), true livable minimum wages, and a myriad other things first.