Why not make it mandatory for 40 or 50 languages? Why not 100? Why not all languages?

In my poor, rural school district (growing up), Spanish was taught starting in kindergarten. In high school, grades 9 - 12, two semesters of foreign language were required to graduate (or you had to demonstrate you qualified for an exception such as that you were already at least bilingual). The school offered French and Spanish. The only reason French was even an option is because of one special teacher, whom we were lucky to have, had a degree in French language arts or something like that. Other schools in the area only had Spanish.

You’ll probably recognize this when you’re older, but nearly everything in life is a balance of constraints and concerns. Teaching languages costs money, often in short supply, and requires qualified educators, often in short supply.

But also, what the hell do you even mean “upper hand when traveling”? I’d be shocked if most non-bilingual Americans who went through the education system in the USA spend more than 1 or 2 weeks in their entire lives some place where being bilingual would give them some kind of upper hand.

One might argue that Spanish alone would probably cover an enormous amount of those who have spent more than 1 or 2 weeks outside of English speaking parts of the world. But it all seems like an enormous waste of time and energy and resources just to make sure the most privileged amongst us have “the upper hand” when they travel. That’s time and energy and resources that could probably be more wisely spent elsewhere to be honest, and for those privileged folks who have the luxury of traveling and need “the upper hand” – they can turn in their privilege bucks and pay for their own education to learn 3 or 4 languages, I would think? Perhaps they could cut back to only 4 trips to Italy this year and use the savings for some lessons on how to speak Italian.