Just to give a point for comparison I will shortly outline the Guatemalan school system.

Educaction is divided into three parts: Primaria (primary), Básicos (secondary I) and Diversificados (secondary II).
Primary education is obligatory and is of six years but starts one year earlier than in the US. So, for instance my son is now in Preparatoria = First grade and passes next year to Primero primaria = Second grade.
Secondary education I is optional and three years.
Secondary education II is optional and two to three years. (Two years for "bachillerato" for going to U afterwards and three years for "perito" and other careers.)

Public schools
Public primary schools are divided into urban and rural, normally called EOUM (escuela oficial urbana mixta) and EORM (escula oficial rural mixta).
The education in urban schools in monolingual. One autochthonous[1] language is obligatory as a "foreign" language.
The education in rural schools is bilingual, the first language being the autochthonous language of the area and Spanish being the second.
This is reglemented by laws, like ACUERDO GUBERNATIVO NÚMERO 22-2004 et alii.

Private schools
There is no obligation to teach foreign languages in primary schools (afaik).
Most private schools however start teaching English at pre-school and maintain it through the whole curriculum.
In secondary education, again by the same laws, it is obligatory to teach one autochthonous language as a "foreign" language. This education generally is really bad, but the kids at least manage to say "Hello" and "Thank you". Better bad Quiché than no Quiché I'd say.
In secondary education, too, most private schools teach English.

Extrascholar
Some 20 years ago the biggest promoter of English was the television and the movies, as most content was OST with subs. This has changed however.
Another source for English education was and still is illegal immigration to the US and returning thence.
Nowadays another major factor are call centres like Tellus etc, which generally have own language academies. I have the impression that like 120% of the urban youth work at call centres.

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[1] Either one of the Mayan languages, Xinca or Garífuna.

orthohawk:

kaŝperanto:According to the author of Bilingual: Life and Reality most of the world's population is bilingual, and a few rough estimates are:
Europe: 56%
Great Britain: 38%
Canada: 35%
United States: 17%

I dare say that 17% for the US includes all those Hispanic kids out there who learn Spanish at home. Considering "Non-ethnic" usonanoj, and that figure would probably plummet to around 4 or 5%.

I would definitely agree. Nowhere near 1 in 5 "native" americans I meet is bilingual. Most have taken some spanish, french, or german, but not to any useable level.

orthohawk:

kaŝperanto:You can most definitely get any degree level you want without a single foreign language.

The 7 universities I've researched in my day all required 2nd year proficiency in a FL for a Bachelor of Arts degree (Bach of Science usually required more math and science courses), though I've been hearing of some BS students needing one year of a FL here at the U of Iowa.

Yes, I suppose I am viewing things from a B.S. background. It makes sense that the arts would require a more well-rounded education. My program had to delay general education courses to senior year just so you could fit all the math, science, and engineering courses into a four year plan.

orthohawk:

kaŝperanto:Wow, how is that legal? She sounds like a total fiulino. According to my understanding a true "born again Christian" would be unable to harbor such judgement and hatred toward her fellow man. Sounds like a fundamentalist nutbag to me.

Yes, that's perfectly legal in 18 states, and a further 5 protect LBGT people only in state employment.
and yeah, fundamentalist nutbag is a good term.

My apologies, I was a bit out of line in that comment. I just can't abide someone claiming to follow Christian teachings so eagerly casting the first stone like that. I don't claim to know that this is the whole story, but given the number of images I've seen of protesters with "God Hates Gays" signs I can sadly believe it to be true. It is this type of selective reading/interpretation that leads to the use of faith as a weapon. God is perfect and incapable of such a vile thing as hatred.
I suppose I should reverse my word order to "nutbag fundamentalist" in that this particular nutbag individual happens to claim to be a fundamentalist. That word is a little bit too loaded to mean what I intended it to, I suppose.

sergejm:In Russia, they study English six years or more, but finally most of students cannot speak English, unless they use computers for other aids and need know English for it.

Sadly, in many countries / societies (I do not say all!) foreign language instruction is poor. In the USA I studied French for almost five years in secondary school and university over fifty years ago. In my university courses, everything was in French, including the papers and examinations. I managed to receive acceptable marks, and now after more than fifty years I can still make more or less good sense out of much of a (formally written, not slang or idiomatic) French text, but please do not ask me to compose a coherent paragraph or buy coffee! Again, in many places foreign language instruction is sorely lacking.

That is why my own opinion is that a structured, standardized language like Esperanto would be an advantage as an international language. (I confess that I myself have interest in another one as well.) I personally have had no opportunity actually to speak it, but I speculate that if I had enough opportunity to do so with supportive speakers who would work slowly with a beginner, I might attain some ability. I can already understand much of written E-o texts apart from unfamiliar words.

I taught Spanish and French in high school and then in elementary school here in the US. The schools provided the books and also the tests based on the books. In Spanish, the tests were mostly about grammatical points, especially the difference between using estar and ser. In French the testas were mostly about vocabulary and grammatical gender (le and la). The schools adhered to the grammatical teaching concept, so reading and understanding texts was more important than real speaking and listening skills. It was interesting to teach Spanish, because many of my kids were from Spanish speaking homes and so it was possible to incorporate their home life in my teaching which helped the non-Spanish speaking kids develop more desire to learn. It was strange that the parents of Haitian kids often wanted their children in Spanish classes and not French. The school principal in the elementary school did not approve of me teaching the kids more about the cultures and traditions of the languages. She wanted more "book learning" (probably for the test scores). I feel that I was successful in helping Spanish-speaking kids regain their pride in their cultures and language. In both schools, the language lessons were deemed to be less important that the other subjects and if any classes were canceled for "more important matters" then it was the language class.
At the university, I taught future teachers how to teach English as a foreign language. Most of my students couldn't remember anything from high school language classes and here in Florida there is no requirement for a second language on the university level. As I posted earlier, there is no requirement for a foreign language to get a doctorate (unless it is a doctorate in a related subject, such as Roman history or Chinese studies).
I teach Spanish as a volunteer at a local non-for-profit. Most of my American students think that after three or four weeks, they should be able to be fluent in Spanish. Of course,that doesn't work. I also teach English, and in this case, the students absolutely need English so they are less optimistic (and more tenacious in their studies).

For many decades, the "melting pot" concept of U.S. society encouraged people coming to the U.S. to use English and stop using the language of their homeland. There was a time in Louisiana when corporal punishment was used on Cajun children caught speaking French in school. "This is America, damn it, we speak English!" For may people there was an attitude of "If you don't speak the language, you don't belong here." Unfortunately, for many there still is. During this time, instruction in foreign language was seen as being of minor importance. That began to change a bit around the late 1960's or early 1970's but still, if a school district's budget is under stress, foreign language instruction is one of the first things to be reduced or eliminated.

Where I live, there is very little need to use a language other than English. When Americans travel abroad, they expect to be served in English. It's a shame that so many of us thumb their noses at the rest of the world.

J.W. von Goether:Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.

Who doesn't know foreign languages, doesn't know a thing about his own.

I think this point is valid. You start to understand how your own language works once you start studying foreign languages. And the more different the foreign language is, the stronger the effect.

If you don't know any foreign languages, your own language is a black box. You use it perfectly, but without knowledge about how it works (and you are generally unable to answer detailed questions about your own language to a foreigner). Once you start to study foreign languages, the black box which contains your own language gradually grows more transparent, and you can glimpse the gears and screws and bolts that operate it.

I can imagine for instance, that studying French, Spanish or Latin, might help an English speaker with spelling English.

(I remember an episode form my Air Force days, when I asked an USAF officer how to spell "reconnaissance". Both he and me were indeed recon staff. He opened Word, typed something remotely resembling "reconasance" and then let the spell-check decide.)

Mustelvulpo:For many decades, the "melting pot" concept of U.S. society encouraged people coming to the U.S. to use English and stop using the language of their homeland. There was a time in Louisiana when corporal punishment was used on Cajun children caught speaking French in school. "This is America, damn it, we speak English!" For may people there was an attitude of "If you don't speak the language, you don't belong here." Unfortunately, for many there still is. During this time, instruction in foreign language was seen as being of minor importance. That began to change a bit around the late 1960's or early 1970's but still, if a school district's budget is under stress, foreign language instruction is one of the first things to be reduced or eliminated.

Where I live, there is very little need to use a language other than English. When Americans travel abroad, they expect to be served in English. It's a shame that so many of us thumb their noses at the rest of the world.

I would add that the melting pot concept also included the notion that everyone was to come together as unique parts of one cultural whole. That is what made us great, and it is very unfortunate that it no longer seems to happen. We have forgotten that we are all immigrants from disparate lands who have come together to make one people. Now we just segregate our cultures instead of merging them into one better whole.

One line of hope I've seen is that those of us belonging to "generation y" are showing a lot more interest in exposure to real culture locally and globally. So hopefully "my generation will put it right" (from my favorite Genesis song: Land of Confusion).

Yea, everything said so far is pretty much spot on. I learned 3 years of spanish in middle school (private school), of which I ... don't remember much at all. Then in High School, I didn't want more spanish, and I didn't care about french, so I took the only other option: Latin. for 3 years. and I remember less of that than the spanish.

In university, 2 years language was required unless you were doing certain BS degrees (the number of hours required to fit in the BS required courses was high enough that some general education / add-on stuff like language got nixed)

Where I live, there is very little need to use a language other than English. When Americans travel abroad, they expect to be served in English. It's a shame that so many of us thumb their noses at the rest of the world.

And this is exactly why, when people say "why learn other languages, everybody already speaks english!", I have to resist the urge to inflict violence.

While it's not completely relevant, I hope to be going into college next year, so I was curious about whether Esperanto would count as a (foreign) language for the Higher Education Admission Requirements (HEAR) in Colorado, and the resounding answer was "No."

While its status as a foreign language would definitely be debatable (In practice: yes. In concept: no.), I believe Esperanto does extremely well to fulfill the intended purpose of that stipulation, which is to introduce students to foreign cultures and generally make them more worldly.

I already have enough Foreign Lang. credits in Spanish and I haven't received credit for Esperanto through my school so it technically doesn't affect me, but I'm of the mind to write letters to the relevant powers and request that they reconsider.

nornen:

J.W. von Goether:Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.

Who doesn't know foreign languages, doesn't know a thing about his own.

I think this point is valid. You start to understand how your own language works once you start studying foreign languages. And the more different the foreign language is, the stronger the effect.

Very true. I studied Spanish and Esperanto at the same time and the two of them not only helped me get more insight into English, but also helped me to understand each other.

You start to understand how your own language works once you start studying foreign languages

This seems to me a view which is often expressed to support the learning of foreign languages. But I am not convinced.

How many native English speakers who have learnt Esperanto are equipped to explain the real difference between Have you seen and Did you see, because they have learnt Esperanto.

Or how does learning of French reveal the meaning of 'will' (as an auxiliary verb) and what idea is being expressed in 'I am seeing John tomorrow' versus 'I shall see John tomorrow'.

What learning foreign languages can do is reveal potentially ambiguity in your mother tongue, because the foreign language may require two separate translations. So it becomes apparent that a particular sentence in your own language may embody two different ideas. (Esperanto is particular strong in that regard for native speakers of English.)

But that is quite different to understanding what concepts underlie the grammar of your mother tongue and bringing those to consciousness.

If the foreign language confounds what your own language expresses separately, I suspect you learn nothing (except for a certain contempt for the foreign language unable to make the distinction).