Foreign Language: Bring it Home!

Few students in the US study foreign language, let alone acquire fluency. Education Week reports:

“The American Councils for International Education survey—which sought state-by-state data on enrollment in foreign language courses—estimates that 10.6 million K-12 students in the United States are studying a world language or American Sign Language. That's only one out of every five students.”

There was a time, wasn’t there, when foreign language was considered a major discipline, like math, English, and science, and everyone took it? So, then, there was a time—right—when students loved to study foreign language and longed to immerse themselves in another culture? Or am I remembering incorrectly? Have we always been, fundamentally, xenophobic?