Why Is It So Important That American Students Learn a Foreign Language?

I ask this after reading the summary of the new Time magazine cover story, "How to Build a Student for the 21st Century." In quoting the chairman of UPS it says that country needs:

workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages" -- not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.

Now, I'm not against global literacy, being sensitive to foreign cultures, etc. I think they're important. But I'm not sure that means it's a problem that only half of high school students are taking a foreign language. I base this on what is admittedly the worst of all sample sizes of one: myself. I took French for six years, starting in the seventh grade and going all the way through high school. In retrospect, it was pretty much a waste of time. I've long since forgotten most of it, and what I remember has been useful only when travelling in French-speaking countries, of which they aren't very many.

Not that I think studying language is a waste of time. I just would have been better off spending that time studying this language, doubling up on English literature, writing, rhetoric, etc. I know that students in other countries around the world are generally much more likely to study multiple languages. But that's partially a function of geography--places like Europe are much more multi-lingual. And it's partially because they're not here. If there was a huge country somewhere else that dominated the world's economy, culture, and commerce, I'd want to learn their language. But I live in that country, so I don't have to. English has become the world's lingua franca. I once stood in line in a Parisian department store behind a German tourist arguing with French saleswoman about the price of a purse. They bickered in English--it was the only language they could both speak. I can see how foreign languages are important if you're running a huge multinational corporation like UPS, but that's not exactly a typical case.

None of this means we should stop teaching foreign languages in public schools. It seems like an important choice to offer, and it wouldn't make sense to shut people off from the opportunity. All else being equal, students are undoubtedly better off knowing multiple languages than just one. But there are lots of things they're better off knowing than not knowing, the question is which of those things are most important. If foreign languages go onto that list, something else has to come off. It's not clear to me what that should be.

The only exception I could see is Spanish, which is spoken by a large and growing number of Americans. If students were required to take a least a few years of Spanish, they'd have a stronger connection to many of their fellow citizens, as well as most of the rest of the Western hemisphere. They'd also have a good jumping off point into other romance languages. That seems like a more logical policy than saying that students should be required to study any foreign language in-depth, but not saying what that language should be.