Americans’ low rate of foreign language fluency is a problem for many branches of the U.S. military, intelligence community, and foreign service. To create a pipeline of foreign language-speaking employees for these agencies, it’s important to invest in foreign language programs at the elementary and secondary school levels now.
School classrooms are a poor place for meaningful language acquisition, as evidenced by the fact that less than 1% of students who take a foreign language in high school attain fluency. The government should instead find ways to encourage parents to teach foreign languages at home, which has been much more effective than classroom instruction.