mrwarper wrote:There bust be many factors, but I would highlight a mix of plummeting standards and ever growing absurd curriculum requirements: when I finished high school you could be sure of being functional at a B2 level if you took advantage of your language classes, and some command of foreign languages was a reasonable recommendation for those engaging in the Erasmus program and the like, as it should be. Fast forward to the present, and now a B1 certificate in some foreign language is a formal requirement to get any degree, while we have loads of undergraduates enrolling in parallel language classes to get that. This clearly implies that high school levels have gone to the dogs, and a high percentage of people who engage in classes because it's required makes it obviously more difficult to find the students who have a more sustainable interest in learning.
I'm always in two minds about accusing the education systems of plummeting standards, since you meet quite a lot of dedicated and hard-working teachers. Yet I also know it is a structural policy problem beginning with those actually in charge of curricula - and it gets worse further up the scale. Politicians seem to have a technocrat's approach to this; and also the eye of a parsimonious accountant, at every turn.
In that past I mentioned, the aim in school academia wasn't ever to really turn out masses of highly-competent speakers, but to ground people in a literary foundation. This was always visible in the UK among those who'd been to a grammar school or posher - able to read a language to some degree, minimal speaking skills. Many years later that same thing exists here in the Netherlands where I live now. It's just easier (or maybe more operational) to learn these skills as a personal pursuit than it is to navigate and conquer the enormous sea of spoken languages.
I have to confess though even though I like languages and think they are valuable for understanding people, I don't agree that everyone should be forced or required to learn foreign languages. Especially as some judgement upon academic worthiness. You can be a good mathematics scholar and not specifically pursue languages. I find it strange that, especially in the U.S., but not only there, that people lament greatly about predominantly English-speakers not learning prestige foreign languages, whilst having e.g. millions of Spanish speaking opportunities built-into the country and cases of it being suppressed because it is linked to the deprecated version of the 'immigrant'.
In the same vein the UK would be better off teaching Polish or Urdu or Chinese in schools, than German, it would do more for social cohesion. Or Welsh on the borders. Instead they force students to plough through languages they'll have scant opportunities to use. Turkish would be an option in Germany/Netherlands. Arabic elsewhere. The obstacles are cultural/political. Imagine how much progress could be made with a language you can practically use around you when at school. That would be a way to set people up for language learning.