Over in my high school in the UK, we had a choice of two from three; French, German, or Spanish. I took the first two and don’t remember much of either (more of French, but that’s more picked up stuff than actually remembering it). They also very briefly offered Sanskrit as an after school thing, but only because the Religious Education teacher at the time understood it, and I remember pretty much zilch of that.
This.
I went through the English school system in Quebec, so I had French classes from Kindergarten through to the Cégep. My full-day kindergarten had the mornings in French and the afternoons in English, with the two swapping every month. After that the requirement was ~1hour per day through to the end of high school (grade 11). Then two French courses in Cégep to get my diploma. University does not have any language requirements, other than proof of proficiency in the language of instruction at enrollment. The amount of French required per day from grades 1-11 has now changed, I think - maybe 90 minutes? I’m not sure. The bilingual kindergarten was particular to my school board at the time.
In my schools, the French classes weren’t necessarily Second Language courses - for those of us that are bilingual, there were more enriched and mother tongue classes (instead of “regular”) so that the subject matter was at a more appropriate level.
We barely had a foreign language in my tiny high school and it was Spanish only. I took it and also had to take three intensive semesters of Spanish in college as well. Spanish 100 was the only college course I got a C in but I clawed my way up to a B+ by my third semester when it was 100% immersion literature and lectures plus intensive papers in Spanish. I tried so, so hard but that was the one academic subject I couldn’t excel at even though I could give good student lectures 100% in Spanish at the end with a question and answer session from professors. I can read some complicated Spanish now but I can’t speak it very well. You need to start young on that stuff and I did not. My daughters are bilingual French though because their public school offers an unusual program in complete French immersion from Kindergarten through high school. They can talk behind my back because I don’t speak French either.
I’m not sure how to answer this. I don’t think my high school had a foreign language requirement, but I took four years of Spanish anyway.
Like SpoilerVirgin, I attended the University of California, but my memory of the admission requirement is different - as I recall, to be admitted you needed to have 2 years of a foreign language in high school, and if you didn’t have 3 years, you had to do a year of a language in college. I didn’t take the AP exam and it wasn’t an issue.
Since I had taken four years of a language in high school, that didn’t affect me. But I took two years of Hebrew anyway.
So my university did have a foreign language requirement, but I think a lot of people weren’t actually affected by it, since pretty much everyone I knew had taken at least three years in high school.
I am old. Two years of Latin were required back when I went to high school . I took Japanese classes in college, but it has rusted away.
But I didn’t learn it in high school. I found it on the net much later, and joined a club. 
I wish we’d had Japanese in high school. It would have fed directly into my [del]obsessions[/del] interests. Strangely, by the time I was well into university, things had changed so much that the obsession was gone.
It’s somewhat similar for French in English-speaking Canada. We can read the French on our cereal boxes, but try to conduct a conversation? Nope. The French I took is long gone, and the German as well. It might be easier for me to pick it up again, than for a total beginner to, but that’s about the only legacy of my public-school and high-school French.
Why is it gone? We never used it outside the classroom. I suppose I could have inquired about trips to Montreal and like that, but my family wasn’t rich in high school, and couldn’t afford to send me on trips. And I lived in a strangely-blinkered world where many things I could have done, it never occurred to me to do, because I thought I was powerless.
I so wish I’d had an opportunity to take French in immersion from age four or whatever–I know I was soaking up Japanese like a sponge in the immersion course I took last year (before I moved).
There was no requirement when I was at school or university. The only languages that my school offered (in the 1970s) were French, Latin and Ancient Greek. I did all three at some stage.
I had to take 2 years of foreign language in middle school (7 and 8). I took Spanish and didn’t learn a damn thing.
I had to take 2 years in high school. I started to take Spanish 3 but dropped it when I realized the futility of actually trying to learn a language at my school. I took Latin for 3 years and learned a hell of a lot more than I learned in Spanish. I credit Latin class with helping me do well on my English SAT.
I will have to take 2 semesters of foreign language for my Liberal Arts degree (Associates). I will be taking Spanish 1 in the Spring and Spanish 2 over the summer. I’ll probably take at least 1 semester of ASL also but that’s just because I want to.
I should probably clarify, since I’m a college student now. I didn’t just graduate from high school. That was 12 years ago. I have no idea what the high school or middle school language requirements are in MA schools these days. I do know that my years of Latin don’t matter to my college and wouldn’t have 12 years ago.
However, my mother took this same major, at this same school and graduated 22 years ago. She said she didn’t have to take a foreign language.
I voted “foreign language in high school but not college”, which is not technically correct because of the word “foreign”, but in spirit correct because high school demanded that you take two languages. In my case this was Afrikaans, which I barely scraped through and can no longer speak or write very well.
The poll didn’t give my option - *two *foreign languages required.
I studied English from 4th grade until I graduated from high school. It was considered one of the most important subjects, up there with math and Hebrew; for me, of course, it was an easy A. An additional language was required from 7th to 9th grade - in my school it was (literary) Arabic, of which I unfortunately remember very little.
This was in regular municipal schools in Haifa, Israel.
What foreign country was Latin spoken in then?
Foreign and dead is still foreign.
Vatican City.
I was not required, just encouraged. But it was impossible for me to fit into my schedule: I was in both band and choir, and took accelerated classes. In retrospect, I probably could have dropped band in the spring semesters, but I did not consider that possibility.
In college, it was on the list of things you could take for a certain type of course, but, as there were English-based courses in that group as well, I wouldnt’ consider that required. I do not count my choral language classes, as we didn’t really attempt to learn the language, just how to sing it, and do very basic translation work with dictionaries.
I did finally take a Spanish 101 course as an elective. I got an A, but not because I learned anything from it. As I’ve pointed out, I don’t do well with memorization, and, until you get a foundation, that seems to be what is required to learn a language. Back when I was in grade school, I could memorize a lot better, and was pretty proficient in French–but I lost the vocabulary since I never used it.
I was required to take French for my major in college, but I had already met the general foreign language requirement by taking Spanish in junior high, high school, and at the junior college I attended before transfer. I was almost fluent in Spanish, but alas, I have forgotten most of it.
In France at the time I grew up (born in 1982), we began to learn english toward the end of elementary school, and in junior high you had to take another foreign language, either spanish or german.
In high school you then had to pick, besides two foreign language between english/german/spanish, either latin or greek, or a third foreign language (I think it was russian, where I was, or maybe dutch).
English was a requirement in my college classes (psychology) for the first two years I think.
When I was in high school in Australia the electives were set up so that you had to choose a foreign language up to year 10. After that it was optional and hardly anyone did it except the people doing really well in year 10.
I had to take (at least) three foreign languages in high school - for different amounts of time though - but none in college. But it has to be said that 90% of literature was in English (for clarity, I went to school in a non-english speaking country) and if a professor was from abroad, you were expected to just take the course and examinations in english.
(Finland here) I had mandatory foreign language (English 10 years), mandatory 2nd domestic (Swedish 6), chose also Latin (3) and French (5). My school had also ancient Greek, German and Russian. Didn’t fit anything and the OP was interested in Americans, so I didn’t vote.
No amount of years in 20 pupil groups exposed only to a teacher and the group gets you a fluent language, so the system should focus on giving the basics in as many languages as possible. People will pick up phrases and words whenever exposed to the language as long as they know the basics and givin these is where a school is at its best. This is my experience of all the languages I’ve studied. In some of them I’m fluent in some I can only skim thru texts, but always when I’m exposed I’m likely to learn.
Languages stick much better at young age so as many as possible should start at the elementary level. If you wait longer the method is likely to become the painful “let’s memorise all these grammar rules on rational conscient level until they possibly become automatic”.