Spain. I had to choose English or French for all four years of high school; one year of Latin was required. If Id’ been pure-humanities track I would have had three years of Latin and one of Classical Greek. These requirements were set at the national level. Most of us chose the foreign language we’d already had since 4th or 6th grade (which one varied by school).
There was a module set aside for “optionals”, 9th-11th grade: in my HS, the optionals offered were draftsmanship/art drawing or accounting, in the other HS in town it was a second foreign language (you could take the foreign language that you had not chosen as your first out of French and English, or Italian) or accounting.
My college required English and a second foreign language (French or German). They started offering English lessons when I was there; previously, and it stayed so for the other two, all they offered was the exams. These grades do not count towards your GPA but you can’t have your viva until you’ve passed everything, including the language requirements and other non-GPA stuff.
The current requirement is to start a second language in 4th grade; many schools begin in 1st or in kindergarten.
In the UK a foreign language in secondary school is mandatory. Our school offered French or Spanish. I took French. In the last two years, Latin was also offered to those in the upper sets in languages (English, French and Spanish), but we had to do it in our spare time (after school and during lunch breaks).
Germany, two foreign languages mandatory in my Gymnasium (I took the maths/science branch), none at university as you were supposed to have covered that at school.
Puerto Rico. English is taught as a second language since elementary school. Public schools do not tend to offer any other language instruction (other than Spanish or English), and only some private schools offer an extra language (usually French, by comemierdería).
When I went to college, UF, it required a foreign language, but since I already knew two, I didn’t need to take any more language classes. But, I needed Gen Ed credits and there was this Brazilian Portuguese class that seemed fun… I ended up getting a minor in Portuguese.
So it has been required for me since elementary school, and it was required in college, but I didn’t have to take any courses because I knew another language already (Spanish). Yet I took a different one and made it a minor.
We were required to take French to ‘O’ Level (the major exams you sat at 16, at which point you could leave school if you wished). Plus we took 2 years of Latin or Spanish (ages 12-14), plus had to take one other language through to 'O’Level (Latin, Spanish or German).
No requirement to take languages in the 6th form unless they were one of your chosen subjects (the two years we take, optionally, at school aged 16-18, where we focus on 3-4 subjects).
No requirement at college, where we only study our ‘major’.
OP, I wouldn’t be too hard on Americans. Us Brits are just as bad at speaking foreign languages, because everyone speaks english to us. A few of us make a little effort when we holiday in Europe, but that’s about it. My French is very rusty, my German long forgotten, and I won’t even discuss my Latin.
At High School in New Zealand a foreign language was also part of the curriculum- your choices were generally French, Japanese, or maybe German. I think they introduced one of the Chinese languages in the year I left.
I took French and have found it to be very useful indeed, FWIW.
There’s been no requirement to study a foreign language at any of the universities I’ve attended in Australia, either at postgraduate or undergraduate level, although I’ve heard that it’s a requirement for some business degrees now.
This was back in the 1960s in Australia. I did not have to take a foreign language at high school, though the way that the class timetable was arranged, it was hard to avoid. As it was, I took French, German and Latin for varying numbers of years. In addition, I think I was the only student in my class who visited countries with all of those as official languages while I was still in high school. (Yes, I did indeed visit the Vatican.)
At university, doing two undergraduate degrees, I never had to study a foreign language.
I took enough German in high school to get college credit towards the foreign language requirement there. I also took a year in French in high school, and a year of Koine Greek was required in seminary.
I took five years of French in high school (7th and 8th grade counted as one year); that was a state requirement.
In college, there was none.
For graduate school, there was a foreign language requirement. Here’s how it worked: You chose a passage in a foreign language (I think it was three pages). You handed it to the professor. A week later he would hand it back to you to translate. You were allowed to use a translation dictionary in the exam. If you translated the passage correctly, you got credit.
It wasn’t required in high school (though highly recommended) but it was for my major at university. I took Spanish in high school and earlier for one year in junior high, and Japanese at university.
I went to school in post-1994 South Africa. We weren’t required to take a foreign language; we were required to take two different official languages (of which SA has eleven). At least one of them had to be taken at “home language” level. At my school it meant either English+Afrikaans or English+isiXhosa.
As I recall, students who had come to South Africa within the last four years of schooling had the “two official languages” requirement waived, and were allowed to take English plus any other language. But everyone had to take two languages.
At my US public high school, foreign language was required. You had to take either three years of one language, or two years apiece of two languages. The classes were offered beginning in seventh grade, so it was possible to take six years of a single language, if you started early. The languages available were French, Spanish, German, and Latin.
I took French for three years. I have a very good passive vocabulary–certainly I can read it and even sometimes understand it spoken–and I speak enough to get by.
The schools of science and liberal arts at my university also required that undergraduates either take two years of a foreign language or demonstrate equivalent proficiency. I tested out of French.
My graduate work was in linguistics–had to demonstrate proficiency in a second foreign language (tested into the second year of Italian, for that, with self-study and my knowledge of French) and take a year of guided study in an “exotic” language. I chose Swahili.
Definitely a requirement at my high school, but I don’t remember how many years were required. I took four years of French (I think third and fourth year were both honors courses) and if I’d known where I was going to end up in life I would have dropped physics and chemistry for Latin. Georgetown may have had one as well, but since Russian was my major it was kind of a moot point for me.
Man, Esperanto… I gotta dust off those books again.
Foreign language was a requirement for graduation at my high school, but I failed each class. I did not graduate from high school because of those damned classes.
Why?
I’m hearing impaired and there was no opt-out for the classes. Take the classes or not graduate.
Got my G.E.D. the same year my classmates graduated from high school. I was in the top 2% for the entire state and I didn’t have to learn a foreign language.
I had to take a foreign language in college, but not high school.
First tried Japanese - this was in the days of “America bow to our Japanese overlords and their immense buying power” - and dropped it after 2 days.
I then took German. Did three classes out of four, never finished the fourth. We had to give a speech at the end of the third class in German and I kind of cheated - I got a guitar, translated both the “Beverly Hillbillies” and “Gilligan’s Island” songs in German, and sang that in front of the class. The professor was entertained/confused* enough that she gave me a “B”, despite the fact that I didn’t really do as asked.
I technically didn’t graduate because of that never-taken fourth German class, but, in one of those things that I wouldn’t believe it if I read it in a book, a year or two after my last class the university revamped the curriculum requirements for my major and applied the changes retroactively. I wasn’t aware of this until I received my diploma in the mail.
Whew!
*She started a discussion asking WTF was I singing, did it have cultural significance here in the US, what?
I had a requirement to pass a foreign language for the Master’s program in History at the University of Toronto. I suppose for most students this would have been a minor speed bump if they were studying European or Canadian history, but I was working in the history of the Church of England. I opted for Latin, though unlike most of my colleagues I wasn’t actually using it in my dissertation.