>and would have found it to be a benefit for many jobs, especially low-paying or lower-management jobs. I think you may be overestimating the benefit. When I w

>and would have found it to be a benefit for many jobs, especially low-paying or lower-management jobs. I think you may be overestimating the benefit. When I worked as a retail supervisor in college, we paid $0.25 more if you spoke one of a few different languages. It never really made much difference when hiring. I also had many Spanish speaking friends in lower paying jobs and apart from 1 who worked as a hospital translator there wasn't much financial benefit. If you take the amount of time that it takes to become proficient (and keep proficiency), you'd be much better off spending that time on something more lucrative. From a purely financial perspective, after factoring in opportunity costs, I think that learning Spanish probably has a negative ROI. >This sort of thing really shouldn't go away, even if the language was forgotten. We don't really know that though. We need more evidence before we base start taking action here. It could be that learning the violin would have more benefit. Learning a new language is romantic, we can't let that romanticism impact policy decisions. And my guess is that to get most of the benefits of bilingualism, you have to get to the point where you spend time thinking in both languages. I don't think classroom instruction is ever going to get you to that level.