I don't think that learning a foreign language is a waste of time, but high school classes of foreign languages may indeed be a waste of time and money. I'm a

I don't think that learning a foreign language is a waste of time, but high school classes of foreign languages may indeed be a waste of time and money. I'm a Mexican. All the way through high school I attended English classes. I learned nothing from those classes. Nada. It wasn't until I started getting into the net and finding that most interesting stuff is written in English, and that I wanted to contribute to Open Source projects and that everybody there speaked English that I started caching up in the language. I'm now trying to learn Italian using the same method. Skip formal courses and just start watching subtitled Italian movies, reading stuff in Italian and hanging out in Italian speaking IRC rooms.