I will concede one point to the article, which is that if you wait until high school to start learning a foreign language, you won't get much out of it. Accordi

I will concede one point to the article, which is that if you wait until high school to start learning a foreign language, you won't get much out of it. According to modern theories of cognitive development, you switch from language "acquisition" to language "learning" sometime around puberty (usually cited as age 13). The two models of gaining knowledge and skills are qualitatively different both in how they operate, and in the benefits they give. I don't have a link, but I've heard that there's solid research saying that kids who grow up bilingual have a better basis for abstract concepts. This makes sense to me: having two symbols for everything makes you more aware of the difference between the symbol and the thing it stands for, and having two ways of expressing a concept makes you more open to hother ways of expressing (and perceiving) it. The main point is, if you start taking your first foreign language in high school, you're only acquiring the single skill of speaking that one language, and I agree that skill may not be utile for you. If you start learning foreign languages earlier (even 2 years earlier!), it has an impact much larger than gaining a single skill. Language is fundamental to human thought, and being able to speak more than one language makes it easier to think in different ways. I would say that teaching kids a foreign language early on is as important as math skills early on, and programming concepts should probably be given the same treatment. Not that I expect every kid to grow up into a programmer, but that style of thinking is useful.