Arabic, anyone?

If you had to pick one foreign language that all students were required to learn in school, what would it be?
Well, I live in America where the unofficial language is English.  Below America is Mexico, where they speak Spanish.  Above America is Canada, where they have two official languages- French and English.  I chose to learn French in school, but despite 6 years of French classes, I cannot remember much.  I do like the language, though- it sounds nice and flowy. 

So I just did a google search and came up with a list of the top 10 most spoken languages in the world

1. Mandarin, with more than 1 billion speakers, but very difficult to learn.
2. English, about 508 million speakers, but it's the official language of more countries than any other language.
3. Hindustani, 497 million, language of India. Namaste.
4. Spanish, 392 million speakers. Has influenced English. Hola.
5. Russian, 277 million, and to say “hello” in Russian, say “Zdravstvuite” (ZDRAST-vet-yah).
6. Arabic, 246 million, one of the oldest languages and mostly spoken in the Middle East.
7. Bengali, 211 million, language of Bangladesh.
8. Portuguese, 191 million, spoken in many countries, national language of Brazil.
9. Malay-Indonesian, 159 million.
10. French, 129 million. Spoken in lots of countries and has influenced English.  Bonjour.

It would make sense to me to have American children study the most-spoken language in the world- but it just happens to be Mandarin, and it is way too difficult to be worth the effort.  Learning any second language fluently opens the mind to learn more languages easier, so I would start American students on Spanish and/or French.  My reasoning: a) we are already doing this in most schools, b) these two languages are the closest to our country's borders, and c) they both share many words with English and are easier for kids to pick up.

I also believe we need to put more stress on learning a second language.  Schools should make it mandatory to pick one language and study it every semester until graduation.  No more messing around, no more firing foreign-language teachers, and no more putting this issue on the back burner.  Learning a foreign language helps the brain in the same way learning to read music does.  When the education system has a firm policy on this, perhaps other languages could be offered to those students who are interested and/or extra talented.  I'd like to see Arabic taught in our schools, and maybe some very enterprising students could attempt Mandarin.

I really think America is being very slow and stupid and behind the times.  Our student's test scores are consistently below other countries'.  I look back at some of my junior high and high school classes and think it's a wonder I learned anything at all. And yet I was a mostly-A student.  Something is broken in the system.