Learning German at school: The Double Whammy of Uselessness ?

Professor Bryan Caplan in the_double_whammy_of uselessness wites that he "repeatedly argued that foreign language requirements in U.S. schools are absurd and should be abolished.  For two distinct reasons.
Reason #1: Americans almost never use their knowledge of foreign languages (unless they speak it in the home).
Reason #2: Americans almost never learn to speak a foreign language very well in school, even though a two- or even three-year high school requirement is standard.
This double whammy is easily generalized.  If studying X for years yields minimal knowledge, and you wouldn't use X even if you knew it, you could defend X as an elective.  But how could anyone defend X as a requirement? 
Yet plenty of people I've met can and do stand by such requirements.  Indeed, they think I'm the crazy one."

 Well said, Prof. Caplan, and looking forward to read your new book:

The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money

Bryan Caplan is an economist, of course.

Here my comment as teacher of German as foreign language ;)

Most kids that are forced to study German, French, etc. at school get a raw deal: Lots of life-time (around 600-1000 lessons in an German secondary school)  spent bored or studying, often with lousy books (Russia, Kazachstan) or not-really-good books (US, UK), locked up in a crowded group of usu. 30 or more other kids. While their parents and the other grown-ups shell out taxes to pay for those "free"-schooling. (In German schools I calculate the cost as 10€ per lesson per student, so 6000 to 10.000 €. And the results? In Germany: not even bad, usu. between A2 and B1. In not so few cases: even  B2, rarely C1. (Though this "succesfull learners" put always a LOT of extra-effort into mastering the language. Outside school.) 

Worth it?

Anyone who takes a thousand lessons and spends 9000€ to reach only B1+/A2+/A1+ - can consider his course as a failure and mark the whole experience as D/E/F and mostly a waste of his life-time. As there are lots of institutes that can deliver B2 in 500-800 lessons, for a total of 2.000 to 6.000 (cheaper in poorer countries, esp. where the Goethe-institute offers subsidised courses).  

Fazit:  Learning foreign languages  at school - outside the US/UK it may not be  "The Double Whammy of Uselessness", if kids actually learn it to a usable level AND many of them use it after school - but EFFICIENT it is NOT.  

WHAT do YOU think? Write in the comments!