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ok I get Chinese is hard, but so is german. In the business world, both the latter will be more important than german or French in terms of business. Sure in the ideal world, you know every language out there.
No English speaker needs to know a foreign language to do business, as English is the standard language of business. When the Germans do business with the Chinese, or the French for that matter, they all speak English.
It is a good skill, however, and the ability to converse or read literature in a foreign language makes one a more well rounded person. I believe more students in the US learn Spanish than any other language. Chinese is growing in popularity but it's a fad.
I would imagine that there is a shortage of teachers. If you are fluent in a language, there are usually career paths that are much more remunerative than teaching.
Since when are students not taking Spanish courses? I thought the whole reason why many of them jump to studying French or German is because they were required to take 2 years of a foreign language in H.S., which in many cases is just plain ol' Spanish.
Due to proximity and grammatical similarities, Spanish is the easiest language for an American to learn, but I can see why the appeal is lost on many teenagers. Spoken nation-wide by maids, lawn maintenance crews, and drug cartel apprentices, Spanish just ain't that romantic anymore.
German can be a very useful language for studying religion, and not everyone wants to be a businessman. Also, check out how few schools actually offer Mandarin.
A lot of public schools only offer Spanish, French, and German. From my experience German is widely popular because it's a "fun" language and culture to study casually.
German and French have vast literature, and have traditionally been the languages that educated native-speakers of English ought to learn (after Latin). What's surprising is the opposite question from that of the original posting: why is Spanish so popular as a second language in the US, and French (and especially German) very much of secondary status?
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