Of course many Hacker News participants come from non-English-speaking countries but have learned English to high proficiency, so I'd be glad to hear their opinions on this question about American secondary school curricula.
In Norway, kids start learning their second language (English) in First Grade, and their third language (Spanish, French and German are most common) in 7th Grade.
It seems clear to me that this is bound to give better results than starting in 9th Grade, as is common in the US.
Personally, I always found languages hard to learn, and I'm still clumsy in my spoken Norwegian, even after 12 years here. On the other hand, my children are completely bilingual, and became so effortlessly. I think it's a shame that the plasticity of young brains is wasted on a single language, in most cases, and that the task of learning a foreign tongue is delayed until such an age as to maximize the amount of effort required.
So I guess we're in agreement - start them young with a second language when they're better able to assimilate it.
I found the article very short sighted. It seems strange to me that a high school kid can choose not to attend a class. If I had to choose, I would have spent all my time in the CS lab. Forget about French, Latin, philosophy, Italian, History! Now, instead, I regret having studied too much CS and only 2 years of Latin.
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.