While you’re not wrong, it’s a very American conceit to make second languages into this mountain to climb. Plenty of countries teach ESL or some other world language and then expect most students to invest about as much energy into a third language as the typical American invests in a second.
In Japan you might go to college with two years of German and five years of English. From my limited sample the third language was often a “where would I like to vacation” question.
I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who watched my spouse struggle with it for over a decade while copping a completely unacceptable amount of flak from both native speakers and other ESL speakers of other primary languages who want to show them up for what is, to me, a very impressive amount of effort. A common topic of conversation between them and their friends is how soul-draining it is to keep up in English, and most of them are PhDs or high-middle management levels, they're not 18 year olds straight out of highschool English.
I'm not just projecting my own struggles with learning Chinese.
While you’re not wrong, it’s a very American conceit to make second languages into this mountain to climb. Plenty of countries teach ESL or some other world language and then expect most students to invest about as much energy into a third language as the typical American invests in a second.
In Japan you might go to college with two years of German and five years of English. From my limited sample the third language was often a “where would I like to vacation” question.