In the second piece of this New York Times article, Ingrid Pufhal points out the fact that the United States has had a utilitarian approach of teaching languages. This means that the languages learned in schools were driven by world events: during the Cold War, Russian was being pushed, two decades ago, Japanese was in the forefront of people's minds, now since China is such a great economic (and military) presence, Mandarin seems to have everyone's attention. This contrast with a very different approach of learning of languages that deviates from this superficial approach. Pufhal puts it in these words: Finally, European policy makers, educators and the general public realize that the benefits of language study extend well beyond the ability to communicate in another language. A recent E.U. meta-study presented scientific evidence that multilingualism contributes to creativity by enhancing mental flexibility, problem solving capability, language awareness, learning capacit...
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