A second language should be mandatory in American public education curricula.

It's pretty backwards and counterproductive to keep thinking that America should be some kind of protectionist, cultural backwater. Of course, this thinking isn't par for the course everywhere where, but it's prevalent enough to be an issue.

I speak as one who was raised in a mutli-lingual household, and wound up being fluent in five languages as an adult.

Sure, proper English should be our lingua franca where it concerns commerce, etc ...

But I think we fall behind as a society by not encouraging multi-lingualism.