In the first place, those studying modern foreign languages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries benefited from prior study of Latin. This means that that half of American students who once brought to the study of modern foreign languages the experience of their exposure to a highly structured classical tongue cannot do so today. It is difficult to overestimate the value of this lost resource. In the second place, the figures cited earlier exaggerate the strength of the present situation because they represent only gross enrollments covering everything from introductory courses in the seventh grade to sixth-level courses for high school seniors. The overwhelming majority of these enrollments are concentrated in the first two years.
Attrition is enormous.
The most common experience for American students of modern foreign languages is to endure the most difficult and least rewarding phase of a program without gaining access to the natural rewards that make such study tolerable. Most American students don't learn enough to build on later and in fact do not build on what they do learn. For the vast majority who quit after a year or two, the most enduring legacy of the experience is bitterness and frustration. Later, when such students find themselves on local school boards, they recall their unsuccessful learning experience, often to the detriment of language programs. Attrition in French is only half as great, but in German it is as great as it is in Spanish.