It seems obvious that there must have been a link between these figures and Franco-American relations during the same period, but it is also reasonable to wonder if there isn't a more prosaic explanation for the subsequent decline of French. When the language rush began in 1958, there was a speedy, energetic, typically American roundup of available teachers and quick and efficient teaching methods. At the secondary level, education committees found more Spanish than French teachers. The attitudes of French departments were perhaps a little too reserved. Still feeling effects of the war crisis, they stuck to old-fashioned formulas and methods, and acceptance of new ones came too late.
Statistics seem to bear out that an opportunity was missed.
Students returning from France say that nobody addresses a word to them unless it's to say something insulting. Even restaurant waiters with their frightful broken English will make fun of Americans whose French is perfectly acceptable. The paradox of the present situation is that it has in large part been created by youthful dissent from the Vietnam war. For hundreds of thousands of young Americans America is closer to Europe than England was to the Continent fifty years ago. Everything which can help French break out of traditional methods and blaze trails to new values, everything which can bring students closer to the French themselves, will be welcomed.