We have similar thing here in UK; in Wales there are many communities who will shut you out if you don't speak Welsh and if you want to get ahead in politics there you can forget about it unless you are a Welsh speaker.
Spanish is a great language for an Anglo-native to learn. The number one factor to the "effort to value ratio" (bang per buck) for learning a language is the number of places you can use it once learnt, and South America is not exactly a small continent.
Ironically considering the thread topic I would even say that exposure to a foreign language for kindergarten age kids is really valuable because the young mind flips that important switch early on knowing that there can be more than one language. Little kids exposed to other languages will have better ability to learn another language (should they wish to) in adulthood. I know because coming from an airforce family I lived at many foreign bases from age 2 and it really helped me later when I ran up against the school curriculum requiring French.
Incidentally if you just don't like Spanish for ideological reasons and want to stay away from it then my guess is being a Russian or Chinese speaker will give you a definite business edge 10 years from now so maybe try that instead.
It's a shame when languages are weaponised,
We have similar thing here in UK; in Wales there are many communities who will shut you out if you don't speak Welsh and if you want to get ahead in politics there you can forget about it unless you are a Welsh speaker.
Spanish is a great language for an Anglo-native to learn. The number one factor to the "effort to value ratio" (bang per buck) for learning a language is the number of places you can use it once learnt, and South America is not exactly a small continent.
Ironically considering the thread topic I would even say that exposure to a foreign language for kindergarten age kids is really valuable because the young mind flips that important switch early on knowing that there can be more than one language. Little kids exposed to other languages will have better ability to learn another language (should they wish to) in adulthood. I know because coming from an airforce family I lived at many foreign bases from age 2 and it really helped me later when I ran up against the school curriculum requiring French.
Incidentally if you just don't like Spanish for ideological reasons and want to stay away from it then my guess is being a Russian or Chinese speaker will give you a definite business edge 10 years from now so maybe try that instead.