Unlike in US, most European students learn a foreign language

Foreign language was required for two years in high school. People in Europe seem to forget that I can literally drive for days and not leave my country nor have any use for a language other than English. If I were to become fluent in anything other than Spanish, as a second language, I'd rarely get to speak it unless I sought at some kind of language group.

There is some important difference, because the current lingua franca is English, so anyone that is not an English native speaker must study English sooner or later. [Hi from Argentina!]

It would be interesting to compare the rate of the US with the rate of the UK to have a comparison of the social interest in learning another language that is not overshadowed by the effect of the native language.

I imagine people in the US would too, if different states spoke different languages. According to Google, all of europe is only double the population of just USA.