Encouraging students to take coding classes is great, but maybe not at the expense of expanding horizons and knowledge of other cultures around the world. Learning a foreign language conveys many benefits beyond just the language itself.
I don’t know, I generally consider my 3 years of Latin as a waste of time.
To be fair, Latin shouldn't really count as a "foreign" language since it has essentially no native speakers :upsidedown:
That's a very native English speaker-centric point of view... Here in Europe we learn English to be able to function in the world, nothing much else. Not many people are interested in any other languages, and Russian was dropped as soon as it got out of importance.
Sounds like you are in Eastern Europe (from the Russian comment). In Scandinavia we all learn English from and early age, but everyone then also takes a second foreign language, usually German, French or Spanish (all incredibly useful if you live in Europe), but some schools also have more exotic alternatives.
Same in India, most students take 3 languages in their school career - English, a native regional language (typically Hindi), and a third language, which can range from Japanese to Sanskrit (i.e. Latin but Indic)
Eastern European here. Nearly every university-educated person I know has at least interest in Spanish, and often already some solid knowledge of the language from e.g. telenovelas or doing Erasmus in Spain.
Where are you from exactly? Here in Czechia compulsory third language started only in 2017 (plus minus), and the education is not really great - many people have serious problems with English, and adding the third language didn't really help them with that either.