I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it's all totally gone from my brain.
My mother's native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.
It's sad that so many "leftists" here are super knowledgeable about politics/history yet when it comes to languages turn into complete dumb-dumbs and say stupid shit like "oH WeLl uNlEsS YoU LeArN It aS A KiD MiGhT As wElL GiVe uP hurrrrr durrrrrr!!!" It's not like CI has been some sort of hidden gem, people have used it to learn languages like Japanese for the last decade on youtube and have produced great results. Another reason why I have absolutely zero hope in the west and have resigned myself that it will become ultra fascist.