Why would the number of languages you can speak indicate effectiveness of an educational system? Yes, I know the argument about cultural awareness. That won't make you better at building web servers. It might make you better at interacting with people of that culture.
Fundamentally though multiple languages is incredibly wasteful. I'd never propose that English should be a global language - it is such a steaming pile of shit thinking it the best we have is insane - it just has network effects in its favor. Of course, building a language scientifically that uses all enunciable syllables and minimizes word size and maximizes understandability is a major project and getting people to speak it is impossible.
And yes, the non-higher US educational system is colossal garbage, but we know that. We are talking about US higher education, where you pick your courses and rarely are students enrolling to learn two more languages for the fun of it. In that context, millions of students around the world strive to get into US schools, not because the teachers are any better - in my experience, one, individual students are different and learn better in different ways so one scale of "better" or "worse" education is insane, and two, there are diminishing returns on teaching skill such that the difference between the best public school teacher and the best teacher period is probably a fraction of a percent of student performance at worst. The US education system is good because of the business networks the prestigious schools get you into and how almost anyone will hire a US school grad.
Fundamentally though multiple languages is incredibly wasteful. I'd never propose that English should be a global language - it is such a steaming pile of shit thinking it the best we have is insane - it just has network effects in its favor. Of course, building a language scientifically that uses all enunciable syllables and minimizes word size and maximizes understandability is a major project and getting people to speak it is impossible.
And yes, the non-higher US educational system is colossal garbage, but we know that. We are talking about US higher education, where you pick your courses and rarely are students enrolling to learn two more languages for the fun of it. In that context, millions of students around the world strive to get into US schools, not because the teachers are any better - in my experience, one, individual students are different and learn better in different ways so one scale of "better" or "worse" education is insane, and two, there are diminishing returns on teaching skill such that the difference between the best public school teacher and the best teacher period is probably a fraction of a percent of student performance at worst. The US education system is good because of the business networks the prestigious schools get you into and how almost anyone will hire a US school grad.