On Sunday, we ran a story about more schools in Missouri and the St. Louis area offering Chinese to students as a foreign language.  Chinese has even come to Bowling Green, Missouri, where the high school employs three full-time agriculture teachers.

After the story ran, we heard from Marshall Cohen, director of Lift for Life Academy, a charter middle school in St. Louis.  They’ve offered Chinese to their students since early January — two classes a day, four students in each class this year, in rotating five week courses.  “It is so popular, more students want to enroll in it,” he said.

Arabic will supposedly be the next hot language offered by schools and districts, and while reporting this story I heard about a handful of schools that offer Japanese.  What other beyond-the-norm languages have you heard of schools offering?  What languages do you think American students should learn?