While I agree with the principle of the idea, I think that it is important that students learn Spanish, by far the most relevant foreign language, before they proceed to other languages.
A brief grant-funded Arabic module in middle school is going to leave kids very little in the long run beyond a few words; I doubt more than a handful will actually learn the alphabet and remember it. Maybe it will help them learn how to learn languages or think about Arabic differently. They'll pursue more widely-taught languages in junior high and high school.
Correct. I had French, German, Latin and Russian lessons in primary school and I retained almost nothing.
