I just found out my kid's kindergarten class is teaching Russian 40 mins per day.

[Sympthsical]

177. French is just as practical

In that, I will never use it outside of a specialized purpose - vacation, movies, literature, etc.

There aren't a lot of French speaking opportunities hovering around California.

I think you're not understanding it. I had this long explanation prepared, but I'm not sure if I'm making haymakers at the wind at this point. It's about how English and Chinese languages use different language structure to describe time and tense. As a result, Chinese culture and Western cultures often have very different ways of thinking about time that shapes their attitudes, on personal and historical levels. We hard demarcate past, present, and future, whereas Chinese language has a more simultaneous flow and existence. How our brains grapple with the concepts of time and existence is shaped by the difference in the language.

Another example. Some cultures in Africa can see more shades of green than Americans can. Is it because of some biological difference? Turns out, it is not. It is because certain African languages have a bigger variety of words for the different shades of green. The difference in language informs the mind's ability to perceive things.

So it's good to learn things away from Germanic and Romance languages. Our culture is already set up for those because of its European roots. By giving children language tools that are different from the structures they hear at home or in their own culture, their minds are being primed to grapple with other concepts down the road in different ways.

It isn't about being practical. It's about shaping minds to work better.