Every person learn to speak when they were babies. From speaking words to words, they build sentences which then not only express their feelings, but also to communicate to the others. However, to be able to communicate to the others means that they need to have something in common. Language. An English-born and raised children may able to communicate with other english spoken people, but how about a person that was raised non-english such as chinese or spanish spoken people? That’s why a foreign language program and training exist started from education. The question now is it necessary to start in the earliest since elementary, or is it better to start at later date, maybe on high school.
With the rising globalization standard, open-border trend, and the importance of making connections, parents becoming more aware of the benefits in learning language other than only their mother tongue. For example, based on the country ranking and geographical standard, most high productive and science-based country have English as their first language. If a family live in a third-world or developing countries, learning english is deemed crucial to enable futher education and secure better connection for career purposes. Therefore, most third-world or developing countries starts learning foreign language starting from elementary school. However this might differ from the first-world countries.
First-world countries, or matured ones, finds that the necessity of learning foreign language is unsubstantial, as they are prioritizing in the ability to express and communicate properly rather than bi-lingual. Usually the choice given for children to learn other languages is for the sake of freedom and making friends, which brings the learning standards also commonly found in high school level.
Personally, I believe that learning foreign language should be started as early as possible because during children phase is the moment where curiosity is a the peak, hence might helps with learning foreign language easily. Albeit the differences above, many researches also found that most young adults gained the proficiency to speak more than 2 languages has been increasing year by year, which correlates with the trend of learning foreign languages might be started from younger level.