What is your take of having every soldier bilingual or taught a second language while on active duty?

I am all for this!

Working knowledge is key. If I went anywhere, I would study enough of the language to get by. "Hi." "Thank you." "Where is the bathroom?" Just enough to endear myself to the local populace and not be completely lost in a foreign country.

While an altruistic vision I fear one that might never seen the light of day. The military calculates, as on a balance beam scale, the net worth of every training dollar spent. If a reward beneficial to the overall mission of the military is not cost efficient then it will never see implementation. I know that a military person fluent in any language other than english has an automatic value added benefit. But, at what cost does the military provide that training to everyone? Learning a new language is difficult, at best. Never everyone has the aptitude to successfully learn a new language. I don't know if language courses are till required in highschool. I took latin for 4 years and when I got to Korea I did not find a single Korean that spoke latin on a daily basis. While in Korea I did learn the language but that was only because I wanted to learn the language. In fact I taught english at the local elementary school in Pyongteak, Korea. So, bilingual soldiers would be fantastic, perfect in fact but in today's world I don't see that happening.