The languages are the only point where I disagree with GP. Most US students don't start studying a foreign language until junior high at the earliest. When I was in high school (early 1980s) very few started foreign languages before high school. There were definitely kids at my high school who were pretty fluent in one non-native language, a few might be conversationally passable in two, but very few if any would have fluency in three or four languages in high school.