From the September 7, 2008 edition of the Ann Arbor News - "If third-graders are to be taught foreign languages, Ann Arbor parents should be offered a choice of which languages their children will learn. In terms of what would be useful to our children, Spanish is a very poor choice. Spanish-speaking cultures and societies are neither economically vibrant nor socially and environmentally progressive."
The volume of business we do with the German-speaking countries of the world is far larger than the trade we do with Spanish-speaking counties. The amount of engineering and software development done in German is much greater than that being done in Spanish.
