Learning a new language

Learning new languages are extremely beneficial when it comes to travelling, your social life, your knowledge, and your future career. Languages open doors to new opportunities and experiences. These are one of the many reasons why we should all learn (and stick with) a new language.
Unfortunately, most of us are American, and with being an American teenager, you should know that the American education system is flawed in many ways, one of them being the lack of teaching languages at an early age.
The problem with teaching languages at the age they begin to teach us (AKA freshmen year in our district) is that our brains have become too developed to pick up a language easily, and it will take us many more years than it would have to learn the language and even become fluent in it. Four years of language in high school is simply not enough to become fluent in a language. It takes many, many years and quite a bit of dedication. Anyway, I'm getting off topic.
Recently, I've become very interested in learning many languages, however a language I am most interested in is Arabic. I really wanted to take a class, but was unable to because the school I currently attend doesn't teach it. So I figured since I already have a lot of background knowledge in the language because of growing up with our mosque's sunday school, speaking a dialect of Arabic, and currently living with an exchange student who's native language is Arabic. I decided to take up the language myself. I've been doing this by using many websites that will teach you Arabic, asking parents and my exchange sister for help, conversing with native speakers via my mosque and the internet, and watching movies, listening to music, and reading in Arabic. I must definitely admit, learning a language is very tough but very rewarding. I feel as though I am learning new things everyday and I like to think about where I will end up in a year. Of course, learning a language on my own is certainly more difficult than taking an hour everyday class with an educated teacher for help, but learning on my own does have it's benefits.
I encourage all of you to take up a language. There are many great sites online to learn just about any language-- even wacky ones like Flemish, Belarusian, and Azeri. Who even knew those were languages? Even getting better at the language you are learning currently, such as Chinese, Spanish, German, or Russian, you can find good sources online to aid you in your quest to unlocking the world of a new language, just find them!
Almost the rest of the world outside America speak two or more languages, so why aren't we?