Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
I'm not convinced it's America. A lot of countries seem to have working mass English education, with some notable exceptions being Japan, to a lesser extent China, and historically (though not anymore) France. At the same time, a lot of European countries force kids to learn a third language at school too, and at least in Germany I have not observed that going any better than second-language instruction in anglophone countries.
The best-fit model for this is something like "school does nothing, and kids will learn a language if and only if they need the pop culture of that language". The rare examples of masses failing to learn English are just the rare countries that produce enough good stuff of their own.
I have to agree with your best-fit model. It's not schooling, but exposure and necessity. Primarily in regards to the internet, if my own experience generalizes as well as I think
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