Ich kann ein wenig Deutsch sprechen. I got to be pretty proficient at German during high school, but I've lost almost all of it if only because in the years since I've learned it, I've never had a reason to speak it outside of class.

At any rate, I had 5.5 years of foreign language in my middle school and high school, and that was pretty standard for my district, so I wouldn't say it was never encouraged. We had Latin, German, Spanish, and French to choose from. Our schools also used to offer Russian until they dropped it due to lack of interest.