Many parents would like their children to master a second language, but few kids in this country do. Only 9 percent of adults in the U.S. are fluent in more than one language. In Europe that figure is closer to 50 percent. “The United States is a long way from being the multilingual society that so many of our economic competitors are,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at a meeting on foreign-language education last December.