It’s worth noting that the lack of second language proficiency isn’t a result of laziness or ignorance
In Europe, most people are a short train ride from another country. There is also a lot of cultural exchange between countries within Europe.
Most Americans are multiple days of driving from the nearest non English speaking country, and that’s just to arrive in an area of Mexico where the people they will interact with overwhelmingly speak English.
In that context, there is little utility for most people in learning a second language. It’s also very difficult to achieve true proficiency when you are so rarely exposed to native speakers of a language.
Also it dosent help that english is the new lingua franca. Those 60% europans usualy speak their own native language and english, sometimes also a second europan language ( In poland for example we learn english and than depending on the school usualy either german or french )
