>It's not that you get N hours free per week if you don't need to learn English, isn't it? English-speakers probably fill those "English as a second language hours" at school with something else. So, all in all, more or less kids in western countries spend the same time in school.

The difference is, in my opinion that you don't have to care about other languages as hard as you have to care about english.

So yea, other kids can have french language lessons, but their life isn't kinda dependent on it right? unless they pick specific career

Meanwhile: tutorials, books (tutorials), research, discussions on the internet - almost all of it is english-driven,

business is english-driven, international communities around topics e.g programming, gym, etc, etc are mostly about english

then it is pretty close to being necessary