Why would they? what realistic benefit would it be to American kids? Americans don't don't generally travel/vacation like Europeans do & a lot of Arabic speaking places are probably off limits to the average american. I'd also hazard a guess that the arabic speaking population of America isn't that great when compared to something like the Spanish speaking population? UK kids are taught either French/Spanish/German as these are countries that most people will visit at some point in their lives. Forcing american kids to learn Arabic would be a bit like forcing UK kids to learn Mandarin!