During the 70's/80's in my home state, 7th grade would be about normal to start learning a foreign language if you were seen as college bound. Otherwise, you had to wait until 9th grade. In my area of the US, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian are the predominant languages taught. The choice of languages goes strictly according to the immigration patterns.
Maybe you were in a public school. Because I was in private schools, I had French in kindergarten and first grade, and then Spanish in fourth and fifth grade. (In between, I was in public schools, you see.) After that, I took French in 7th grade, Spanish in 8th grade, Japanese and French in 9th grade, and then Latin and Classical Greek in what would have been 12th grade, except that I had dropped out in order to go to college.
This was in Texas and then in New Mexico, which has one of the two or three worst public school systems in the US.
This might sound like a "nyah nyah my family is so rich" except that in fourth and fifth grade I was living with my dad in a converted school bus parked on a friend's lawn, while he was fixing cars at the garage on the outskirts of a small town, and then later we upgraded to a trailer in a trailer park. Obviously we weren't the poorest of the poor, since we did have enough money for housing and to send me to a private school, but we were far from rich in US terms.
"Maybe you were in a public school." Through 8th grade I was. For high school I went to a private school with religious affiliations. I'd qualify the private school as antiquated at the time, so my education was better in the public system.
The private schools you attended sound above average. Friends of mine in private schools through elementary (grades K-6) took French - no other options were available.
Out of curiosity, do you still speak any of the languages?
Oops, I lost my longer answer in a power outage. The short answer is that I only speak English and Spanish fluently, and Spanish only because I've been living in Argentina since 2006. I can get by in Portuguese and French under some circumstances, and my Japanese is sufficient to make Japanese people giggle before they talk to me in English.
Far better than I. I can read French and German but my speaking French makes native speakers cringe. German is easier for me but I've lost too much vocabulary to hold a long conversation.
Tolerant native speakers make a huge difference. Backpackers and people from Couchsurfing are great for this. (Also it helps if you can tolerate people cringing when you talk, some.)
