Is the point of education to develop agile thinkers with the capacity to meet unknown future global challenges? If so, then Language learning perhaps should be the centre of 'essential', above the 3 Rs, and not an add on. This article by David Marsh et al,  "The Bilingual Advantage: The Impact of Language Learning on Mind and Brain" (2020), shows that its in Language learning that our brains get turbo charged (my way of saying it) - in 6 ways - the flexible mind, the problem solving mind, the metacognitive mind, the learning mind, the interpersonal mind and the ageing mind.  In two parts I reflect on some of the points.