The American public appears most interested in language teaching and learning during periods of military and economic crisis. The Spanish-American War (1898), the opening of the Panama Canal (1914) and the outbreak of the First World War led to exponential growth in Spanish enrollments. The conventional wisdom that Spanish was a practical choice accounted in large part for increased student interest. Nonetheless, critics argued that the commercial value of Spanish was overblown and that few students would derive vocational benefits from its study. Moreover, humanists lamented that Spanish was considered a tool for material advancement rather than intellectual growth. In the end, all advocates of language study, for whatever motivation, united to defend the place of language in the curriculum, faced with the attacks of educational experts trained in scientific management.