LW1: You missed the point. There shouldn't be any skin-counting or ranking going on anywhere at all, for any reason. Why would you defend this, especially when there are (as you stated) far more logical ways to organize people, such as by last name? Larry is right and kudos to him for refusing to agree with you. LW2: Thanks to the dual influence of the British Empire and the United States of America, English is a far more widely-spoken and universal language than nearly any other, including German. The original letter in question was about driving in the US, not Europe, and indeed America is not a patchwork quilt of languages and cultures like Europe is. Besides, do you think you're going to find more English-speaking police and English road signs in Germany, or more German-speaking police and German road signs in America? Larry is right here, too, though Europe's bloody history is beside the point. A person could probably get by in Germany without knowing German, but he'd be hard pressed to get by in the US without knowing English. (Though Spanish seems to be making inroads here as well...)

I think that everyone has missed the point of lining up by skin color--this is supposed to be a sensitivity training technique to show how people make unconscious judgments about what is better or what goes together. It's supposed to cause people to rethink some attitudes they might not realize they have which are affecting how they respond to one another. I can't imagine why any teacher would want students to do this unless this was the point of the demonstration and the teacher had some training in this subject matter.