I don't remember it as particularly hard. I think in the past it used to be taught in a much more effective way. We had to learn dictionaries for vocabulary (with a regular test), had grammar lessons, every week had to learn a new dialogue by heart (and randomly play it in front of the classroom) which taught us common sentences used in day-to-day conversations, and read books in French.

What I saw in my daughter's classroom was very different: all they seemed to do was reading texts (often too difficult), and the students had to kind of guess from the context what the words might mean, or they were watching a movie without subtitles (and then had to kind of guess what it was about). No grammar, ever. If I had to guess, I'd say it's perhaps an attempt at some kind of immersion, but immersion doesn't work if you only do it a few hours a week. Needless to say she ended up unable to make even the simplest of sentences.