There’s a new policy out of the Mile-High City that’s making some wonder just what it’s high on. After all, the initiative, called “language justice,” could conceivably turn the whole country into a Tower of Babel, as one commentator put it.
As Just the News reports:
The Denver school district is among the first in the country to adopt a “language justice” policy as a “long term goal.”
The district would encourage non-English speaking students to be able to use their native language to learn as opposed to being educated in English, which advocates say is oppressive and rooted in racism.
Denver schools had about 90,250 students in 2022 with 35,000 multilingual learners with home languages other than English. The district has 200 languages spoken across the district, with Spanish as the home language for the majority of those.
The district included a draft of an equity document that includes a policy statement on “language justice.” It was included in the Nov. 16 school board agenda.
“Agenda” is the right word here, too, in the term’s most negative sense, as political correctness permeates the Denver Public Schools (DPS) document. Its “Policy Statement’s” opening line reads, “DPS will be a district that is free of oppressive systems and structures rooted in racism and one which centers students and team members with a focus on racial and educational equity, enabling students to ultimately become conscientious global citizens and collaborative leaders.”
Note the “global” (not American) citizens and “collaborative” (a synonym for which is “collective”) leaders elements.
To the point here, the statement’s second line states:
“DPS has a collective responsibility to uphold the practice of Racial Equity, and Educational and Language Justice in all of its forms by honoring language and culture as fundamental human rights.” (Emphasis added.)
The DPS concludes, “We will achieve equity when we identify and remove deeply rooted systems of oppression that have historically resulted in inequitable access and distribution of opportunities and resources for those who represent marginalized identities, including but not limited to race, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, language and ability.”
As a reminder, “equity” has become a euphemism for officially sanctioned (usually anti-white) discrimination.
“The document includes this [the following] definition for ‘language justice,’” Just the News adds: “The notion of respecting every individual’s fundamental language rights — to be able to communicate, understand, and be understood in the language in which they prefer and feel most articulate and powerful.”
“The district didn’t respond to an email seeking comment,” Just the News continues. “It’s not clear how much such a policy would cost and the district didn’t provide details in the school board agenda packet of how to implement it.”
So what is “language justice,” in a nutshell? Well, since “the English language is ‘oppressive’ and ‘rooted in racism,’” avers commentator Olivia Murray, “the idea is to permit foreign students to forgo learning English, and instead allowing them to retain their native languages in the classroom.”
How could this work? Note, again, that more than a third of the DPS district’s students are “multilingual learners” — and I’m guessing there’s far more multilingualism than learning — and that “200 languages [are] spoken across the district.” Will there be scores of interpreters in every school? There was an old Star Trek episode in which every Enterprise bridge member heard an alien transmission in his own native language. Is someone waiting for artificial intelligence to effect this miracle for us?
But forget artificial intelligence; natural stupidity is the issue here. That is, “We tried telling them, all that ‘diversity is our strength’ talk was really just a utopic pipe dream or a wishful sentiment, but nowhere is that more obvious than with language — when people can’t understand each other nobody can communicate effectively — but again, they’d know this if they knew their history and literature,” Murray points out. “What happened when God ‘confounded’ men and they couldn’t decipher one another’s speech at the Tower of Babel? Well, their grand plans turned into a big ol’ flop.”
Really, though, “language justice” didn’t come out of nowhere. Unbeknownst to almost everyone even at the time, in 2000 then-president Bill Clinton signed an executive order that made our federal government “officially multilingual, requiring any entity receiving federal monies to provide services in any language,” website U.S. English reminds us.
“Private physicians, clinics, and hospitals that accept Medicare and Medicaid must provide, at their own expense, translators for any language spoken by any patient,” the organization elaborates.
In other words, if you get a dollar of your tax money back in “federal funds” and someone walks through your doors speaking Lemerig, Njerep, Ongota, or Chamicuro, you’ve got to be on top of that.
The sad irony here is that while countless foreigners overseas spend good money having their kids taught English — the international language of business — so that they can be successful, we’re going the Babel route. (It should be added that none of this would be happening were we not balkanizing ourselves with irrational, self-destructive immigration policy.)
And that’s what happens when in charge are babbling pseudo-elites who, in their hearts, know they make the most sense when no one can understand them.
