“Shouldn’t overdo it”
Kretschmann does not want gender language in schools
01/09/2023, 10:09 am (updated)
Gender in German lessons? According to Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann, this might overwhelm the students. Basically, he sees the development of the German language critically – and also takes his own guild to task.
Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann doesn’t think much of gender in the classroom. “The schools have to stick to what the Council for German orthography specifies. Otherwise we won’t have a uniform spelling in the end,” said the Green politician in Stuttgart. “It’s bad enough that so many of our elementary school students can’t read. You don’t have to make it harder for them by writing things in school that you don’t even speak.”
Kretschmann is concerned regarding the development of language in general – but the gender debate is not the focus for him, but rather distracts: “I find it regrettable that we often reduce language issues to gender,” he says. “Our language is no longer creative. We just overload everything with strange anglicisms,” he criticized. “It would be good if we all used our own language more creatively instead of writing things that cannot be spoken with colons and underscores.”
Kretschmann also criticized his own guild, which had to speak in a way that people might understand. “We politicians are masters at generating plastic words.” The language gender is irreversible. “But one should at least not overdo it.” Kretschmann is convinced: “You can’t order language politically.”
(This article was first published on Sunday, January 08, 2023.)
