The Prime Minister of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, does not believe in gender in the classroom. “The schools have to stick to what the Council for German Spelling specifies. Otherwise we will no longer have a uniform spelling in the end, ”said the Green politician of the German Press Agency in Stuttgart.
“It’s bad enough that so many of our elementary school students can’t read. You don’t have to make it even more difficult for them by writing things in school that you don’t even speak,” says Kretschmann, who is concerned regarding the development of the language in general.
For him, however, the gender debate is not the focus, but rather a distraction: “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.” Language gender is irreversible. “But at least you shouldn’t overdo it.” Kretschmann is convinced: “You can’t order language politically.”
