292 L. Kingston, A. Seibert Hanson criteria of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability (see Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for instance)—and that blocking students from learning in the local language can impair their learning capacity and reduce the quality of their education (pp. 108–109). “The use of a local language in the educational system adds self-respect and contributes to de-colonizing local culture,” she writes. “By reinforcing the importance of local languages, one reinforces the interest in local knowledge and skills” (Babaci-Wilhite 2015, pp. 111). For instance, there have been positive results for student achievement stemming from the use of the Hawaiian language in schools in Hawai’i, including for students’ achievement in English and other domains (Wilson and Kamanā 2013, pp. 159). By not providing education in a child’s own language, especially one with strong ties to cultural identity, a government makes a clear and negative statement in regard to the value of that language and its people. Indeed, it is important to stress that discriminatory language policies are no accident; they are targeted state efforts to marginalize minority populations, deny political membership, and erase cultural identities—meanwhile, often fueling ethnic tensions leading to conflict and mass atrocities. Stephen May (2018) argues that “there is widespread belief that the recognition of language rights for linguistic minority groups…is, by its very nature, a grave threat to social and political stability” – even if “active repression of minority languages often fosters ethnic conflict and entrenches political instability, rather than the reverse” (pp. 236, 244). James W. Tollefson (2013) writes that “language policies in education must be understood with reference to the aims and institutions of the nation-state and associated processes of nationalism, especially the fundamental state function of allocating among social groups access to economic resources and political power” (pp. 18). A variety of cases—including the privileged position of Serbo-Croatian in the years leading up to the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, for instance—further demonstrate that “war and military institutions often play a major role in language policy” (pp. 19). Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) further warns against linguistic genocide—which, like cultural genocide, was included in early drafts of the UN Genocide Convention but not in the final, binding document. Linguistic genocide “represents (actively) killing a language without killing the speakers (as in physical genocide) or (through passivity) letting a language die” (pp. 312). Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) continues: “If a minority group or [I]ndigenous people are allowed to learn and transmit further their own language, they also reproduce themselves as a minority group or [I]ndigenous people….one of the reasons for linguistic genocide is that it can reduce the number of (potential) nations, meaning peoples who could demand the right to first internal, then external self-determination” (pp. 311). She argues that most languages do not die a natural death today—it is related to “linguicide,” which means there are agents involved in causing the language death (see pp. 369–370). Indigenous languages of the United States and Canada, for instance, have suffered severe losses because of English-only education. One of the driving forces of the Boarding School Era in North America was to eradicate Indigenous languages by forcing Indigenous children to use only English, and severely punishing them for using their languages (see, for example, the case of the Chickasaw language in Fitzgerald and Hinson 2016, pp. 525). Scholars link this destructive practice of 13