But an important foundation for learning a new language is motivation, and if there is a context in which a regional language is motivating for students then money spent there actually allows them to learn something. As opposed to spending money getting students to sit through classes.

Knowing languages also makes it easier to learn more languages, so no efficiency is not a reason to suppress local languages. The reason instead tends to be that language is one of the cornerstones of modern (19th century and onwards) national identity. France is in no way alone in this, finnish and sami languages was once banned in and around schools in Sweden. All nationstates can probably present similar stories. Speaking the languages of other colonial powers (not to mentioned the pointless ancient greek and latin) was on the other highly approved as this was something upper and (depending on period) middle class people did.

Anyway, I think the reason DCB mentions this is that he is positioning himself as Green as localist in contrast to a soc-dem/communist socialist tradition of centralism. I think the greens as a movement has more or less always done that, it is one of the groups founding identity-markers - not centralist like the red parties.

All in all I find the interview unsurprising. "He is a centralist communist, and not as good environmentalist as us Greens" is exactly how I would expect a leading Green politician to comment on a competitor from left of the soc-dems. Constructive? No, politics is not constructive, it is an endless repetition of group identities - They are not us!

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