I remember how it was -- JR
Econo-linguism: The correlation between language and wealth
I personally am rather interested in foreign languages. As is my Serbian partner. I have minor qualifications in three of them. But I don't think it is clear that anybody is rich BECAUSE he speaks another language. I think it is more likely that a third factor (such as IQ) is at work: i.e. rich people are the sort of people who are likely to speak another language.
And in any case, the findings below are slim warrant for teaching or studying another language in High School. A much better case could be made to teach another languge in the grade-school years -- when another language is most easily acquired
Do people who speak more than one language earn more money?
When Forbes released its World Billionaire List for 2022, it became apparent that a pattern could be detected: many of the billionaires were able to speak a second language. In fact, we were able to determine that a staggering 32% of the richest people in the world can speak another language.
Establishing this was achieved by focusing on the languages that these billionaires speak, as some seemed to be more popular than others – but why is this? Are some languages more useful when it comes to being financially successful than others? Do job roles asking for bilingual people tend to pay more than those that don’t?
To answer these burning questions, we analysed whether there was a connection between the languages spoken by the richest people in the world and their wealth, as well as utilising Numbeo and The World Happiness Index to see if richer, ‘happier’ countries came with languages deemed useful in the workplace.
We then focused on the top-paying jobs on LinkedIn and Glassdoor to establish whether particular languages are requested for specific job titles, as well as whether they come with healthier salaries. After all of this, we were truly able to determine whether it pays to know a second language.
Do the richest people on the planet speak more than one language?
Unsurprisingly, at the top of the list sits Tesla mogul Elon Musk, with a net worth of a staggering $219,000,000,000 (£181bn). However, despite regularly being the wealthiest person on earth, Elon does not speak a second language. Third on the list was Benard Arnault, chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE who is worth a whopping $158,000,000,000 (£130bn).
His first language is French, but he can also speak English, German and Italian. With Germany sitting as the third richest country in the world and the UK ranking fifth on the same list, it is not surprising that the billionaire opted to learn these languages. As Italy is hailed as a country that is rich in culture, art and history, learning the native language also makes a lot of sense for the investor and art collector.
Third on the list is Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, with a net worth of $107,000,000,000 (£88bn). While English is his first language, the entrepreneur also speaks Russian. Steve Ballmer, 10th on the rich list, is worth $91,400,000,000 (£75bn) and speaks French as well as his first language, English. A recent article detailed that a speech done entirely in French by the Internet giant left Finance Minister Christine Lagarde ‘impressed’, along with a permanent legal residency in France.
32% of the world’s richest people speak a second language
Mukesh Ambani, director of Reliance Industries Ltd and worth $90,700,000,000 (£75.2bn), comes in at 11th on the list. With Gujarati as his first language, the billionaire has managed to forge immense success – unsurprising as this dialect is spoken by over 46 million people, across India, the United States and the UK. As his second language, he also speaks English.
Michael Bloomberg, 13th on the list and worth $82,000,000,000 (£68bn), speaks English as his first language and Spanish as his second. Our data revealed that the top languages spoken by billionaires on this list were Chinese, French and Spanish – which is unsurprising, as China is the third largest country in the world. Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook and worth $67,300,000,000 (£55.8bn) speaks Chinese as his second language. With so many financial possibilities in this country, it is obvious that billionaires would want to be able to make deals there as efficiently as possible.
https://preply.com/en/blog/econo-linguism-the-correlation-between-language-and-wealth/
******************************************************CDC Urges Teachers, Administrators, School Nurses to Adopt LGBT Curriculum, Endorse Transgender Identity
Just days after Christmas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention republished a “self-assessment tool” urging teachers, administrators, school health staff, and others to become an “awesome ally” by advocating for LGBT causes in school.
The document cites multiple LGBT activist groups, including a division of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The CDC did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the document, which it originally published in October 2020.
“School administrators: Our LGBTQ inclusivity self-assessment tool can help you quickly gauge inclusivity at your school,” the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health posted on Twitter on Tuesday. “See your score today and learn ways to increase inclusivity.”
The document, “LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools: A Self-Assessment Tool,” appears on the CDC’s youth website in a section “For Schools” and under the drop-down “Tools for Supporting LGBTQ Youth.”
“Schools play a critical role in supporting the health and academic development of all youth, including the success of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) youth,” the document states. “Creating and sustaining inclusive school environments, policies, programs, and practices that include LGBTQ youth is one strategy for improving the health and academic success of all youth.”
The document notes that it includes resources from nongovernmental organizations “focused on improving school inclusivity” and that the resources do not represent the CDC’s official opinion. The document further notes that the self-assessment tool is optional, not required, but it touts the document as “a focused, reasonable, and user-friendly approach to identify strategies to increase LGBTQ inclusivity in schools.”
The tool includes four assessments, one each for all users, administrators, educators, and school health services staff. The tool includes three scores: “Commit to Change,” “Beginning to Break Through,” and “Awesome Ally.”
The general self-assessment encourages education leaders to adopt certain mindsets, such as “I cannot assume a student’s gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation,” and urges them to adopt “inclusive” terminology, such as “using individuals’ chosen names/pronouns” and rejecting terms like “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” for “neutral terms” like “partner.”
It also encourages leaders to “advocate for LGBTQ inclusive and affirming materials in all school and classroom environments” and to participate in the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance.
This section also lists resources from activist groups such as GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, and PFLAG, along with the infamous “Gender Unicorn” graphic presenting biological sex as inherently different from gender identity.
The next section encourages administrators to alter their school health policies to include explicit anti-bullying and nondiscrimination policies for LGBTQ students, to allow “students to use the bathroom/locker room which aligns to their chosen gender,” to allow students to alter their paperwork “to present their chosen name and pronouns, rather than their legal name,” and to allow students “access to age-appropriate LGBTQ content and information.” It also encourages administrators to let teachers “develop LGBTQ inclusive curricula” and to support teachers attending LGBTQ trainings.
The document encourages educators to put up “visual labels” such as “rainbow flags, pink triangles, unisex bathroom signs” marking a classroom as “a safe space for LGBTQ students.” It urges them to teach with “LGBTQ inclusive” content and to attend LGBT trainings.
The document also urges teachers to “describe anatomy and physiology separate from gender (e.g., ‘a body with a penis’ and ‘a body with a vagina’).”
Finally, the document urges health services staff to set up “visual labels” to demonstrate support for LGBT causes in the school’s clinic, to offer intake forms with separate sections for “gender identity and sex at birth,” to use students’ chosen names and pronouns, to offer “LGBTQ-specific health pamphlets” at the school clinic, to “describe anatomy and physiology separate from gender,” and to attend LGBT trainings.
Although the CDC document insists the “self-assessment” is voluntary and does not represent an endorsement of LGBT activist groups, it encourages teachers, administrators, and health staff to endorse LGBT activist symbols, consult with LGBT activist organizations, and change school policies in an LGBT activist direction.
Parents have urged schools to remove certain books from libraries, such as Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir.” Although the book includes pictures of sexual acts between a boy and a man, a Fairfax County Public Schools committee defended the book, saying it depicts “difficulties nonbinary and asexual individuals may face.” The committee concluded that “the book neither depicts nor describes pedophilia,” but parents have contested this assertion.
While the CDC document does not reference “Gender Queer,” it does cite Teaching Tolerance, a project of the left-leaning SPLC which has since rebranded itself as Learning for Justice. According to critics, the SPLC brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” putting them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. In 2012, a man used the SPLC “hate map” to target the Family Research Council in a terrorist attack. He was convicted of terrorism.
As I note in my book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC fired its co-founder and had its president resign amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019. During that scandal, a former SPLC staffer admitted that the organization’s accusations of “hate” are a “cynical fundraising scam” aimed at “bilking Northern liberals.”
The CDC did not respond to questions regarding its decision to cite the SPLC.
The CDC also did not respond to questions about how it might defend the LGBT “self-assessment tool” as a necessary health measure. It also did not respond to questions regarding its apparent endorsement of transgender ideology.
While many national health organizations support experimental transgender medical interventions in the name of “gender-affirming care,” medical organizations both in the U.S. and around the world are reversing course. The Florida Board of Medicine and the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine last month approved a new rule banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries for minors.
Karolinska Hospital in Sweden announced in May 2021 that it would not prescribe hormonal treatments to minors under 16. In June 2021, Finland released medical guidelines opposing such drugs for minors, noting: “Cross-sex identification in childhood, even in extreme cases, generally disappears during puberty.” In April 2021, Britain’s National Institute of Health and Care Excellence concluded that the evidence for using puberty-blocking drugs to treat young people is “very low” and that existing studies of the drugs were small and “subject to bias and confounding.”
The CDC also did not respond to concerns that the document represents activism in the name of promoting public health. The agency also declined to comment on whether it would consider promoting alternative materials from organizations that do not endorse LGBT activism.
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DeSantis Takes Aim at ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion’ Efforts on Florida College Campuses
Florida’s combative Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a possible presidential contender, is poised to ramp up his battle against so-called woke ideology on college campuses, if a letter his office sent to the bosses of the state’s college and university systems is any indication.
The letter, sent just before the New Year to the state’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz, and to the chancellor of the state university system, Ray Rodrigues, said the governor’s office was preparing budget proposals ahead of the 2023 legislative session and requested data “regarding the expenditures of state resources on programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and critical race theory within our state colleges and universities.”
The letter requested data on the number of staff attached to such programs, the funding spent by each university to support such programs, and the portion of that spending that comes from state sources. The universities were given until January 13 to turn over the information.
Mr. DeSantis has in the past made no bones about his beef with the leftward drift of Florida’s public schools, at both the primary and secondary levels, and what he calls the “indoctrination” of students in the state. His “Stop Woke” act, which has been challenged in court, was aimed at racial instruction in public schools, and a subsequent Parental Rights in Education Act took aim at sexual instruction and gender ideology in lower grades. Now, he appears to be setting his sights more urgently on higher education.
In his second inaugural speech on Tuesday, the governor made clear his intentions. “We must ensure school systems are responsive to parents and to students, not partisan interest groups, and we must ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideology,” Mr. DeSantis said.
Florida’s state university system consists of 12 universities spread across the state, among them Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, Florida State, and the flagship University of Florida at Gainesville. The request for information from his office was also directed at the leadership of the 28 community and state colleges that make up the Florida College System.
The universities alone in Florida’s state system had an operating budget of $14.3 billion for the 2021-22 school year, a number that is expected to increase to $14.8 billion for 2022-23. About $2.7 billion of that budget comes from state sources, according to the Florida Department of Education. How much of that expenditure goes toward programs revolving around diversity, equity, and inclusion is unclear from the publicly available budget documents.
A recent study by the conservative Heritage Foundation, though, made the case that university spending on diversity and related programs has swollen in recent years, to the point that there are now more staff devoted to these programs on many campuses than there are, for example, history professors. At the University of Michigan alone, the study found, there are more than 163 staffers dedicated to the programs.
A scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has also studied the issue, Max Eden, welcomed the Florida governor’s effort to shed light on the topic. Republicans, he said, are coming around to the notion that “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is merely a marketing term for “Applied Critical Race Theory.”
“There is no public interest in funding personnel or programs that aim to impose a divisive and intellectually stultifying orthodoxy on institutions of higher education. Hopefully DeSantis’s request is an opening move toward defunding DEI on campus,” Mr. Eden told the Sun. “Republicans should have taken the initiative on this a decade ago, but hopefully DeSantis's leadership will, as it has before, spur copycat efforts in other states.”
Some members of the faculty and staff at the Florida colleges and universities — as well as Democratic lawmakers in Tallahassee — are not on board with Mr. DeSantis’s request, however. The head of United Faculty of Florida, a teachers’ union that has sued to block several of Mr. DeSantis’s measures, Andrew Gothard, called the directive “horrible” and said the union is “deeply concerned” by the precedent.
“Attempts such as these by the governor to chill speech and to intimidate those he disagrees with into remaining silent, altering their curriculum, and silencing their students are an affront to democracy and the American way of life,” Mr. Gothard, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, told the News Service of Florida. “Let those who supported Governor DeSantis in the recent election heed this warning: A man who will silence those with whom he disagrees — in the classroom and beyond — will one day find a reason to silence you as well.”
A Democratic state representative of Jacksonville, Angie Nixon, also attacked the initiative. “In the so-called free state of Florida under Gov. DeSantis, the freedom to run DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs at public colleges and universities appears next on the radar for destruction. Nothing is safe and it’s sickening,” Ms. Nixon said on Twitter.
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http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
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http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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