Mandatory English in schools worldwide is often justified as a tool for economic opportunity, but it's quietly erasing linguistic identity. In my hometown, parents pull kids out of Maori immersion programs because they fear English-only jobs, and the result is that our native language loses another speaker every week. Some argue that a global lingua franca inevitably wins out, but I wonder if we're sacrificing cultural depth for convenience—could we not celebrate both English proficiency and mother-tongue preservation?