Subtractive teaching subtracts from the child's linguistic repertoire, instead of adding to it.

The harm caused by subtractive education can also be seen in figures showing consequences for indigenous children and adults.

In this enforced language regime, children undergoing subtractive education, or at least their children, are effectively transferred to the dominant group linguistically and culturally.

Instead of this type of subtractive education which, as we shall in this paper, actually violates children's right to education, it is perfectly possible to follow a both and and path.

In subtractive language learning, dominant majority's language is learned at the cost of the mother tongue which is displaced, leading to a diglossic situation and later often replacement by the dominant language.

Next are some examples of the ways in which education causes more obvious forms of harm to children and effectively transfers them from their own group to the dominant group through the assimilationist practices in subtractive education.

The mental harm caused by the subtractive education can be expressed in spiritual terms, as in the three quotes below Native American Psychologist Eduardo Duran who suggests that the colonial oppression suffered by indigenous people inevitably wounds the soul.

Without binding educational linguistic human rights, especially a right to mainly mother tongue medium (MTM) education in state schools, with good teaching of a dominant language as a second language, given by competent bilingual teachers, most indigenous peoples and minorities have to accept subtractive education through the medium of a dominant majority language.