The relationship between national languages and schooling is a recurring theme in Derrida's writings on education, playing an important role in the challenge he mounts to traditional understandings of the French State's involvement in the teaching of philosophy. In this essay, I follow this thread of thinking across several of Derrida's texts, paying specific attention to his diagnoses of positions arguing for a universal philosophical language on the one hand, and those elevating French as the proper language of philosophy on the other. I demonstrate how, against these positions, an alternative understanding of relation between language and philosophical education starts to emerge in Derrida's work, one in which translation is a key element.