I am naturally curious and last week I woke up wondering to myself whether our Deaf Umbrella followers think that British Sign Language should be taught in schools... More specifically, if it should be a mandatory part of the curriculum, or it should be an optional subject?
There is research which confirms that the vast majority of young people think there should be a GCSE in sign language.
Deaf children admit that when they meet hearing children who can sign, they feel happy and confident.
BSL is one of the official languages of the UK and it is used by around 70,000 deaf people here, so why would you not learn how to communicate with your fellow Britains? After all, we all learn another language at school - why not add BSL as an option?
By teaching Sign Language in schools we would achieve two important things:
Break struggles and barriers of communication, which would make a big impact on a deaf person's life.
Whilst expanding our own knowledge, we also encourage confidence and inclusivity for the deaf community.
So we created a survey on our main social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) and these were your answers:
TWITTER POLL (8 votes): Do you think British Sign Language should be taught in schools?
25% votes: Yes as compulsory subject
75% votes: Yes, as optional subject
FACEBOOK POLL (1,153 votes): Do you think British Sign Language should be taught in schools? In that case, choose one option:
613 votes: Yes, as compulsory subject
540 votes: Yes, as optional subject
So, it was a surprise to find out that on Twitter the result was "Yes, as optional subject" whilst on Facebook, the most voted for answer was "Yes, as compulsory subject".
But what about your own thoughts? Do you think BSL should be taught in schools? Leave us your comment :)
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