Over one million people speak Sign Language (ASL) as their primary language. Many more speak sign language as their second language. It’s more commonly spoken than Latin and French in America, and should be considered a language at schools.

This issue is personal because I have grandparents who are deaf and I would love to learn in school how to communicate with them better.

Schools do not have many deaf students attending public/private schools because there is no class for sign language. Schools should teach sign language because it would be beneficial for them to communicate with the other kids in the school. If we offer ASL, students will become more aware of issues that face this community.

Sign language is beneficial for learning at a young age. Because at a young age you’ll have more time to learn the language and be fluent when the time matters. It also leads to higher reading and writing levels of kids.

Finally, schools should teach sign language because students can communicate with their deaf family members. If one of their family members is deaf, it would be so much easier to talk to them in their own language then trying something different. Can also relate to deaf friends.

Sign language isn’t as popular as Spanish, but is more popular than French, Latin, and Mandarin in the U.S. on a day to day basis.

30 out of every 1000 children have hearing loss. 20% of individuals in the U.S. have some form of hearing loss. 360 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss. 4,000 new cases of hearing loss occurs each year in the U.S. These stats about hearing loss show that we should consider teaching sign language at schools.

On the other hand, people would debate that French and Latin are more highly spoken than ASL in America but numbers change every day and we don’t know for sure. Also, if schools do consider teaching ASL, then it would take a while for the kids to learn the language and be fluent. So it might be a while for them to successfully talk to deaf people at the school.

Sign language is a language in the U.S. and many people speak it, so I think its fair for schools to teach this language if its a language many people are familiar with.