American Sign Language Should be a Required Class by Zayne

American Sign Language Should be a Required Class by Zayne - January 2023 Scholarship Essay

While high school students at large would benefit from more foreign language classes, I believe the language that would be of the most benefit to learn is American sign language. This is for many reasons, but the three I will be highlighting in this essay are that many deaf people rely on the use of sign language, learning sign language increases reaction time, and it can increase spelling ability.

More people in the United States suffer from hearing loss than one might originally assume. According to the U.S. 2022 Census, there are 11.5 million deaf Americans. Further than that, about 500,000 people within the US speak American Sign Language as their primary language. Unfortunately, not nearly as many people speak ASL as a secondary language, leaving deaf people struggling to communicate with others. This can harm their social development, as well as making life overall more difficult. If ASL were to be taught in high schools, the amount of people able to communicate with those suffering from hearing loss would skyrocket. This change would therefore greatly benefit deaf people.

According to a study by the University of Sheffield, "sign language users have better peripheral vision and reaction time." Sign language as a whole is very visual oriented, making it so you are significantly more focused, making your "visual field response" greater. This has led to some interesting findings about deaf people's visual abilities, such as the idea that "deaf people have exceptional visual abilities that hearing adults do not." Learning ASL would mean deaf people aren't the only ones receiving the benefits from sign language, but the population at large.

While there are signs for most words within ASL, there are some words which don't have a sign, in which you'll need to "fingerspell" the word, where you essentially spell out each letter of the word. If you are forced to fingerspell certain words, you will need to be a lot more familiar with their spelling, especially as compared to simply speaking.

If ASL were to be a required class within high schools, as demonstrated throughout this essay, deaf people would benefit greatly from having more people to communicate clearly with, learning sign language can increase your visual skills, and practicing ASL could also improve spelling. For these reasons, I believe learning ASL should be a required class within high schools.