DESPITE recent cautiously rising numbers of pupils learning modern languages, the subject is far from thriving in Scottish schools.
But what if the answer was to offer a modern language that’s not spoken, but signed?
Last September the Scottish Government took the step, unique in the UK, of passing the British Sign Language (Scotland) Bill to give British Sign Language (BSL) and deafblind tactile BSL the status of languages in their own right, on a par with Gaelic.
This was a leap forward from its existing status, which was as a minority language, recognised in 2003, and protected under equalities legislation by the Westminster parliament.
The ambitious - yet entirely reasonable - aim of the Bill is to ensure full inclusion for BSL users living in Scotland.
Currently, BSL is used at home by more than 12,500 people in Scotland there are around 6000 people with BSL as a first language.
However, there are only around 70 sign language interpreters, a figure often compared to Finland, where the population size is comparable but where there are 500 interpreters. Inclusion is impossible without easy access to communication.
How to tackle this?
Well, the first graduates of an innovative new MA in BSL passed out of Edinburgh’s Heriot Watt University last week and the man in charge of the course, Professor Graham Turner, chairman of Interpreting and Translation Studies, wants to see BSL taught in schools alongside modern languages. Just as it is at Heriot Watt.
Mr Turner said: “School children are voting with their feet and not choosing to study languages.
“If we want our children to learn languages, and we do, then offer children the chance to learn BSL.
“If you offer school kids the opportunity to learn BSL, not only do they think it’s really cool, but you are giving them the chance to benefit from all the same cognitive advantages as learning a spoken language and gets them thinking in quite different ways.”
Anecdotally, Professor Turner says young people who have been offered the chance to learn BSL report it to be "really cool" - a far cry from the response to French or German.
Deaf charities have often spoken of a desire to get more people at least learning the BSL alphabet and some basic signs in order to be able to have the ability to communicate with Deaf people they live and work beside.
Perhaps a young generation of school pupils learning BSL is the way to realise Scotland’s ambition of full inclusion for the Deaf community.
Mr Turner added: “Scotland really values diversity and as part of that we must value what disabled people bring to society.
“And learning BSL is a really, really good way to do that and part of what the BSL act is all about - valuing the diversity of Scotland and making the most of what we can learn from different communities.
“Last year a deaf patient in a Dundee hospital was left for nearly three days unable to communicate because no one arranged a sign language interpreter.
“These sorts of things should never happen again.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here