We Already Have GCSE’s For Languages Like Spanish, French and German, Why Not BSL?
It’s January, we have said our goodbyes to 2023 and are now saying Hi to 2024. Apart from the Summer Olympics taking place in the beautiful French capital of Paris and Sweden hosting the Eurovision Song Contest for what feels like the umpteenth time even I don’t know how it will shape up. Just hoping that it’s not as barmy as 2023 has been.
What I am hopeful of though is to finally see British Sign Language, BSL for short, to begin being slowly implemented into the education curriculum. Now this is something that had been campaigning for, and for quite some time I might add. Now according to the latest reports it’ll another year till we start seeing it actually being taught in schools. Basically we won’t be having it until 2025, and even then it won’t be until the Summer/Autumn.
Now I openly admit that I don’t have the first clue on how the mechanics of the educational system works. I myself have been through at least three different stages of the system itself; School (Primary and Secondary, and yes I count them as one been of the word School being used), College and University. Yes I did do Apprenticeships but that’s a conversation for another day.
When I was at school, Secondary, the only language class I did was German, and I openly admit I wasn’t great at it. I didn’t get on with all my German language teachers. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it. There was French as well but I was never on the list to attend, for reasons I can guess but that’s all they’ll ever be.
English did appear on the board but only ever in the reading writing literature sense. There was the odd specialist classes which were more like electives that only lasted a few weeks but it’s not like you’d suddenly become fluent after a month or two.
Looking back at the past couple of decades there was a small handful of languages being taught in schools; German, French, Spanish, Italian and Greek. The latter being useful if you ever planned on a career in Medicine.
From the moment I became aware of British Sign Language being an actual language I was always curious to know why it was never taught in schools. I first became aware of it when I was at Primary School and even then it looked both weird and intriguing.
My reasons for this? For me, it was the first time in my entire life that I had seen a type of communication which wasn’t verbal. It was spoken through hand gestures and movements rather than spoken orally. Can’t remember the exact moment other than it was during those years and I was absolutely fascinated by it.
During college there was a student who I got to know and we became really good friends and they had a Sign Language interpreter who stayed with them during the whole day. Me, even though I hung around them a lot and they had an interpreter with them I was too busy being intrigued by their communication. The whole ‘three’s a crowd’ thing barely occurred to me, mainly because both myself and our peers would be asking how you pronounced words or phrases in Sign Language.
There was the one about how to spell but that seemed a little time consuming at the time. However, I did learn how to say both my first name and nickname.
Apart from social gatherings the only other time I remember seeing it is in the 1994 film, The River Wild.
So even though it won’t be happening this year I am looking forward to seeing it become an official GCSE. At the end of the day, like German, Spanish, French and Italian, British Sign Language is an official law so why not teach it as a GCSE.
From what i have seen over the past few years we have accepted that Sign Language is an official language, so why not? There will always be people who are deaf, either from birth, illness or injury. Now I’m only just saying this as a theory, there are people who probably use it, not because of hearing problems, but because of verbal communication issues and signing’s just easier.
Even though it’s another year away I am of the opinion that it should be rolled out sooner, this year in fact.
