Should schools teach sign languages?

  • who first invented sign language

    The first person credited with the creation of a formal sign language for the hearing impaired was Pedro Ponce de León, a 16th-century Spanish Benedictine monk. His idea to use sign language was not a completely new idea
  • sign language was created in

    The recorded history of sign language in Western societies starts in the 17th century, as a visual language or method of communication, although references to forms of communication using hand gestures date back as far as 5th century BC Greece.
  • What was the first sign language in the world?

    The French priest, Charles Michel de l'Eppe founded the first public school for the deaf in Paris in 1755. Using the informal signs his students brought from their homes and a manual alphabet, he created the world's first formal sign language, Old French Sign Language.
  • ASL

    In the 1800s, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet developed American Sign Language (ASL). Inspired by a desire to help his neighbour's deaf daughter, Gallaudet went to Europe to meet with Laurent Clerc, a deaf instructor of sign language.
  • ASD

    ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in West Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has propagated widely by schools for the deaf and Deaf community organizations.