This is a fair point. An assumption I had (but forgot to include in the post) was that most english-speaking schools spend several years teaching children a non-english second language, and very few kids come out of it speaking that language. So sign language could be a better default second-language to teach to kids.
I’m not super convinced that things would be better if everyone spent those years learning sign language, nor do I think that learning sign language would be magically more likely to stick than a spoken language. But I do think that sign language has some interesting possibilities due to the different medium of communication, and I rarely (if ever) see this brought up.
This is a fair point. An assumption I had (but forgot to include in the post) was that most english-speaking schools spend several years teaching children a non-english second language, and very few kids come out of it speaking that language. So sign language could be a better default second-language to teach to kids.
I’m not super convinced that things would be better if everyone spent those years learning sign language, nor do I think that learning sign language would be magically more likely to stick than a spoken language. But I do think that sign language has some interesting possibilities due to the different medium of communication, and I rarely (if ever) see this brought up.