Eli5: what has prevented braille and sign language from being taught in mainstream schools?

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It’s not necessarily more work to teach kids basic communication in both ASL and braille than some of the other things kids get taught in schools.

I can think of many benefits to society if the majority knows how to do both, so I’m genuinely curious why it never gained traction anywhere? Like, there are no countries on earth where the majority can communicate in sign language or read braille.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Only blind people *need* to learn braille; a sighted person usually wouldn’t have the tools to create it or a situation where they would need that instead of speaking, so even if every sighted person knew it, it wouldn’t make the world any easier for the blind.

ASL *is* taught in some public schools. For that, it’s more of a cost-benefit analysis. Learning it allows communication with about 1 million deaf Americans and very few non-Americans (since ASL is not an international language), vs. learning Spanish allowing communication with over 10 million Americans who don’t speak English and hundreds of millions of others worldwide, or learning French or Chinese allowing communication with very few Americans but again hundreds of millions of others worldwide.

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