Learn to Sign Week
The final item of business today is a members' business debate on motion S2M-4843, in the name of Cathie Craigie, on the no need to shout … just learn to sign! campaign. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes Learn to Sign Week from 2 to 8 October 2006; commends the work of the British Deaf Association and supports its objective of building a nation where British Sign Language (BSL), with its Scottish dialect, is a shared communication medium for both deaf and hearing communities; welcomes its 2006 UK-wide campaign, "No need to shout ... just learn to sign!", which aims to encourage people to learn BSL; applauds the work of the Scottish Deaf Association (SDA) in raising awareness of deaf issues in our schools, further education establishments and workplaces, and considers that the Scottish Executive should be encouraged to support the efforts of the SDA.
As convener of Parliament's cross-party group on deafness, I am delighted that my motion celebrating learn to sign week 2006 has been chosen for debate this evening.
In the first week of October every year, the British Deaf Association campaigns throughout the UK to encourage the public to join in, have fun and learn British Sign Language. I hope that the debate will go some way towards promoting those aims in Scotland.
More than 250,000 people in Scotland have a communication impairment and many use BSL as their first language. With the learn to sign campaign, the British Deaf Association is not asking everyone to become fluent in BSL, but to try to learn a few words or phrases or to try out a basic sign language course so that they can better communicate with the deaf community in Scotland.
Knowledge of sign language benefits the people of Scotland, not only in communicating with members of the deaf community but in communicating with members of their families and friends. We know how difficult it can be to chat to someone in the library, in a noisy pub, across a busy factory floor, across a platform or even across Parliament's chamber. The BDA is encouraging us to learn to sign not only so that we can communicate with deaf people but so that we can communicate with other people and learn BSL as another language.
Schools throughout the UK are taking part in learn to sign week. Thousands of schoolchildren, mainly in primary schools but also in secondary schools, are participating. In Scotland, 2,300 young people are learning to sign and in my constituency whole schools are involved. I am looking forward to visiting Cumbernauld primary school tomorrow, where this week children have been going online, watching demonstrations of BSL phrases and taking in that knowledge like sponges. They have been taking vocabulary cards home with them to learn phrases and by the end of the week they will be able to ask someone their name, their age and what they had for lunch in BSL
The head teacher of Cumbernauld primary school, Betty Greenwood, tells me that they are stressing to the children that BSL is a different language for deaf and hard of hearing people and that it is not just gestures. Too many people think that BSL is the English language in gestures and sign, but it is not. This week aims to raise general awareness of deaf issues among children and people in workplaces. I am told today that many of our major employers, including the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament, have been raising awareness this week of the benefits of learning to sign. As I said, the young people in schools not only learn within the classroom but take work home. They go home and speak about BSL with other members of their households, so those others learn, too.
We should all applaud the work of the Scottish Deaf Association in raising awareness of deaf issues in schools, workplaces and further education establishments. In my constituency, such establishments have recently begun to offer classes in BSL. I know of people who are involved in voluntary groups and organisations in Cumbernauld and Kilsyth who are taking advantage of the opportunity to learn how to communicate with a large section of our community. I would love to see and hear the minister say tonight that BSL is an option for our schools curriculum, because the schools that are taking part this week are certainly embracing it and the children are hungry to learn it. BSL being on the curriculum would mean that many more pupils would have that advantage.
There is an on-going struggle to recruit and train sufficient numbers of interpreters in Scotland. The introduction of BSL as an option in schools would encourage more young people to pursue it as a career path. I am grateful that the Executive has been able to offer funding and support to many different organisations to encourage BSL development. Heriot-Watt University is out on its own among Scottish universities in providing opportunities for people to learn BSL. However, two United Kingdom universities are further ahead than we are, namely the University of Bristol and Preston University—which will from next year, I understand, offer the opportunity for people to learn BSL and do deaf studies, and take that towards a degree course. I would love it if we were able to do that in Scotland.
Parliament had a debate back in February 2000 in which we spoke about the need to encourage more people to learn about BSL. Parliament campaigned to have BSL recognised as a language in its own right and we won that fight—BSL now has that recognition. However, we do not have enough BSL interpreters. We had 32 registered interpreters in February 2000 and we have 48 in October 2006. It is good that the numbers are going up, but we should be looking to the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, with the support and encouragement of the Executive and Parliament, to develop BSL as a degree course. That could give deaf people the opportunity to engage in activities that the hearing community takes for granted but which deaf people often find it difficult to engage in—a visit to the doctor or the heath centre, for example. Anything that we do in our daily lives can be difficult for deaf people because of the shortage of BSL interpreters.
That is the serious part, but this week is about fun and asking people to come along to learn a bit about and get a taste of BSL. We are sure that people will enjoy that so much that they will want to learn more. The campaign's slogan is "No need to shout ... just learn to sign!"—that is what we are asking people to do.
I congratulate Cathie Craigie on securing the debate on such an important issue. Many more people are living to an old age and increasing numbers of them are becoming partially or totally deaf.
Ironically, I have been losing the hearing in my left ear for the past two weeks, so I have had a small taste of what it is like to try to listen to conversations and hear what is going on. I hope that it is a temporary condition, but I shall not know until next week. I am looking forward to it not going on longer than that. The issue is not that one does not hear anything; one hears buzzing the whole time. When people are around, one tries to listen to the conversation, pretending sometimes to hear what is going on, but in fact being completely unaware. There is great isolation in deafness or partial hearing.
It is pertinent that the motion includes the phrase "no need to shout". My father is 91 and is increasingly losing his hearing. We are both now yelling at each other, with neither hearing what the other is saying and each of us having independent conversations. That was probably always the case, but it certainly is the case just now. My experience is minor, but it has taught me many lessons in the past couple of weeks.
I want to refer to the isolation that occurs when one is unable to communicate. With members' leave, I will refer to two examples in the context of the charity Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. I will focus on the experience of isolation rather than on the charity. I will quote the words of Adam Wilson, who had severe hearing loss for more than 30 years, but found himself alone and isolated only when he retired. He said:
"It is hopeless living on your own and not hearing the everyday sounds … Worse than that, the most critical problem was how easily I was slipping into a reclusive state."
That illustrates the importance of signing: it allows communication between those who have their hearing and those who do not, or who have defective hearing. Hearing people cannot understand how confusing it can be for deaf people to be in crowds, in open spaces, or where there is background noise or wind. It was not until Adam Wilson got a dog that he began to communicate again; previously, he had just thought that he would stay at home.
I will also cite the example of the young woman who lost her hearing completely overnight after a viral infection. She then found life becoming increasingly difficult. She says:
"It took two years for me to realise the goalposts had moved for ever. Then depression set in: I couldn't cope with noise, use a conventional telephone or engage in conversation."
Was that the end of her working life? She felt that it was almost the end of her life, because she was not part of society and was not communicating any more.
BSL is not just for deaf people and their families; it is for the rest of society, too. If someone does not know what is going on in a room and can only guess, their answer is often either to pretend that they know or simply to shut down. I therefore congratulate Cathie Craigie on her motion.
Through the facilities that it can offer, Parliament has gone a long way towards assisting people with partial hearing or deafness. Some of us in the chamber have to use headphones to follow debates; it may be me next week.
We must continue to bring this issue to Parliament, especially as so many people in society now have defective hearing. Many people are not letting on that they are in that position.
I, too, congratulate Cathie Craigie on securing the debate and I acknowledge the importance of signing. As members will know, before I was elected I worked as a community paediatrician. At one school for which I was the doctor, both the primary and secondary parts of the school had a unit for children with hearing impairment and deafness. Some of the children were profoundly deaf and some were just severely deaf.
At that time, we had come through—and had come out the other side of—the idea that children should not be taught to sign because they would then not speak. That idea has now been completely disproved. Children take to signing very readily; they can learn to sign much sooner than they can learn to speak. Even with good results from the best hearing aid, or even with a cochlear implant, a deaf child remains a deaf child. He or she still needs the back-up of signing in order to develop language and communication skills. They also need signing for the day when technology breaks down. I knew a young girl who had very good speech and a good level of understanding through her cochlear implant, but when it went wrong—and it did go wrong—she would have been left with nothing had she not had her signing to fall back on.
In my job, I was struck with the speed with which the rest of a deaf child's family could learn to sign—the siblings in particular. As I say, children take to signing very readily and the siblings always learned well, but other children took to it, too. In the deaf unit of the secondary school I mentioned—it was in Dingwall—a large number of mainstream hearing pupils chose to do a Scottish Vocational Education Council course in signing because the facility existed there. The course was very popular—in one year, a couple of dozen children took it. They had the advantage of having the deaf unit and therefore having the teacher of the deaf children to take them through the course.
As Cathie Craigie says, BSL is a language in its own right. It is a beautiful language because it is three-dimensional—it is a language in space rather than in sound. In the units in Dingwall we were lucky in having the help of a native BSL user—a deaf lady who has now retired. She would come in and engage the children in conversation and storytelling. She once went to Bristol, I think it was, for a course in storytelling. When she came back, I learned that there are dialects of BSL. She described how, when asked what she wanted from the bar, she used a sign that for her meant "lemonade" but which was mistaken for something a lot more intimate in another dialect of BSL. BSL is a very beautiful language that has a degree of expressiveness that cannot always be translated into spoken language.
There were classes for those of us who were involved with the deaf unit and who wanted to learn BSL. I have to say that I tried to do signing, but was terrible at it; I was not a good signer. Cathie Craigie said that the challenge of learn to sign week is to learn a few words or phrases and that we are not expected to become fluent BSL users.
At this point, I crave members' indulgence to play to the gallery by signing the one phrase that I know how to sign. I will use sign-supported English rather than BSL because, of course, BSL has its own grammar and I want to use English grammar: "Oh Lord, help me to keep my big mouth shut until I know what I'm talking about."
That is a useful motto for us all.
I am slightly reluctant to follow that remark.
I add my congratulations to Cathie Craigie on securing the debate and extend to her my compliments for her efforts as the convener of the cross-party group on deafness.
The motion is welcome. We should indeed commend the work of the British Deaf Association, especially its efforts to extend the use of British Sign Language. As the motion says, the Scottish Deaf Association has helped to raise awareness of deaf issues in the areas that are specified. Perhaps the SDA should look closely at the provisions of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 because they may well contain opportunities to extend the use of BSL at local level as the act is implemented by local authorities.
Before I became an MSP, I worked in the gas industry, where two employees of mine asked whether they could go on a BSL course. They went on the course, but I regret that I did not join them because, if nothing else, I would have been able to know what they subsequently said about me across the office. Their experience has stayed with me, which was that BSL is a language of its own in that it is—as Eleanor Scott said—a three-dimensional language that has a unique beauty and fullness of expression. They told me that, for them, understanding BSL opened a whole new world of experience.
Perhaps the most important impression that has remained of their experience is that BSL allowed them to communicate with people with whom they would otherwise not have had the opportunity to communicate, which was of as much benefit to them as it was to the people who were deaf or hard of hearing with whom they communicated.
I have nothing further to add, other than to say that the motion is welcome and that I hope that we will all take away something from learn to sign week. If the Executive can help in any way through its many connections, I am sure that it will. I wish the week every success.
In 1983, I ran the London marathon to raise funds for a phonic ear for a totally deaf child who is now training to be a primary teacher. Twenty years on, when I trained as a mathematics teacher, I had a profoundly deaf student in my class. I am now in the privileged position of serving on the excellent cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on deafness, of which Cathie Craigie is convener. I congratulate her on bringing what is a most worthwhile debate to the chamber.
Deafness is a challenge, but it should not be a barrier. Communication is mankind's greatest tool because it enables us to be understood, but we take it for granted, which perhaps is our problem. However, a significant group of people in the country do not take communication for granted. For a large number of people in Britain—equal roughly to the population of cities such as Stirling or Inverness—sign language is all that is available. However, that should be viewed not as a disability, but as an ability. Since the widespread introduction of sign language, it has been an overwhelming asset to tens of thousands of deaf Scots.
Accordingly, I applaud the British Deaf Association's learn to sign week. By encouraging non-deaf people to learn to sign, we will increase the inclusion of the deaf community and interact more with it. We never know when we will need to be able to sign. An encounter with a deaf person will not be placed in advance in the diary. The ability to sign increases people's potential and widens their experiences and opportunities. The skill sets them apart from many people in the workplace. I am pleased that most high street banks and many other businesses have a signing interpreter these days.
I am pleased that, as has been mentioned, part of the learn to sign week campaign has focused on primary schools, because nowhere are people keener and more able to learn and be introduced to the new skill. It has been proved that introducing children to a new language early develops the part of their mind that makes them more able to excel at languages later in life. Signing is a fun and stimulating activity that would benefit most primary classrooms and break up the day. Accordingly, I hope that schools throughout Scotland will consider introducing signing into the wider curriculum.
The Scottish counterpart of the British Deaf Association, the SDA, has a valuable role in Scotland. I support those who promote a wider understanding of signing and deaf issues, particularly in our education system. As a former teacher, I am only too aware that many problems that arise later in life can and should be tackled initially in the classroom. Schools are a place not only to teach children how to add and spell, but to prepare them for the outside and adult world that they will soon enter.
The technology revolution has affected us all, none more so than those in the deaf community. I am pleased that so much time and investment has been put into new products and technologies that have improved deaf people's way of life. We now have the textphone system as well as the sign video relay service, which is a brilliant system to enable communication over the telephone—a third party sees the customer signing and interprets orally to the person at the other end. Such innovations increase inclusion among the deaf and hearing communities. In addition, a wealth of products that use lights and flashes, such as alarm clocks, baby monitors, doorbells and smoke alarms, are available. Those have an equally important role.
To return to teaching, the one big advantage that deaf teachers have over ordinary teachers is that, when kids cause havoc at the back of the class, most teachers do not have a clue what they are saying, but a deaf person who can lip read knows, which I consider to be a distinct advantage in teaching.
I support the breaking down of barriers, a more inclusive society, an attack on discrimination and the desire for every Scot to reach his or her full potential, which is why I am pleased to support Cathie Craigie's motion.
I pay tribute to Cathie Craigie's persistence and commitment in pursuing the issues. I have known Cathie since we entered the Parliament in 1999. From the beginning, she has been an advocate for deaf people and has worked tirelessly with organisations that represent deaf people to secure change. I congratulate her on securing the debate and on being an important part of the process by which the Scottish Executive has sought to address the issues that deaf people have highlighted to us.
I am pleased to speak in this debate to mark learn to sign week 2006, which provides an opportunity to highlight and commend the work of the British Deaf Association and the Scottish Deaf Association to raise awareness of the barriers and discrimination that deaf people face, to address those issues and to improve linguistic access for deaf people in Scotland through the no need to shout … just learn to sign! campaign. That primary schools in particular are embracing the campaign is welcome. Our children can teach us much about the importance of learning to work with people throughout our communities. Their desire to learn should be an inspiration to us all. I am glad to be able to lend the Executive's support to this important campaign, which challenges us all.
We know that communication is vital to full participation in society, whether at the office or going to the shops. The Executive has long recognised that deaf people in Scotland do not have the same opportunities as hearing people. To address that, we undertook a number of years ago to examine the issues around British Sign Language, particularly interpreting, which makes such a practical difference to people's lives. We have done that in partnership with organisations that represent deaf people.
I am pleased to say that as part of our work to support British Sign Language in Scotland, we have recently agreed funding for the Scottish Deaf Association to support continuation of its BSL cultural development in Scotland project, which will promote deaf culture throughout Scotland and establish for the first time a focal point of cultural resources for the deaf community; increase the number of qualified deaf BSL teachers and assessors by providing training, assessment and support for them; provide sign language classes and deaf equality training in order to help remove the communication barriers that exist between the deaf and hearing communities that currently cause the isolation and exclusion of deaf people that have been highlighted in the debate; and enable the SDA to organise cultural events open to all to encourage a greater understanding of deaf culture and provide the opportunity for meaningful interactions.
In addition to that support, the Executive is delivering a range of measures to improve linguistic access for deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing people. I will mention some of those. There is an important recognition and acknowledgement by the Executive and by organisations that represent deaf people that we are in this for the long term. In the long term, we wish to make a real change.
I was privileged to be at the launch of the graduate diploma at Heriot-Watt University and to hear Professor Carol Padden from America speak at that event. It was a great event because it was so enthusiastic. There was such energy there and a recognition of the important work that was being done.
We are committed to doubling the number of BSL/English interpreters and are funding a number of projects to help us deliver that commitment, including £360,000 over four years to the Scottish Association of Sign Language Interpreters to work in partnership with Heriot-Watt University to develop and deliver a graduate diploma in teaching British Sign Language tutors. We are continuing to work with our BSL and linguistic access working group, of which the Scottish Deaf Association is a critical member, to discuss the issues at the heart of linguistic access in Scotland and to help develop the Executive's approach to increasing linguistic access for deaf people. In an exciting development, we are in the process of appointing a BSL and linguistic access project manager to work in the Executive for 11 months, to support our BSL and linguistic access working group. The project manager will work with the group, the wider deaf community and colleagues throughout the Executive to develop a road map for improving linguistic access in Scotland.
To respond to Cathie Craigie's point about languages funding, since 2001, the Scottish Executive Education Department has provided education authorities with approximately £4 million a year to support languages learning and teaching. We have always been clear that that money can be used to support the teaching of any foreign languages—it is up to the local authorities to decide which, based on the staff they have available and the needs of their pupils. However, in offering the languages funding for 2006-07, we specifically asked education authorities to work towards providing a diverse range of languages for young people in schools so that they have the opportunity to try lesser known or community languages, such as Urdu. While the original aim of the funding was to support the teaching of foreign languages, there may be cases in which authorities could use it to support the teaching of BSL. That would be an interesting development.
To help us learn more about the needs of BSL users, we commissioned research on access to public services in Scotland using British Sign Language. The research highlighted the difficulties that deaf BSL users experience in accessing public services. In particular, the research found that BSL users were almost never able to access public services directly in BSL; that the lack of available interpreters sometimes led to the use of people who were not fully qualified, which could lead to poor quality relay of information and concerns about confidentiality; and that deaf people considered that there was a lack of deaf awareness among public service employees.
To inform our next steps, we are working with our BSL and linguistic access working group to consider that research along with the SASLI training strategy group's report "Creating Linguistic Access for Deaf and Deafblind People: A Strategy for Scotland", which has been instrumental in helping us to develop the Executive's approach to increasing interpreter numbers.
As an employer, the Scottish Executive is delighted to support the learn to sign initiative and will provide taster sessions for staff. Indeed, I was talking today to staff who have taken up that opportunity. We will also encourage staff to look beyond the taster sessions to undertake longer courses and we hope that the initiative will make a lasting contribution to the Executive and its staff.
We recognise that there is still a long way to go and that there is a need for further action to enable deaf people to have equal linguistic access in Scotland. We are committed to working with the deaf community to ensure that we make real improvements to deaf people's lives. Learn to sign week is an important element in creating positive change. I encourage people to take part in it and to take up the opportunities that are available to learn to sign. We have worked closely with the Scottish Deaf Association and others on developing action and we aim to continue that critical partnership. We are driven and determined to continue the work.
I congratulate Cathie Craigie on securing the debate and look forward to the important work that will continue in the Executive and elsewhere to ensure equal access for people from within the deaf community.
Meeting closed at 17:41.