Deaf Awareness spreading like wildfire???

It is a common knowledge among the Deaf communities in USA that it was around 1960s when the awareness upon Deaf Culture and ASL appeared on the radar. Supposedly, it spread across USA like wildfire!

I am curious there is any truth to that? There is an easy way to find out. Let's find out how many students are taking American Sign Language BEFORE entering college.

According to the Standard and Poor's website, the total number of K-12 students in the U.S. is about 50 million people.

Additionally, Modern Language Association ranked ASL as the 5th most learned foreign language or 4%. Spanish is #1 at 55%, French is #2 with 15%, Germany is #3 with 7%, Italian is #4 with 5%, and the other 14% goes the rest of other languages.

So if we take the 50 million students and mutiply it by 4%, that'll mean about 2 million students are learning ASL...

And

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorders (NIDCD), "about 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children in the United States are born deaf or hard-of-hearing. Nine out of every 10 children who are born deaf are born to parents who can hear." That's .02% - .03%. http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick.htm

Gallaudet University published an article in 2005, stating "About 2 to 4 of every 1,000 people in the United States are "functionally deaf..." That's .02% - .04%. http://gri.gallaudet.edu/Demographics/deaf-US.php

And there are about 305 million people living in USA.

If we do math... There are between 610,000 and 1,220,00 "functionally" deaf...

In conclusion, the total # of people learning ASL is twice the total # of Deaf people in USA...

Mhmmm. Not bad at all! It's been only 50 years..

Additoinally, I stumbled onto an article published by Dr. Wilcox. "More and more colleges and universities are accepting ASL in fulfillment of foreign language requirements. The University of California system (all campuses) will soon accept ASL in fulfillment of foreign language entrance and graduation requirements. Harvard and Yale are among some of the schools which are investigating similar action. Recently, we have witnessed tremendous activity by state legislatures to support the teaching and acceptance of ASL as a foreign language. Many states now recognize ASL as a foreign language for the purpose of meeting high school graduation requirements." http://web.mac.com/swilcox/UNM/facts.html

Again, not bad at all!!!!!