EDUCATION HISTORY: MILAN 1880
When Milan 1880 is talked about amongst Deaf people, it is always in a very negative response. Why is this so? It is mainly to do with Deaf education. Deaf people were around in the pre 17th century but they were seen as being 'uneducable'. However, around the 1750's, people started to notice that Deaf people could be educated via sign language. From the 1780's onwards, Deaf people were having no problems with education and they were even writing books. There is also evidence that Deaf people were successful lawyers, artists and politicians.
In 1880, the situation for Deaf people started to take a turn for the worse. It was at the International Congress on the Education of The Deaf in Milan that sign language was almost destroyed by the delegates who all were strong oralist supporters. At this Conference, held on September 6 -11, a declaration was made that oral education was better than (sign) education. A resolution was passed banning sign language.
The repercussions to the resolution and declaration had a knock on effect of the decline of Deaf people. Deaf teachers lost their jobs; sign language in schools reformed to the oral method; hundreds of oral schools were set up; the quality of Deaf education decreased dramatically and Deaf children were leaving schools with little qualifications and social skills.
The decline in Deaf education has been long and steady, reaching a low point in the 1940s. At around that time, some oral schools realized that their methods were not working. They started to introduce sign language to support speech. This improved things a little but not sufficiently as signs were only there to support speech and it is now used in education as a language in its own right. The 1980s saw the rise in its rights movement and the growth of number of Deaf activists pressing for rights to BSL and Deaf identity.
We have not yet regained the position we had pre Milan 1880 as there are many issues that needs to be resolved. The movement to achieve this has already started. It is time for Deaf people to get together and reverse the Milan effect.
This is a summary of a paper that was given at the Federation of Deaf People's AGM in March 2003
