Why did a conference in 1880 ban sign language from schools?

In September 1880, a conference of deaf educators in Milan, Italy, voted that oral education was better than sign language and passed a resolution banning sign language in school. After that, many European and American schools largely switched to speech therapy without sign language until the late 1960s and early 1970s. The vote is known as the Milan Conference or Milan Congress.

It was not an open debate. The conference was organised by a committee of oralists, people who wanted deaf children taught to speak and lip-read, and it was essentially an attempt to legitimize an official ban on sign language. The organisers secured the outcome by carefully selecting who was invited: more than half of the people invited were known oralists. Of 256 attendees, a handful were deaf. Of twelve speakers, nine took the oralist side and three, including the Gallaudet brothers from the United States, supported sign language. The key resolution passed 160 votes to 4.

The influence behind it was strong. Alexander Graham Bell, who was not at the conference, shared its ideas, and he believed sign language kept deaf people from becoming 'true Americans'. The London Times declared afterwards that 'Deafness is Abolished.'

The effect lasted for generations. Sign languages were suppressed for almost a century, and in 2010 the international congress formally apologised. In 2025 it fully renounced the 1880 resolutions, citing the long-lasting harm and the language deprivation of generations of deaf children.