The Crucifixion of ASL [Milan]

Description:

The Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf, an international conference of deaf educators, was held in Milan, Italy in 1880. Commonly known as "the Milan Conference or Milan Congress," the conference declared, after many heated deliberations, that oral education (oralism) was superior to manual education and passed a resolution banning the use of sign language in school. After its passage in 1880, schools in European countries and the United States switched to using speech therapy without sign language as a method of education for the deaf. In the United States, sign language use was banned in classrooms and Deaf children were forced to hide their use of American Sign Language (ASL). The imagery of a hand crucified on the cross is quite disturbing but purposely so. The quick manner in which the educational systems in the United States fell into lock-step with the ban on ASL was a singularly repressive action on a community which sees itself as an ethnic minority.

Attribution:

David Call (1962- )