In 1880 Queen Victoria had been on the throne for forty-three years; Gladstone began the second of his four terms as Prime Minister; Great Britain was at the zenith of its powers.
In 1880 and the industrial revolution was at its height, and the Forth railway bridge was opened in Scotland.
Unfortunately, in the year 1880, what came to be viewed as the greatest injustice ever to be perpetrated against deaf people occurred in September when the highly-misleading International Congress of Teachers of Deaf-Mutes was convened in Milan, Italy.
The International Congress of Teachers of Deaf-Mutes, Milan: September 6th11th 1880.
This Congress had its roots planted in Paris in 1878 at the French Universal Exhibition when a hastily-assembled meeting of twenty-seven teachers of the deaf was arranged.
Of this number and twenty-three were French, and the other four came from Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria.
It was no coincidence that the majority of the French delegates were members of the little-known Le Societe Pereire, which sought to recognise Pereire as the first teacher of the deaf in that country ” Pereire being a man who practised teaching by the oral method.
The objective of this association was to promote the adoption of the instruction of deaf children not through the use of sign language or any method that used it as then prevailed in many countries including the U.S.A. and Britain, but through oral methods to the total exclusion of sign language altogether.
The Paris meeting appointed a committee of twelve from those present to make arrangements for a second international conference. Of these twelve, eleven were from France (and naturally Le Societe Pereire.)
They chose Milan as the venue because of the presence of two schools which for the previous ten years had pursued the Pure Oral System, or the German System as it was more commonly known, and to help to give the Congress credibility and they chose as the President one of the schools’ headmasters, while the other school’s headmaster was Secretary.
In addition and they appointed four Vice-Presidents and four Vice-Secretaries of whom seven were staunch supporters of the German System.
It is therefore not surprising that once assembled and the Congress exuded a strong oralist flavour. Out of 164 participants, eighty-seven were Italians and fifty-three were French.
The only truly representative delegation was that of the United States whose five delegates had been chosen earlier that year at a convention in Cincinnati.
The British delegation of eight comprised of two Principals of Oral Schools for the Deaf which had a combined total of less than 25 students! (Rev. Thomas Arnold and a Miss Hull).
One (A.A. Kinsey) was the Principal of the Ealing College for Training of Oral Teachers of the Deaf.
He was accompanied by his Secretary, Dr. David Buxton, formerly headmaster at the Liverpool Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, who had become a convert to oral methods.
Two others, a Mr. and Mrs. Ackers, were parents of a deaf girl who had been orally-educated by them at home. They had no experience whatsoever of any deaf school.
Only Richard Elliott, Headmaster of the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb at Margate, and the Reverend William Stainer, chairman of the London Schools Board Classes for the Deaf, could be said to be representative of the dominant system of education then prevailing in British schools.
Many of the great institutions in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham or Yorkshire ” which had in their employ a considerable number of deaf teachers of the deaf ” were not even present. (In reality, none had even been invited.)
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