Milan 1880: Consequences (2)
"In the aftermath of Milan, the conception of the deaf as a social class regressed to the view that had prevailed a century earlier, when Epee was beginning his labors: as their poor achievement confirmed, they were defective.
"Everyone knows," said our inspector-general, "that the deaf are inferior in all respects. Only professional philanthropists have said they are men like everyone else...
Similar to homo-alalus, to man without speech in prehistoric times, yet even more retarded since they cannot hear, they pass among like men as their shadows, without hearing them, without understanding them: all human things are foreign to them."
The suppression of sign, the firing of deaf faculty, the retrenchment of educational goals, and the medical model of the deaf as defective all conduced to Milan's last catastrophic effect: the infantilizing of deaf young men and women. For the oralist teachers, childishness and docility were desirable qualities in a pupil, (..). "
Harlan Lane, When the Mind Hears. A History of the Deaf, 1984, page 401