Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf

The Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf, commonly known as the Milan Conference or Milan Congress, was an international conference of deaf educators held in the Regio Instituto Tenico di Santa Martha, Milan, Italy from 6 to 11 September 1880.

After deliberations, the Conference declared that oral education (oralism) was superior to manual education (sign language) and passed a resolution banning the use of sign language in school. After its passage, various European and American schools largely switched to using speech therapy without sign language as a method of deaf education until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when sign language started to be recognised as the ideal method of deaf education.

In 2010, a formal apology was made by the board at the 21st International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Vancouver, BC, Canada, acknowledging the detrimental effects of such a ban as an act of discrimination and violation of both human and constitutional rights. In 2025 the resolution that was passed in the conference of 1880 was "fully and unequivocally" renounced during the 24th International Congress on Education of the Deaf. Among the reasons given for the renunciation are the "profound and long-lasting harm caused by those resolutions, including the widespread exclusion of sign languages from educational systems and the systematic language deprivation experienced by generations of deaf children" and the acknowledgment that "these measures suppressed a natural human linguistic modality and severely restricted the ability of deaf individuals to fully exercise their human rights".