I know where you live, she said.
* * *
—
I met Eliot today, she said to Kayla that night.
They were in their respective beds surrounded by homework. Charlie pulled her hair into a knot high on her head, a hairdo she had never dared at Jefferson because of the way it revealed her implant.
Pretty, right?
Yeah, but…what happened to him?
Charlie copied the outline of his scar down the side of her own face.
Well…Kayla leaned in. I heard it was his mom.
Charlie could see Kayla was trying her best to hold in whatever gossip she knew, but it was brimming in her eyes, the spark of something lurid.
His mom?
Kayla nodded.
But what would leave that kind of mark?
They say she lit him on fire! she blurted.
What? No way.
It looks like a burn though, right?
That can’t be true.
I thought so, too. But then I started thinking, maybe she didn’t do it on purpose.
She accidentally lit him on fire?
Well, no, but like she didn’t mean to hurt him.
Charlie rubbed her temples. Either Kayla wasn’t making any sense, or Charlie’s ASL skills had lost the thread of this conversation.
She didn’t mean to hurt him…when she lit him on fire?
Kayla swept her eyes over Charlie, like she was waiting for her to have some kind of epiphany, but none came.
I don’t get it.
Anyway, it was just a rumor.
Either way, you were right.
He’s hot.
She could see Kayla realizing something, the sheen of her eyes shifting to something like mischief.
Wait. Were you over in their room just now?
Charlie could only blush.
O-h-h-h, damn!
Kayla jumped from her bed and offered her a high-five.
Put in a good word for Alisha next time, she said.
I’ll try to squeeze that in.
Kayla clapped her hands over her mouth in mock scandal, and she and Charlie laughed all the way to dinner.
alexander graham bell, milan 1880,
AND WHY YOUR MOM DOESN’T KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE
In the late 19th century, manual language versus oral communication for deaf children was a hot topic of debate among educators, embodied by Thomas H. Gallaudet, the cofounder of the American School for the Deaf, and your friendly neighborhood eugenicist, Alexander Graham Bell.
Gallaudet, who’d learned sign language from French teacher of the deaf Laurent Clerc, had seen the success of signing Deaf schools firsthand in France, making him a strong proponent of signed languages. But Bell believed deaf people should be taught to speak, and sign language should be removed from Deaf schools.
Q: Why would a man with a deaf wife and mother want to eradicate sign language?
A: Eugenics
Eugenics （N.）： The practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations （as by sterilization） to improve the population’s genetic composition
IN HIS WORDS:
“Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriages of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy.” —Alexander Graham Bell, 1883
Eugenics was a popular pseudoscience at this time in the U.S., and Bell was a big advocate. The belief was used to justify the forcible sterilization of disabled people, a program that Hitler admired and is said to have learned from.
Bell was against forced sterilization himself, but instead believed getting rid of sign language was the key to eradicating deafness. Without sign, deaf people would integrate into the general population rather than marry one another, thereby producing fewer deaf babies.
Besides his ethics, Bell’s actual science was wrong—most deafness isn’t directly hereditary—but his ideas remain prevalent in deaf education circles today.
DELEGATES AT THE MILAN CONFERENCE IN 1880:
HEARING: 163
DEAF: 1
In 1880, educators gathered in Milan, Italy, to discuss the state of deaf education. The delegates had been handpicked by the oralist society sponsoring the conference with the express goal of eliminating manual language from schools.
The conference passed eight resolutions, effectively banning signed language from schools for the deaf around the world for about 80 years. Some schools, including the school that would become Gallaudet University, pushed back against the resolutions, but most adopted them.
MILAN’S FIRST RESOLUTION:
The Convention, considering the incontestable superiority of articulation over signs in restoring the deaf-mute to society and giving him a fuller knowledge of language, declares that the oral method should be preferred to that of signs in education and the instruction of deaf-mutes. （Passed 160–4）
MILAN’S SECOND RESOLUTION:
The Convention, considering that the simultaneous use of articulation and signs has the disadvantage of injuring articulation and lip-reading and the precision of ideas, declares that the pure oral method should be preferred. （Passed 150–16）
Where Milan’s resolutions were implemented, deaf children were forbidden from using sign language in the classroom or outside of it. As punishment, hands were tied down, rapped with rulers, or slammed in drawers. The period between 1880 and 1960 is considered the dark ages of deaf education.
In the U.S., the National Association of the Deaf, founded in 1880 in response to the conference, became the first disability rights organization, and was and is run for and by Deaf people.
Worried that ASL would become extinct, they also used brand-new film technology to document the language, making some of the earliest recordings of their kind.
In the U.S., eugenics became unpopular after it was associated with Nazism. Subsequent deaf education conferences have apologized for the harm done by the Milan resolutions. Science has since proven ASL is a fully realized language, and that its use does not inhibit the learning of speech. Nevertheless, the shadow of eugenics persists in medicine and education today. The Alexander Graham Bell Association continues to advocate for the pure oral method of educating deaf children.
ASK YOURSELF:
What would the world be like if ASL had gone extinct?
What other effects on deaf life stem from the Milan conference? Work with a partner to add another example to the cycle graphic.
Where else in today’s society can you see the legacy of eugenics?
february spent her first week back at River Valley overwhelmed, and returned home each night dazed—though everything felt terribly important as it was happening, by the time the day was over she couldn’t remember any of it, just that it had been hard and she was worried and had no idea how to help her students. That Friday, as she and Phil walked into the district office, she knew she would have to go home, tell Mel, and finally reckon with an uncertain future.
Swall took the podium to call the meeting to order, and she found it unbearable to look at him. Instead, she fixed her eyes on Henry Bayard, who sat beside Swall, interpreting for Phil. Henry was a good interpreter, and she’d seen him work in all manner of high-pressure and unpleasant circumstances—tense parent-teacher conferences, health crises in which students had been wheeled off campus by EMTs. She’d never seen him flinch, not even as he’d hoisted himself up into an ambulance midsentence. Now, as Swall began an extensive list of programs to be dismantled “in light of new legislative fiduciary constraints,” she could see Henry’s eyes narrow slightly. Most of the cuts were small, school-specific programs with which February wasn’t familiar, though she had no doubt the students they served would be disenfranchised by their loss. But when Swall announced the closure of the River Valley “special needs” institute, she saw it—a quick jump in Henry’s shoulder—as he announced the news that his son’s school would soon cease to be.