The Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf was an international conference of deaf educators held in Milan, Italy in 1880. It is commonly known as "the Milan Conference or Milan Congress". The first meeting was held in Paris in 1878. Joseph Marius Magnat, a former oralist educator from Switzerland, received a wealthy donation to organize a larger meeting two years later. After deliberations from September 6 to 11, 1880, the conference declared 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. A formal apology was made by the board at the 21st International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 2010 accepting the dangerous ramifications of such ban as an act of discrimination and violation of human and constitutional rights. Background Alexander Graham Bell and Edward Miner Gallaudet, both prominent U.S. figures in deaf education, had been debating the effectiveness of oral-only education versus an education that utilizes sign language as a means of visual communication, culminating in the Milan Conference in 1880 that passed eight resolutions on deaf education. The Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf (which, despite its name, was actually the first) was an international meeting of deaf educators from at least seven countries. There were five delegates from America and approximately 164 delegates total in attendance. The Congress was planned and organized by a committee created by the Pereire Society, a group that was against sign language. More than half of the people invited were known oralists; therefore, the Congress was biased and most, if not all, of the resolutions that were voted on by the delegates gave results in favor of the oral method. Many of the resolutions were worded in ways that supported the oral method, such as "Considering the incontestable superiority of speech over signs in restoring the deaf-mute to society, and in giving him a more perfect knowledge of language,/Declares –/That the Oral method ought to be preferred that of signs for the education and instruction of the deaf and dumb". The Milan Conference was organized by the Pereire Society, an organization formed by the family of Jacob Rodrigues Pereira of France and