### Chap­ter 9 Sum­ma­ry: Frowned upon by the Gods, The Boys of River­side

In “Frowned upon by the Gods,” the nar­ra­tive reflects on the his­tor­i­cal strug­gles and ten­sions between edu­ca­tors regard­ing the ped­a­gogy of deaf stu­dents, cen­tered pri­mar­i­ly around sign ver­sus oral com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Lin­da Adams’ real­iza­tion that her son craved lan­guage becomes emblem­at­ic of two cen­turies of neglect faced by the deaf com­mu­ni­ty in these debates, often sidelin­ing their voic­es in mat­ters that direct­ly affect their liveli­hoods.

The chap­ter draws on schol­ar H‑Dirksen Bauman’s anal­o­gy com­par­ing the study of deaf his­to­ry to chas­ing fire­flies in the dark—occasional insights shroud­ed by peri­ods of igno­rance. Evi­dence of sign lan­guage pre­dates for­mal doc­u­men­ta­tion, with sign sys­tems blos­som­ing inde­pen­dent­ly around the world, lead­ing to a schol­ar­ly debate on whether they pre­ced­ed spo­ken lan­guages. His­tor­i­cal accounts, includ­ing ref­er­ences by Socrates and obser­va­tions of deaf courtiers in the Ottoman Empire, show­case the var­ied per­cep­tions of deaf indi­vid­u­als. How­ev­er, it under­scores a grim real­i­ty: in many soci­eties, deaf peo­ple were often mar­gin­al­ized, fac­ing social and legal dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Euro­pean cul­tures expressed an ingrained belief that deaf indi­vid­u­als were inca­pable of faith, which aggra­vat­ed their exclu­sion. Yet, a shift occurred with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary work of Charles-Michel de l’Epée, who estab­lished the first pub­lic school for the deaf in Paris in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry. His efforts in teach­ing sign lan­guage not only laid ground­work for deaf edu­ca­tion across Europe but also chal­lenged pre­vail­ing beliefs about deaf­ness as a dis­abil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, progress suf­fered a severe set­back at the 1880 Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress of Edu­ca­tors of the Deaf in Milan, which result­ed in a ban on sign lan­guage in schools. Alexan­der Gra­ham Bel­l’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in this con­fer­ence sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced its out­comes, lead­ing to detri­men­tal con­se­quences for deaf com­mu­ni­ties, who were fur­ther detached from their lin­guis­tic her­itage. This deep-root­ed stig­ma sur­round­ing sign lan­guage con­tin­ued, even as deaf indi­vid­u­als like Ken Wat­son nav­i­gat­ed oppres­sive envi­ron­ments at schools that penal­ized their use of Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage (ASL).

The nar­ra­tive illus­trates how atti­tudes toward lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tion shift­ed over decades, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the expe­ri­ences of Kei­th Adams. Enrolling at the Cal­i­for­nia School for the Deaf allowed him to thrive in an all-deaf envi­ron­ment, lead­ing to sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al growth and social con­nec­tions. Ulti­mate­ly, the chap­ter empha­sizes the ongo­ing strug­gles and tri­umphs of the deaf com­mu­ni­ty, encap­su­lat­ed by Kei­th’s jour­ney and the impact of socioe­co­nom­ic and cul­tur­al fac­tors on deaf edu­ca­tion and iden­ti­ty.