Samuel Johnson said it was the greatest human calamity, Helen Keller said she would rather be blind, and A.G. Bell feared that unless extraordinary measures were taken, a new and toxic variety of the human race would emerge. Deafness, the invisible disability, affects only one person in one thousand, but for as long as history has been recorded it is a topic that has been plagued with controversy. For the past 300 years, the question of the "right way" to educate deaf children has been at the center of a bitter educational dispute. Before that time, education was not an issue, as virtually every society took the term "deaf and dumb" quite literally. The idea that deaf children were capable of education constituted a dramatic breakthrough, but it came with a heavy price as it was based on two very divergent ideas: communication through sign language or teaching the deaf to speak. This article addresses some of these issues in the following sections: (1) Some History; (2) Speak or Sign: The Great Debate; (3) The Literacy Challenge; (4) Qualified Teachers in Short Supply; and (5)What Can Be Done?