Forty years on: A belief in equal education
In 1978, a mother asked MLC for something that sounded simple but, at the time, wasn't available anywhere. Jocelyn Teh wanted her profoundly deaf, signing daughter, Moon, to have the same education as any other girl at the school. Before then, Deaf children who signed were educated in separate schools that rarely offered a full secondary curriculum or got a student to Year 12, let alone university. Jocelyn offered to interpret for Moon herself, in the classroom, every day. Principal David Loader agreed to trial this arrangement. It was a small act of faith that would take almost a decade to reach its full potential.
What made the difference in the years that followed was not one decision but many people continuing to make it. When Alice Ewing's parents were looking for options a few years later, the best offer elsewhere was that the Victorian School for Deaf Children might send her to Wesley College to sit in on some classes. It wasn't enough, and MLC's parents and staff sensed it. More families arrived, and by 1986, thirteen deaf and hard of hearing girls were enrolled. MLC formalised what had begun as a series of individual acts of goodwill and appointed Helen Badcock (McIntosh 1956), herself a former MLC student and an experienced Teacher of the Deaf, as the first full-time staff-member for the Deaf Integration Program.
Helen's job was to turn that belief in equal education into the everyday reality for Deaf students. She briefed teachers on small, practical adjustments, arranged interpreters and notetakers for the girls who signed, and taught other students Auslan at lunchtime so no girl sat alone at the edge of her own classroom. Parents built on it too, forming a support group that fundraised through selling wine and recipe books to help pay for the interpreters their daughters needed.
The outcomes validated the belief. Rebecca Adam (1988), who arrived in 1983, became the first signing student to complete Year 12 at MLC. She went on to study law and commerce at the University of Melbourne and became the first signing Deaf person in Australia to be admitted as a practitioner with the Supreme Court of Victoria. MLC’s first Deaf student to enrol at the school, Moon Feris (Teh 1989), graduated from MLC in Year 12 the following year and went on to the University of Melbourne. Alice Ewing also graduated and went on to study science. Other students from the Deaf Education Unit have built careers in nursing, accounting, business and teaching, opportunities that simply hadn't existed for deaf women before a school decided they should.
MLC recently celebrated 40 years of Deaf Education, and we were delighted that Adrika Sri Bawan (2013), Old Collegians’ Club council member and graduate of the Deaf program, was a guest speaker. Her reflections traced the lasting influence of the program and the teachers who championed her, shaping not only her experience as a student, but the person she has become.
What began as one mother refusing to accept less for her daughter became a model other schools have since adopted, and a community that never stopped believing every girl deserved the same chance. As Helen puts it, "It just takes people to be brave and to stand up for what they believe in." Forty years on, that belief still opens doors for the girls who walk through MLC's gates.