Joyce Hickes arrived in Penang in 1954 to help open the first school for the deaf in the nation
FOR a West Yorkshire lass working in an “almost Victorian” surrounding in a school in Newcastle during the cold winter months without much heating, an advertisement for a job in the tropical island of Penang, seemed the ideal ticket out.
Without a clue as to where Penang was, Joyce Hickes, then 25, applied for the post in a school for deaf children. A quick inquiry revealed that Penang was also known as the Pearl of the Orient, out in the east and had plenty of sunshine.
After an interview at Manchester University, where she received her training as a specialist teacher for deaf children, Hickes set sail on The Atreus of the Blue Funnel Line, heading for Penang.
It was February 1954 when she embarked on this life-changing mission, one that not only impacted her life, but also those who were unfortunate enough to have hearing impairment and fortunate enough to be students of the pioneering school.
Hickes, who later became Mrs Joyce Sundram when she married a Singaporean parliamentary draftsman in 1962, helped open the first school for the deaf in Malaya.
After the initial shock of learning that she was the principal that the members of the board were referring to during their first meeting soon after arrival, Hickes had no hesitation about making it work.
When The Atreus docked in Penang, Hickes was met by several people — Malay, Chinese and Indian — representing the board for the Federation School of the Deaf, as well as Dr C. Elaine Field, a medical specialist.
Dr Field, who visited Penang in 1952, realised there were no education programmes for deaf children and discussed this problem with Lady Templer, wife of Sir Gerald Templer, the British high commissioner in Malaya then.
It was then that the seeds for the establishment of the school for the deaf were sown on the island, and it was also by chance that Hickes saw the advertisement for the job in a magazine in the west. The rest to Hickes was history.
“It occurred to me, as if it happened yesterday, sitting at the table, with all these people that they didn’t really know anything.
“I didn’t know a lot either. I decided I had to do something. I remember thinking to myself that if it doesn’t work out, I still have my return ticket,” Hickes says with a laugh.
“From that moment on, I can’t recall having any misgivings, doubts or anxiety about the situation,” she relates of the 7½ years she spent there as the first principal.
In a farewell note by Hickes, written in the 1961 publication of Tunas (Volume 1, No. 1), a magazine for the School of the Deaf in Penang, the outgoing principal spoke fondly of a student who was brought to the school as, “a spitting, screaming, stone-throwing virago of five, whom her family could not control”.
The success story and transformation of Puan Binti Bahadon made Hickes’s departure from the school more bearable.
She wrote poignantly about Puan, the recipient of the best painting in the federation-wide competition organised by the Malayan Council for Child Welfare in celebration of Universal Children’s Day in 1960.
Puan received the prize from the then Yang di-Pertuan Agong Almarhum Tuanku Syed Putra.
Hickes then wrote: “The school has made a charming little girl of her — not a cowed, docile listless child, but one with spirit and gumption.”
I had travelled up to Leeds from London to meet Hickes, a sprightly 89-year-old lady who insisted on meeting me at the train station before we had a lunch of dosai and curry at a local Indian restaurant.
“Do you know, Zaharah,” she asks as she took me back to the year I was born, “I didn’t have any administrative experience, nor any children of my own to take on this role,” she says, downing her mango lasi.
But there was no time to lose and she and the other employees of the school, soon set about looking for furniture — desks and tables and chairs — for the huge mansion at 47 Northam Road.
They started looking for children whose hearing was impaired. The big mansion — belonging to a “rich Chinese Tauke” with its huge rooms for classes, sleeping quarters, gardens and playing fields — was ideal for a boarding school.
“We started with four students,” she says as we continued with the conversation at her house.
She suddenly got up and led me to the hallway leading to the kitchen. From the wall, she took a big picture of a young Hickes with two children.
“Eng Swee and Yong Nyuk Fah, both 4 years old in 1954,” she recalled effortlessly, as she did with the names of the workers of the school.
Names such as Ong Huck Ling, Cheah Ing Keong, Dr Baboo, Chan Ah Mooi, the cook, teacher Othman and Sung Cheng Sun came easily to her.
The school, which initially survived financially on donations, and even from the British National Health Service for hearing aids, soon received the attention of the Education Ministry. Its then education minister, the late Khir Johari, became the chairman of the federation.
The then prime minister of Malaya, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj too gave his support and visited the school and even tried on the hearing aid.
“I got to know Tunku and he was very supportive. He phoned me to request that I help a penghulu who was becoming hard of hearing.”
The number of children at the boarding school soon increased, and they came from all the states and different backgrounds. They enjoyed sports, outings, concerts and competitions.
“Where they were once jeered at and snubbed for being different, society began to view them differently. I left in 1961 to go to Kuala Lumpur to work as an adviser for education for the deaf at the ministry.
“By then, there were provisions for children with hearing problems in ordinary schools. There were pilot projects and the endorsement from the ministry helped,” said Hickes, who later came back to England to continue her work with deaf children.
The woman from the village of Hovingham, who will turn 90 in October, remembers Malaya and the people she got to know fondly and thanks the workers of the school for the deaf that she helped set up.
Not someone who knows the meaning of rest, she is an active member of her church and fills her time with activities that promote greater interaction in a multicultural society.
“I am ever so grateful to the people of Malaya, who were kind to me and helped me with the establishment of the much-needed school for deaf children.”
As I left on the train to London that evening, I wondered if it would be too much to wish that this message is read by former students of the school, especially Eng Swee and Nyuk Fah who would be 68.