Date: 4-1-01
VOICE ONE:
I'm Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Shirley Griffith.
Every week at this time, we tell the story
of someone important in the history of the United States.
Today,
we tell about Mary Lyon.
She was a leader in women's education
in the last century.
(THEME)
VOICE ONE:
During the Nineteenth Century, women's education was not
considered important in the United States.
Supporters of
advanced education for women faced many problems.
States did require each town to provide a school for children,
but teachers often were poorly prepared.
Most young women were
not able to continue on with their education in private schools.
If they did, they often were not taught much except the French
language, how to sew clothing, and music.
Mary Lyon felt that women's education was extremely important.
Through her lifelong work for education she became one of the
most famous women in Nineteenth Century America.
She believed
that women were teachers both in the home and in the classroom.
And, she believed that efforts to better educate young women also
served God.
If women were better educated, she felt, they could
teach in local schools throughout the United States and in
foreign countries.
((MUSIC BRIDGE))
VOICE TWO:
Mary Lyon was born in Buckland, Massachusetts, in
Seventeen-Ninety-Seven.
Her father died when she was five years
old.
For Mary, hard work was a way of life.
But she later
remembered with great pleasure her childhood years in the home
where she was born.
This is how she described what she could see from that house on a
hill:
"The far-off mountains in all their grandeur, and the deep
valleys, and widely extended plains, and more than all, that
little village below, containing only a very few white houses,
but more than those young eyes had ever seen."
VOICE ONE:
At the age of four, Mary began walking to the nearest school
several kilometers away.
Later, she began spending three months
at a time with friends and relatives so she could attend other
area schools.
She helped clean and cook to pay for her stay.
When Mary was thirteen, her mother re-married and moved to
another town.
Mary was left to care for her older brother who
worked on the family farm.
He paid her a dollar a week.
She
saved it to pay for her education.
Mary's love of learning was
so strong that she worked and saved her small amount of pay so
she could go to school for another few months.
Mary began her first teaching job at a one-room local school
teaching children for the summer.
She was seventeen years old.
She was paid seventy-five cents a week.
She also was given meals
and a place to live.
Mary Lyon was not a very successful teacher at first.
She did
not have much control over her students.
She always was ready to
laugh with them.
Yet she soon won their parents' respect with
her skills.
((MUSIC BRIDGE))
VOICE TWO:
When Mary Lyon was twenty years old, she began a long period of
study and teaching.
A new private school opened in the village
of Ashfield, Massachusetts.
It was called Sanderson Academy.
Mary really wanted to attend.
She sold book coverings she had
made.
And she used everything she had saved from her pay as a
teacher.
This was enough for her to begin attending Sanderson
Academy.
At Sanderson, Mary began to study more difficult subjects.
These
included science, history and Latin.
A friend who went to school
with Mary wrote of her "gaining knowledge by handfuls." It is
said that Mary memorized a complete book about the Latin language
in three days.
Mary later wrote it was at Sanderson that she
received the base of her education.
VOICE ONE:
After a year at Sanderson Academy, Mary decided that her
handwriting was not good enough to be read clearly.
She was a
twenty-one-year-old woman.
But she went to the local public
school and sat among the children so she could learn better
writing skills.
In Eighteen-Twenty-One, Mary Lyon went to another private school
where she was taught by Reverend Joseph Emerson.
Mary said he
talked to women "as if they had brains." She praised his equal
treatment of men and women when it came to educating them.
VOICE TWO:
Three years later, Mary Lyon opened a school for young women in
the village of Buckland.
She called it the Buckland Female
Seminary.
Classes were held in a room on the third floor of a
house.
Mary's students praised her teaching.
She proposed new ways of
teaching, including holding discussion groups where students
exchange ideas.
Mary said it was while teaching at Buckland that she first
thought of founding a private school open to daughters of farmers
and skilled workers.
She wanted education, not profits, to be
the most important thing about the school.
At that time, schools
of higher learning usually were supported by people interested in
profits from their investment.
VOICE ONE:
In Eighteen-Twenty-Eight, Mary became sick with typhoid fever.
When her health improved, she decided to leave Buckland, the
school she had started.
She joined a close friend, Zilpah Grant,
who had begun another private school, Ipswich Female Seminary.
At Ipswich, Mary taught and was responsible for
one-hundred-thirty students.
It was one of the best schools at
the time.
But it lacked financial support.
Mary said the lack
of support was because of "good men's fear of greatness in
women." Zilpah Grant and Mary Lyon urged that Ipswich be
provided buildings so that the school might become permanent.
However, their appeal failed.
((MUSIC BRIDGE))
VOICE TWO:
Mary resigned from Ipswich.
She helped to organize another
private school for women, Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton,
Massachusetts.
It opened in Eighteen Thirty-Five.
She also began to raise money for her dream of a permanent,
non-profit school for the higher education of women.
This school
would own its own property.
It would be guided by an independent
group of directors.
Its finances would be the responsibility of
the directors, not of investors seeking profit.
The school would
not depend on any one person to continue.
And, the students
would share in cleaning and cooking to keep costs down.
VOICE ONE:
Mary Lyon got a committee of advisers to help her in planning and
building the school.
She collected the first thousand dollars
for the school from women in and around the town of Ipswich.
At
one point, she even lent the committee some of her own money.
She did not earn any money until she became head of the new
school.
Mary Lyon opened Mount Holyoke Seminary for Women in
Eighteen-Thirty-Seven.
It was in the town of South Hadley,
Massachusetts.
She had raised more than twelve-thousand dollars.
It was enough to build a five-story building.
Four teachers and the first class of eighty young women lived and
studied in the building when the school opened.
By the next
year, the number of students had increased to
one-hundred-sixteen.
Mary knew the importance of what had been
established -- the first independent school for the higher
education of women.
VOICE TWO:
The school continued to grow.
More students began to attend.
The size of the building was increased.
And, all of the students
were required to study for four years instead of three.
Mary Lyon was head of the school for almost twelve years.
She
died in Eighteen-Forty-Nine.
She was fifty-two years old.
She left behind a school of higher education for women.
It had
no debt.
And it had support for the future provided by thousands
of dollars in gifts.
In Eighteen-Ninety-Three, under a state law, Mount Holyoke Female
Seminary became a college.
Mount Holyoke College was the first
college to offer women the same kind of education as was offered
to men.
VOICE ONE:
People who have studied Mary Lyon say she was not fighting a
battle of equality between men and women.
Yet she knew she
wanted more for women.
Her efforts led to the spread of higher education for women in
the United States.
Historians say she was the strongest
influence on the education of American young people during the
middle of the nineteenth century.
Her influence lasted as the
many students from Mary Lyon's schools went out to teach others.
(THEME)
VOICE TWO:
This Special English program was written by Vivian Bournazian.
I'm Shirley Griffith
VOICE ONE:
And I'm Steve Ember.
Join us again next week at this
same time for another People in American program on the Voice of America.