Mary Lyon

Mary Lyon

At the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century, philosophers in Europe began to argue that all individuals, male or female, were born with natural rights that made them free and equal, one of these is education. However, it was not until nineteenth century, women’s education had not considered important in the United States. 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. In opposition to the current thought, Mary Lyon supposed that women’s education was extremely important. Through her lifelong work for women’s education, she became one of the most famous women in nineteenth century America.

No one can deny that the first thing people think of Mary Lyon is the picture of a flower that bloomed in adversity and the love of learning. Being born in a poor family at the small village of Buckland, Massachusetts, in Seventeen-Ninety-Seven, Mary spent her life through a mass of hard time. Her father died when she was so little, five years old. It seemed that she had lost the great thing in her life; the shade of her father had been no longer to be available to protect her from all harm. In addition, when Mary was thirteen, her mother re-married and moved to another town. Mary’s life from that day was as like as the single sail over the boundless ocean. But these could not rout her determination. It is said that “If a fire is lit properly, it will burn”. Was the fire named Mary Lyon lighted in adversity? Furthermore, Mary longed for studying. Her learning spirit was deep-seated from the inside. At the age of four, Mary began walking to the nearest school several kilometers away. For Mary, hard work was a way of life. She helped clean and cook in a farm; she was paid a dollar a week. Mary’s love of learning was so strong that she worked and saved her small mount of pay so she could go to school for another few months. She believed that women were teachers both in the home and in the classroom. And if women were better educated, she felt, they could teach in local schools throughout the United States and in foreign countries. Mary began her first teaching job at a one-room local school teaching children for summer. She was seventeen years old. She was paid seventy-five cents a week and also was given meal and place to live. It was not until twenty, she began a long period of studying and teaching. A new private school opened in a village of Ashfield, Massachusetts. It was called Sanderson Academy. Mary was well aware that the only way to make her dream of better education for female come true is studying. Therefore, she really wanted to attend. She sold books and used everything she had saved from her paying as a teacher. It was enough for her to begin attending Sanderson Academy. This seemed to be one of the first steps on her long way of struggling for women’s education.

All her life, Mary strived tirelessly for the right of women’s education. One thing that made Mary excited is when studying at Sanderson Academic, she was taught by Reverend Joseph Emerson. Mary said he talked to women “as if they had brains”. This gave her more strength to go on and raised her hope for the better future for women’s education. In 1824, Mary Lyon opened a school for young women in the village of Buckland. She named it the Buckland Female Seminary. Classes were held in a room on the third floor of the house. Mary’s students praised her way of teaching. She proposed discussing in groups so that students could exchange their ideas. Mary said it was while teaching at Buckland that the first thought of founding a private school open to daughters of farmers and skilled workers. She wanted education, not profit, to be the most important thing about the school, even thought at that time; schools of higher learning usually were supported by people interested in profits from their investment. In 1828, after recovering from the typhoid fever, Mary decided to leave Buckland and joined a close friend, Zilpah Grant, who had begun another private school, Ipswich Female Seminary. At Ipswich, she taught and was responsible for one-hundred-thirty students. It was one of the best schools at the time. But it lacked financial support. Until 1835, Mary resigned from Ipswich. She came home, Massachusetts, and helped to organize another private school for women, Wheaton Female Seminary. 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. The school would not depend on any one person to continue. And, the students would share in cleaning and cooking to keep costs down. However, everything was not easy at all. Mary had to get a committee of advisers to help her in planning and building the school. She did not earn any money; even she had to borrow it from everywhere to support the school until she became head of the new school. Mary Lyon opened Mount Holyoke Seminary for Women in 1837. It was in the town of South Hadley, Massachusetts. At the beginning, there were only four teachers and the first class of eighty young women lived and studied in the building. By the next year, the number of students had increased to one-hundred-sixteen. Mary happily knew the importance of what she had done – establishing the first independent school for the higher education of women. More and more students attended the school and it continued to grow. All the students were required to study for four years instead of three. Mary Lyon was head of the school for twelve years. She passed away at the age of fifty-two.

She left behind a school of higher education for women; it had no debt, but the more than all is she had created the difference on thinking about women’s education not only in her home, Massachusetts, but through out the United States and all over the world at the time. She grew up in a poor village and all in front of her eyes is the picture in which women was working hardly from sun rise till sun set. Day after day, nothing was different, nothing changed. All women’s lives kept circling following a never-changed orbit to be wives, be mothers, or even be slaves. Women whose energies found no outlet and whose talents ran slowly to waste. A large part of society of America at the time in particular, and the world in general, took these things for granted. Mary did not agree with this kind of thinking, so she wanted to make a difference. Another reason forced Mary to try her best level to change the current situation was her love of home where she was born. This is how she described what she could see from her 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.” There is no doubt that Mary, with her wholehearted efforts, had changed not only the expression but also the deep inside of the thinking about women’s education. In practice, Mary had built many female schools where women were belonged all classes, especially labor class, could study and affirm their more and more important roles in community. Even though, most of these schools were only in Massachusetts, they had a great influential on the United States. Gradually, “the movement” became a nationwide one. Moreover, thank to education, women had certain roles and contributed to social activities. 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. It is no doubt that her efforts resulted in to the spread of higher education for women in the United States. Also, historians say she was the strongest influence on the education of America young women during the middle of the nineteen century.

Mary Lyon’s life is a struggling life, we can say. She was not in battle but what she had done, not many people can do: overcame adversity, turned the dream come true, and created a completely different thing for women at the time: right of education. Frankly, the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.”

* Source: People in America.