McTyeire: The School for China’s Daughters

Young women in smart uniforms run down the wide steps, ponytails flying, laughing and talking. Clusters of girls sit and chat on the green lawn that fronts the grand building with its own turret. At first glance, they seem like adolescent girls anywhere, but look closer, and the girls of the Shanghai No.3 Girls’ Middle School have a poise, confidence and ambition unusual for young women of their age — but perfectly in keeping with the legacy of their school: McTyeire was established to educate the elite young ladies of Shanghai.

McTyeire 1938 class — McTyeire Class of 1938, in front of Richardson Hall. Photo from the 1938 yearbook.

The Beginnings: A Radical Idea

In 1892, missionary Young John Allen and Laura Haygood of the Southern Methodist Mission, set up the McTyeire School for Chinese girls in Shanghai. Both natives of Georgia, Allen and Haywood were strong advocates for education – Allen had also founded the Anglo-Chinese College in Hongkou in 1885 – and an advocate for Chinese women’s education at a time when it was considered inessential and even dangerous. Education was in English, the teachers were foreign, and the outlook was decidedly Western, and, of course, Christian.