(Excerpt from Letters to a Young Teacher
Know thyself was...)
Excerpt from Letters to a Young Teacher
Know thyself was the injunction of'am ancient philosopher and it has been reiterated by many among the wise Of modern days.
Most of those traits which make up what we call character in a man.
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He was born in Watertown, Massachussets, in 1793, the son of Zephion and Susannah (Bond) Thayer. He was a descendant of Thomas Thayer who was in Braintree, Massachussets, as early as 1647. In his early boyhood his parents removed to Brookline, Massachussets. Within a few years both parents died, and Gideon was adopted by Gideon French, a tallow merchant of Boston, whose name he bore.
Education
A period of schooling in Boston was followed by his apprenticeship, at fourteen, to a retail shoe-merchant, with whom he remained for six years. Throughout this time he studied privately to prepare himself for teaching.
Career
In 1814 he was appointed usher in the South Writing School of Boston, where he acquired a reputation for his instruction in penmanship. To augment his salary he conducted an evening school for apprentices. A severe hemorrhage of the lungs in 1818 forced him to withdraw from teaching, and at the expense of sympathetic friends he was sent to New Orleans. Returning two years later, he took up his residence in Milton, Massachussets.
In 1820 he established a private school in Boston, where two innovations which proved popular with his students were the installation of gymnastic apparatus and his practice of taking the boys to the Boston Common for exercises and games during periods of recess. In lectures to schoolmasters he stressed the importance of a well-balanced program of mental, moral, and physical instruction. The school succeeded so well that he was able in 1828 to secure sufficient credit for the purchase of a site and the erection of a school-building on Chauncy Place (later Chauncy Street).
This was the famous Chauncy-Hall School. Among his first pupils was Francis Parkman, the historian. A noteworthy feature of the school was its departmental plan of instruction, with competent teachers in charge of the various courses of study. William Russell was the instructor in elocution. Singing by note was introduced in the school, as a general exercise, some years before it appeared in the public schools. Thayer was invited frequently to lecture on the work of the school, and to give addresses on educational topics before various teachers' associations. One of his lectures, delivered in 1840 before the American Institute of Instruction, entitled "On Courtesy, and its Connexion with School Instruction", was reprinted in pamphlet form by Horace Mann and distributed to all the schools in Massachusetts; over fifty thousand copies were also printed and circulated by Henry Barnard, in whose journal Thayer was publishing a series of articles, later separately printed as Letters to a Young Teacher (1858).
In 1831 he removed from Milton to Quincy, Massachussets. There he was influential in establishing the first high school (1852) and in organizing a lyceum for the encouragement of cultural interests in the community. He was one of the organizers of the American Institute of Instruction, serving as its first recording secretary (1830 - 31) and as president (1849 - 52). In 1848 he was one of the editors of the Massachusetts Teacher; and from July 1851 to April 1852 he edited the Quincy Patriot, a weekly journal devoted to the arts and sciences, a venture in which he lost a considerable sum of money. He was one of the organizers of the Boston public library. He withdrew from the Chauncy-Hall School in December 1855, leaving it in the charge of Thomas Cushing, who had been his partner since 1840.
On January 1, 1856, he became president of the Quincy Fire and Marine Insurance Company (later the Prescott Insurance Company). He resigned in 1860 because of ill health and retired to Keene, N. H. , where he died.
(Excerpt from Letters to a Young Teacher
Know thyself was...)
Membership
He was a member of the Boston Common Council (1839, 1844 - 48), and president of the Boston Dispensary (1840 - 46). His name also appears among the founders of the American Association for the Advancement of Education, the Massachusetts State Teachers' Association, and the Norfolk County Teachers' Association.
Connections
He married, August 27, 1821, Nancy Pierce, daughter of Rufus and Elizabeth Pierce of Milton, by whom he had three sons and a daughter.
One of his grandsons was Abbott Handerson Thayer the artist.