Joseph Gideon Hoyt: the Great Teacher
Joseph Gibson Hoyt was born on January 19, 1815, in Dunbarton, New Hampshire. Like Principals Benjamin Abbot and Gideon Lane Soule, Hoyt spent his first sixteen years working on his father’s farm. During this time, his father allowed him to attend the school only three months each year. His education truly began in 1831, when he began studying and teaching at various local institutions. After five years, he entered Yale in 1836 at 21. He graduated in 1840 and, following a year of teaching, joined the Academy as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at age 26.
From 1841 to 1859, Mr. Hoyt devoted himself to the Academy. Together, he and Principal Soule shaped the character of the school. Soule, the old traditionalist, provided a filter for the progressive undertakings of the young professor and helped Hoyt, in Principal Harlan P. Amen’s words, balance “a proper degree of modern progressiveness and the Academy’s ancient traditions.” The pair’s legacy lives with us in both spirit and practice.
His students, if they were to become men, must be treated as such to learn self-reliance, he believed.
Mr. Hoyt’s first piece of administrative genius was his reorganization of the student body in 1854. For about 70 years, the school had operated well without any structuring of the students, but it's later growth demanded change. In order to mitigate chaos, Hoyt organized the students into preparatory, junior, middle, senior and advanced classes. The former provided instruction to those ill-prepared for the junior class, and the latter included material typically learned during the freshman year of college.
Until 1857, only the principal and the trustees operated the school. But as the student body grew, the two parties felt the need for a more structured form of daily governance. Mr. Hoyt’s solution, to “constitute the Instructors a Faculty,” gave the instructors power over disciplinary and academic issues. Hoyt set the governance of the school on its democratic path.
Professor Hoyt also began the school’s revolution towards personal relationships between the students and the instructors. Before 1858, the students were required to study under the eye of their instructor in the Academy Building. Mr. Hoyt argued against this practice on the grounds, in Crosbie’s words, “that the Academy had always striven to treat its charges as men and not as children.” His students, if they were to become men, must be treated as such to learn self-reliance, he believed. In respecting his students as adults, Professor Hoyt earned their respect.
Perhaps the most popular piece of trivia from Professor Hoyt’s tenure was his revolutionary and somewhat scandalous step from the desk to the floor of the recitation hall more than half a century before Edward Harkness’s gift. There had, of course, been personal interaction between the students and their instructors outside of the classroom before Hoyt walked among his pupils, but as Laurence Crosbie, Class of 1900, writes in Phillips Exeter Academy, a History, the instructors “like the gods on Olympus, would not descend from their exalted stations [in the classroom] for mortals.” Professor Hoyt’s students adored him for this friendliness and openness. His student, Professor Sylvester Waterhouse of Washington University, where Hoyt spent his last years, recounted the youthful professor’s energy: “[Hoyt] was animated by a strong and unaffected desire to benefit and befriend students … His keen wit enlivened the sobriety of the classroom, and … inspired his students with a new and deeper devotion to learning and a generous emulation of his example,” Waterhouse said. “He impressed upon them the priceless value of culture and the duty of self-development … always appealed to their nobler instincts, and reposed trust in their sense of honor.”
Professor Hoyt’s energy extended beyond the classroom. With Hoyt’s encouragement, Professor Waterhouse and his peers “gained new hopes of victory in the battle of life, and fresh determination to redress the wrongs of fortune. The friendship which began between the humble pupil and the warm-hearted teacher has never known a moment's interruption … His personal interest, his latchless hospitality, his quick sympathy and cheerful encouragement in moments when life looked sunless are titles to my grateful regard.”
Hoyt also brought his general enthusiasm off-campus. For years, he served on the town’s school committee, authoring reports renowned for their content and style, and took part in many efforts to beautify the town. While in Exeter, he planted many trees and pushed the construction of the present town hall. In 1851, he helped revise the Constitution of New Hampshire and in 1858, he narrowly missed congressional office. Since his college days, Hoyt had always been a master of many talents.
In 1859, Hoyt left Exeter to accept Chancellorship of Washington University in St. Louis. His chancellorship was a success; Waterhouse wrote, “the institution which [Hoyt] found [as] an academy, he left a university.” Hoyt’s contributions to the university become more impressive given the brevity of his time in St. Louis. He had only one year of health before an illness seized him. He suffered for two years and passed away at the premature age of 47.
Professor Waterhouse summarizes Hoyt’s intellectual and moral positions: “[Hoyt] believed … that nobility of character should be the primary condition of admission to literary institutions, that only pure worshipers were entitled to enter the temple of learning. In intellectual discipline, he considered it [most] important to teach the mind habits of accurate thought … He had the faculty to kindle enthusiasm in students, to reconcile them, by the attractions of his instruction, to the toils of scholarship, to develop powers of reasoning … and to show that the thoughts of the dead past are yet [alive] with life and wisdom and applicable still to the conditions of human society.”
During his time at Exeter, Professor Hoyt made “the dispositions of the minds and morals of the youth under [his] charge,” as John Phillips put it, the principle object of his attention. He coupled youthfulness with impressive scholarship and true commitment, making himself one of the greatest instructors the Academy has ever seen. All in all, Professor Hoyt truly was the “Great Teacher.”