Three hundred and eighty-nine years ago today, on April 23, 1635, Boston Latin School was the first school founded in colonial America.  It was initially funded by donations rather than tax dollars, and the first classes were held in the home of the first headmaster, Philemon Pormort.  The school’s purpose was to educate young men from all social classes in the classics; it required students to master the reading and writing of Latin; five of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence attended the school—Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, William Hooper, and Robert Treat Paine; and Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the school’s most famous dropout.  One of the traditions at Boston Latin School is for students to give at least three orations, called declamations, each year in front of the entire school. 

Any of this sound a little bit familiar?  Latin, the classics, recitations in front of the school?  Of course, we don’t hold classes at my house (thank goodness).  And hopefully, the part about Ben Franklin failing to graduate doesn’t sound familiar…although, if any of you drops out of CCA and goes on to found a newspaper and a college, serve as postmaster general and Ambassador to France, develop a phonetic alphabet, discover revolutionary facts about electricity, become a master chess player, play the violin, harp and guitar, and end up on an American dollar bill…well then, I suppose we’ll forgive you for not graduating. 

But either way, my question for you this morning is simply this: What do you make of the fact that your school—and what you are learning here—is in some ways an awful lot like the very first school in colonial America, started almost 400 years ago?  And 400 years from now, what do you think they will say about our graduates?

Have a wonderful day.