True to its name, to this day the entrants to the Boston Latin School are required to complete three to four years of Latin. The focus on a “classical” education, meaning founded on immersion in the humanities — history, philosophy, literature, art — was present when it was founded as the colonial equivalent of the Boston Grammar School of Lincolnshire, UK, from which many of the original Boston settlers came.

On this day, April 23, in 1635 the Boston Latin School, the first public school in the country, opened in the home of Schoolmaster Philemon Pormont, in what today is Causeway Street and the Charleston Bridge.

The school has moved since to School Street, but that location today today holds the statue of a man who briefly attended, in preparation for a life in the clergy, but dropped out because of family finances. The statue of Benjamin Franklin celebrates Boston Latin School’s unmistakeably most famous dropout.