The Roxbury Latin School is the oldest school in continuous operation in North America. The school was founded in Roxbury, Massachusetts by the Rev. John Eliot under a charter received from King Charles I of England. Since its founding in 1645, it has educated boys on a continuous basis.
Located since 1927 at 101 St. Theresa Avenue in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, the school now serves about 290 to 300 boys in grades seven through twelve. Eliot founded the school "to fit for public service both in church and in commonwealth in succeeding ages," and the school continues to consider instilling a desire to perform public service among its principal missions.
The school's endowment is estimated at $143.8 million, the largest of any boys' day school in the United States. The school maintains a need-blind admissions policy, admitting boys without consideration of the ability of their families to pay the full tuition.
Its previous headmaster, F. Washington Jarvis, who retired in the summer of 2004 after a 30-year tenure, published two books about Roxbury Latin: a history of the school and a collection of his speeches to boys at Roxbury Latin (With Love and Prayers). The title of the former, Schola Illustris, was the phrase Cotton Mather used to describe the school in 1690, following John Eliot's death. In addition to those books, Richard Walden Hale published Tercentenary History of the Roxbury Latin School in 1946. Roxbury Latin continues to hold a unique place in the history of American education.
Roxbury Latin School is a member of the Independent School League and NEPSAC. It has an unofficial sister school relationship with The Winsor School in Boston as well as an African brother school, the Maru a Pula School.
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Famous quotes containing the words latin and/or school:
“In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)