When William Penn founded his school, he did so with the conviction that an educated people would shape the future of his new colony. He wrote to Philadelphians in 1689 urging them to organize a school on the banks of the Delaware River. The school that Penn founded was different from schools elsewhere. Penn wanted his school to offer a new kind of education that would prepare young people to be teachers, merchants, builders and farmers, as well as political and professional leaders. When the school opened in 1689 on the south side of High Street, now Market Street, the progressive curriculum taught science in addition to Latin, Greek and Hebrew.