This school was for boys only. Children had to be at least twelve years old and pass an entrance exam. The entrance exam covered reading, writing, grammar and arithmetic. The high school had a three-year program that included courses in English language and literature, natural sciences, mathematics, and ancient and American history. When 1840 arrived, Massachusetts had twenty-six high schools. Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago opened their own high schools. However, all these cities had one thing in common and that was their curriculum inherited from the academies: normal, classical Latin and Greek and terminal