Adelaide Educational Institution

[1][2] He avoided rote learning, punishment and religious instruction, but taught moral philosophy, physiology, political economy and mechanical drawing ... (and) surveying on field trips.

By this time Prince Alfred College had emerged as a suitable school for well-to-do Protestants to send their sons.

Dear old Dean Russell, of blessed memory, wished us to be confirmed; and, as our parents agreed, we escaped from lessons two nights a week to attend classes.

Consequently we had a good time going home afterwards, on some occasions climbing the posts and 'dousing the glim' as the sailors say, performing other boyish tricks, and arriving very late because of such 'awfully long classes'[14](Taken from Geoffrey H. Manning's A Colonial Experience)[15] From a welter of amateur establishments emerged two institutions, one of which did noble service to two generations, the other the germ of one of the colony's greatest denominational schools today.

The first was John Lorenzo Young's Adelaide Educational Institute, which in its peregrinations from a room at the rear of Ebenezer Chapel (now built over by the East End Market), by way of Stephens Place and Gawler Place, to a final home at Young Street, Parkside, educated 1,500 young South Australians many of later distinction – Caleb Peacock, Adelaide's first native-born Mayor, Charles Cameron Kingston, the dominating figure on the colony's political horizon and Joseph Verco, doyen of our medical fraternity.

[16][17][18] He received a non-sectarian education in Europe and England, with emphasis on mathematics and the newly developed sciences of geology, physics and chemistry.

[17] In 1851 he was appointed second master at the newly opened South Australian High School,[19] under Headmaster Charles Gregory Feinaigle (1817?

John retired in 1880 and closed the school, with the intention of joining his wife and large family who were visiting brother Oliver and his father in Veryan, in Cornwall.

[12] The two Parkside buildings, at 61-71 Young Street, were sold by Alfred A., Fred N. and Violet Laura Simpson to Mr. C. O.

He embarked on the steamer John Elder in 1881 to visit England (where his father was still living), his family having preceded him, but died on 26 July 1881 while crossing the Red Sea.

[25]Young's work in South Australia is commemorated by scholarships at the University of Adelaide for research in political economy.

In the Second Class, homework was encouraged and after five hours of schoolwork the more industrious students would voluntarily turn in up to four long essays a week.

Elected: C. Peacock, President; M. L. Clark, Treasurer; Joseph Coulls, Secretary; and E. Cheetham, Walter Samson, Wm.

Any flaws in the operation of the school and the training of eager young minds were only hinted at in retrospect – by pronouncements on the great strides made in the current year.

No longer were the speeches by the headmaster and the visiting dignitary quoted verbatim and, sadly for the historian, the only students named were the recipients of prizes.