The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-10-05
OPPOSITION TO BURKE.
Some Parents Who Think Vivi-
section Not a Necessary
Study.
FAVOR 0LD-TIME PEDAGOGY.
Strong Effort to Gust the Educator
With the Advanced
Ideas.

SANTA ROSA, CAL, Oct. 4-This city
is again in ferment over school matters.
year ago last May the fight for School
Trustees was based on the same questions
involved in the suit recently brought to
enforce the payment of the salaries of GER
tain teachers. Advanced educational ideas
are the cause of the trouble.
Frederick Burke, an old newspaper man
of San Francisco and a charter member of
the Press Club of that City, was elected
principal of the schools of this city three
years and half ago. After turning his
back on journalism Mr.. Burke took a
course at the State University and fitted
himself for teacher in the highest depart
ments and along the line of advanced edu-
cational ideas. He came highly recon-
mended to Santa Rosa and soon became
very popular with the teachers of the three
schools under his charge.
1t was not long, however, before the
School Trustees began to receive COM
plants from the parents of pupils at the
three schools about the new methods being
introduced. Those complaints proceeded
as rule from those who thought the three
"R's" were all that was necessary. "Read-
ing, writing and figuring" they averred,
were enough to lay the foundation for
their sons and daughters education. They
did not care to have the time of their
children spent in vivisecting frogs for the
purpose of physiological instruction;
neither did they care to have the vertical
style of chirography taught to their boys
and girls. They wanted the plain, simple
and old-fashioned curriculum of fifty years
ago retained in the schools. A frogs heart
was not half as important in its beating
anatonomical intricacies as the rule of
three-in short, they wanted Professor
Burke removed.
When the election of June 8, 1894, &C.
CURED the Trustees contested for office on
Burke and anti-Burke platforms. The
city was thoroughly excited. Those who
opposed Burke were characterized as moss
backs" and silurians," and his friends
were catagoried as extremists"
The Burke faction were successful IN the
election, and seated enough Trustees to
retain Professor Burke at the head of the
city schools. The then County Superin-
tendent, Mrs. Fanny MEG. Martin, was
Burke's friend, as was every member of
the County Board of Education, and no
complaint secured Judgment with the
board. Salaries were paid without objec-
ton.
E. W. Davis, ex-master of the State
Grange, an old-time pedagogue and erst-
while candidate for Congress, who de-
feated Mrs. Martin for the Office of County
Superintendent, was opposed to Professor
Burke's ideas. He did not like frogs
hearts in the exposed state, and preferred
the Spencerian to the new-fangled vertical
form of chirography. He defeated Mrs
Martin, who had held the office half a
decade, and the anti-Burkeites considered
they had won a victory, though the
County Superintendent has little to do
with the city schools. They are all
powerful, however, as appears from the
resignation of Trustee Burnett, ex-Dis-
trict Attorney from the board and the re-
fusal to audit the warrants of certain
teachers who followed Professor Burke's
educational system.
1t is still Burke fght-Burke, the
university man with advanced educational
ideas, against the three RS" Several of
the High School and grammar-grade
teachers since the Burke regime have
taken special courses at the State and
Stanford universities in order to better
qualify themselves for the work he had
mapped out for his corps of instructors.