The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-04-28
ALL THE GIRLS TO SEW
Domestic Economy Is Being
Added to the Public
School Work.
WAITING FOR MORE MONEY.
Sewing Is Now a Feature of Five of
the Grammar Schools of
the City.

The story in yesterdays CALL of what
the sewing classes in the Franklin Gram
mar School were doing for 225 girls of the
rising generation has been read with
appreciative interest by a great many
people who realize with pleasure that the
system of popular education of to-day i'll
San Francisco and elsewhere is rapidly
approaching the ideal. 1t is being adapted
| to actual life and actual life includes
practical everyday affairs of comfort and
prosperity as well as the higher and better
things that belong to the realm of culture.
Sewing and cooking will before a great
while be taught to every girl who goes to
school in San Francisco, so the leading
school authorities say. Sewing has been
added to the Potrero School within the
past month by the appointment of Miss
Effie Smith as special teacher OF sewing
there.
She is the second special teacher of sew
ing employed in the department, and is
herself an illustration of the practical
benefit of practical education. She gradu-
ated from the Cogswell Polytechnic
School while that institution was open,
and while there, took the course in sew
ing. a few days ago she was on the day
substitute list in the School DEPARTMENT,
with long wait ahead before she could
expect a regular appointment as teacher.
Her special ability as needle-woman gave
her an appointment ahead of many others,
and now she is organizing the work of
sewing in the Potrero School similar to
that done in the Franklin.
The Board of Education is as heartily in
favor of industrial education as was the
last board, which was the first to take up
the idea of manual training in a large way.
The present board will develop this work
as fast as the money at hand will allow.
Inc ral o0hn Nc hos IT1tr
duced in the past few months, but sewing
has not been introduced as extensively.
Sewing will be added to the work of a
number of schools as soon as possible, says
G. B. Stone, chairman of the classification
committee, who is an enthusiastic believer
in this practical work. 1t takes money to
do it though, for sewing added to one
school means the salary of an extra
teacher and quite little expenditure for
tables, chairs and working tools and ma
terialS.
What can be done at the beginning of
the next school year depends entirely on
| how liberal the Board of Supervisors Will
| be with the appropriation for the schools.
| While the Franklin Grammar School
was the first one in which a special teacher
OF sewing was employed, and is to-day, as
a result of the efforts OF Principal James G..
| Kennedy, the one with the most scientific
and elaborate course in needlework, there
is good deal of interesting sewing work
done in other public schools as few people
| know
! Miss Jean Parker principal of the Broad
| way Grammar School, can display some of
| the finest samples of plain and fancy sew
j ing that can be found in San Francisco
! She began sewing there ten years ago as
an idea of her own which no school au-
/ thorities interfered with. She is a woman
! of practical ideas, and has always taken a
| great interest in the children who gather
| there, most of whom are poor and belong
to foreign elements. She got all her teach
ers to take up the work, and for long
time it has been going on, beginning with
the first year of school Life and continuing
clear through the nine years that end with
the highest grammar grade.
Up there on Broadway the little babies
begin TO struggle with thimbles, needles
and little scraps of cloth after they have
been to school for six months, and they
spend one hour week trying to make all
sorts of stitches. Each year they advance
to more difficult fields, and simple gar
ments are made in the highest grades.
When Raphael WE'LL was a member of the
Board of Education, four or five years ago,
he took special interest in this voluntary
work, and gave much material to be
worked up in the Broadway school. All
the teachers in that school have become
expert sewers, and some exquisite work by
the children is on exhibition. The girls
delight in the work, as is always the case,
and the parents are even more delighted,
Many garments made up in the school
have quietly found their way to the homes
of the poorer children.
Sewing is also going on in the Denman
school on the same plan and with the same
success, each teacher being required to
give instruction in it one hour a week.
The work was begun there by James Den
man when he was principal of that school
some years ago. The exhibitions of sew
ing made along with other school work
each Christmas time at this school are
always surprising to visitors. Principal
A. l.. Mann is a thorough believer in the
work. The same course is being carried
out in the Rincon school, of which Miss
Cleveland is principal.
The success of this work, taken up vol
unfairly in these three schools led, four
years ago, to sewing being made part of
the regular course of study for schools ex-
clusively for girls, and the three schools
named are the only exclusively girls
schools in the department. In all other
schools it is optional except in the Frank
lin and Potrero schools.
But now, since industrial training has
been taken up and is being rapidly devel-
oped as a feature of public school educa-
ton here, special teachers of sewing will
be gradually employed, along with special
teachers in cooking in one grammar school
after another and the girls will become as
proficient in domestic economy as in pars-
ing. As owe. 80 per cent OF the school chill
dren end their education with the gram
mar schools and go into practical life the
extra knowledge this work will give will
be of inestimable value.