RSAC Final Report
David Starr Jordan’s Role in our Community
Palo Alto is the place of origin and center of a community, now called Silicon
Valley, which is the world leader in entrepreneurship and innovation. Many cities
and countries use Silicon Valley as an example for creating their own areas which
can give their communities the economic, social mobility of this area. Palo Alto
itself is a progressive community, intellectually strong, ethnically inclusive and
with a strong sense of unity and support of its public school system.
The underlying reason for much of this is the fact that Palo Alto developed
alongside Stanford University, with which it shares a parallel history. Stanford’s
excellence in scholarly activity, including, but not limited to, science, technology
and professional training, has led to the Palo Alto area being the leader it is. It
needs to have, however, further development in the ethnic and sexual diversity of
opportunity. David Starr Jordan, while he didn’t provide the money, was the
founder, in one sense, of Stanford University. As its founding president he
recruited the first faculty members, with an emphasis on science, organized the
departments, with the encouragement of Jane Stanford, insisted that women be
admitted, started the intercollegiate athletics program and emphasized
excellence in performance and in the continuing recruitment of faculty. He
continued his own scientific work and publications as a leader in the field of
ichthyology, with over 60 publications. While these founding achievements could
have been done by somebody else, it was Jordan who started this community on
its continuing pathway to participation in academic affairs and world-wide
leadership in the building of new companies which have changed the way people
live. Other very able people, of course, have continued to bring Stanford to its
present prominence.
Jordan was a believer of, and a major factor in, the development and
promulgation of the “science” of eugenics. It is not now considered a science, and
is regarded as morally culpable and racist by modern people, because many of its
followers at that time, including Jordan, believed the people of European descent
were superior to other ethnic groups. He did state, however, in his essay on
imperialism in 1899 that people of African origins could and should be educated
to achieve status as “men,” but he did not state that would make them equal to
Appendix 11: David Starr Jordan’s Role in our Community - Pitch Johnson
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RSAC Final Report
Europeans in his eyes.
One of tenets of eugenics was the human race could be improved by selective
breeding of people by eliminating physically and intellectually weaker peoples,
sometimes by forced sterilization, and emphasizing the stronger, much as is done
with farm and working animals. The people making the decisions about breeding,
however, would be the people in charge of western society, primarily people of
European origins.
Eugenics attracted the support then of a great many prominent politicians, such
as Winston Churchill, business leaders and members of the intellectual
community. That included the founder of the NAACP, W.E.B DuBois, who believed
that the ethnically black Americans as a group could be improved by the
application of eugenics. Important foundations, such as the Rockefeller
Foundation, supported it also.
In listening to the sincere, moving and often emotional statements of the many
students and citizens to the PAUSD School Board at its earlier meetings about
eugenics and Jordan, one can’t help but observe that they are comparing today’s
standards and morals, which we all share, to what eugenicists believed starting
well over 100 years ago, with Jordan as a prime leader, and which he probably
believed until his death in 1931. Eugenics mostly died out during WWII, partly
due to Hitler’s use of some of the ideas and the apparent scientific moral and
scientific problems with it. The eugenics of the past has no prominent followers
now, to the best of my knowledge. PAUSD takes great care that the students our
district are educated in the same way, whatever their ethnic backgrounds. It has
been said that Planned Parenthood is a present artifact of eugenics, but that
ignores the fact that a woman makes her own choices of what services to use, a
far cry from the forced sterilization practiced by some in the time of eugenics’
prominence.
Even though the speakers to the Board were connecting Jordan to moral
judgements today, only two of the many mentioned his role as the first president
of Stanford and none discussed his resulting effects on our lives today in this
community. It gave the sum of the presentations a feeling of organization and
imbalance to me. The fact that Paly High now has a social action student group,
to which some of the speakers belong, however, was a very impressive
development.
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All of this discussion is meaningful to whether to change the name of Jordan
Middle School only if one accepts bringing a figure from the distant past, when
there were widely accepted beliefs, into the present, when beliefs are sharply
different. This is called “presenting” by many historians. There is simply no way to
know what the past figures would believe now. Examining those old beliefs in the
present day, however, and studying someone like Jordan, who believed them,
does provide an opportunity for improving the education of this and future
generations as to realistic history
Keeping the name of Jordan Middle School, for instance, but educating the
students there on why the name was chosen by the Board of Education in 1937
for David Starr Jordan Junior High, and giving those students a full picture of the
man, including his now odious views and how times change, would be very strong
lesson in historic realism of great value to them. The name was kept by the Board
in 1991, after Jordan Middle School had been closed since 1985 because of low
enrollment.
Changing the name would cause a lot of excitement for a short time, but future
students would soon lose interest in the subject of the dual nature of an
important figure in the history of our Palo Alto community. Thinking realistically
about the great figures of the past would be a valuable habit to instill in students.
In the end it is the effect of the decision about a name change on the students of
all backgrounds, especially members of minority groups, that is of overriding
importance. Also of great significance is the confidence of the community in our
schools and their governance, which needs to mainained at a high level.
That is the message we should give the present School Board, who has the job
of making the decisions about naming, and, as an inherently different matter,
renaming schools. According to our committee name, that was our job in the
first place.
Pitch Johnson
Jordan Junior High School, 1943
September 22, 2016
Appendix 11: David Starr Jordan’s Role in our Community - Pitch Johnson
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