Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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DAVID 8TARR JORDAN,' LL. D.

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David CSfarr Jordan, LL. D. M. S., Cornell University, 1872 ; M. D., Indiana Medical College, 1875 ; Ph. D., Butler University, 1878; LL. D., Cornell University, 1886. Instructor in Botany, Cornell University, 1871-72 ; Professor of Natural History, Lombard University, Illinois, 1872-73 ; Principal of the Appleton Collegiate Institute, Wisconsin, 1873-74 ; Student and afterward Lecturer on Marine Botany, Anderson School, at Penikese, 1874 ; Teacher of Natural History, Indianapolis, Ind., High School, 1874-75; lecturer on Zoology, Harvard Summer School, Cumberland Gap, 1875; Professor of Biology, Butler University, 1875-79; Naturalist of the Geological Surveys of Indiana and Ohio, 1877; Assistant to the U. S Fish Commission, 1877-91 ; Student of Ichthyology, British Museum, Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, etc., 1879-81 ; Professor of Zoology, Indiana University, 1879-85; Special Agent of the IT. S. Census Bureau, Investigating Marine Industries of Pacific Coast, 1880; lecturer on Comparative Anatomy, Indiana Medical College, 1885 ; President of Indiana University. 1885-91 ; President of Leland Stanford Junior University, 1891. Publications of Dr. Jordan : “A Manual of the Vertebrate Animals of the Northern U. S.;” “Science Sketches;” “A Synopsis of the Fishes of North America,” etc.; also contributor to current scientific literature. “As a teacher, Jordan makes the impression of weight, sincerity, and simplicity. He rests down confidently upon the subject, and makes that speak. He has the instinct attributed by Matthew Arnold to Wordsworth; he lets Nature speak through him ' with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power.’ Students say he is the simplest of lecturers. Others may seem more profound l eeause less lucid ; Jordan strikes for the centre. As an administrator, Jordan is a man of distinguished performance and splendid promise. In the course of six years he raised the state university of Indiana from a condition of obscurity and ineffectiveness to its present position in the front rank of Western colleges. His success was due largely to his policy of surrounding himself with a faculty of young, energetic, progressive men, and of keeping the university in touch with society at large. At Stanford University he has drawn a large number of diverse and energetic personalities into abiding harmony touching matters that pertain to educational salvation. Jordan’s favorite quotation is the saying of Ulrich von Hutten, ‘ Die Luft der Freiheit wcht ’ (‘ Freedom is in the air ’).”— Melville Best Anderson in Popular Science Monthly, Feb., 1894.

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Tl)e Specialty stem in tt)e College Curriculum. DAVID STARR JORDAN. The American college was in the first place a transplanted scion from the universities of England. Its course of study for many generations, even until after the middle of this century, was essentially a course of mental gymnastics. Its three pedestals were Greek, Latin, Mathematics, and over these was laid a varnish of Ancient Philosophy. Everything in the course was fixed. No deviation from its requirements was allowed, either to meet the mental peculiarities of the student, or to prepare for the details of his active life. No form of original investigation was tolerated in this scheme, and no provision was made for any form of modern outlook. Some thirty years ago, the need for training in other subjects than those embraced in the traditional classical curriculum began to be keenly felt. Reluctantly the college authorities of the day gave way to it: first by the establishment of inferior courses (miscalled scientific, leading to inferior degrees), and afterward by the formation of patch-work courses containing a little — a very little — of everything that the public seemed to demand. The patchwork course is in vogue today in most of the smaller colleges. Its results are distinctly inferior to those of the classical course, it has in part supplanted. It gives not training, insight, nor inspiration. It renders thoroughness impossible. It violates every law of pedagogy in the interest of versatility. It makes men four-square to every wind that blows.” The reaction from the defects of the patchwork system led naturally to the elective system. You cannot in four years teach everything to every man. Either the college or the student must choose. In the long run the school must give what its students need or demand. The essential advantage of the elective system is its recognition of the law of self-activity. Unwilling work is never effective. Scholars cannot be made by either driving or coaxing. ‘‘The way to educate a man is to set him to work. The way to get him to work is to interest him. The way to interest him is to vitalize his task by relating it to some sort of reality.” In this way, “without losing their natural vivacity, boys become men, bringing to the serious work proper to men the spring and hopefulness of youth.” The great increase in the strength and usefulness of American colleges within the past twenty years is directly traceable to the vivifying influence of the element of consent in college work. The old •M. II. Audcruon.