A little knowledge can be a disingenuous thing.

Just in case anyone didn't notice, this isn't some Palo Alto Weekly newsstory, but an amateur posting to advertise and advocate the petition.

Not once in the life of this amateur campaign has there been a single argument in favor of honoring David Starr Jordan by having one of our schools named after him. Let's engage with substance and stand up for your views with your name, not your online handle

JLS was called Wilbur Jr. High when I attended back in 1978.

Palo Verde changed its name to Sequoiah in 1977, after Ortega Elementary closed and the students were re-routed to Palo Verde. I remember in 6th grade, we had to vote on new name because parents insisted a new name would welcome the Ortega students and all of us students didn't understand how a school name change would matter.

Now, it's likely another parent who has made a fuss out of the Jordan name. Likely the kids don't give a hoot or know anything about the guy. We are never taught about the names of our schools. The Jordan name is not like a Confederate flag that the general public acknowledges. What are these parents teaching the students? Complaining, looking for conflict, and the Squeaky Wheel trait. How sad. There are politics everywhere in life and they should be teaching them how to be well-liked rather than negative traits. Perhaps it's a lawyer with too much time on her hands.

Which reminds me that my 6th grade son doesn't even know the Pledge of Allegiance because of parents who fought to eliminate it from PAUSD. This, too, is sad. We should teach our children pride in our country. I am a Democrat but my grandparents are immigrants and we cherish the opportunities that America has given us. I wish our students could pledge to our flag.

[Post removed.]

Remember the Dolphins!!

Given that racism was endemic to the time period, I'd like to know if Jordan's views stood out as particularly egregious--to the point of completely undermining his achievements: founding president of Stanford, peace activist, environmentalist and expert witness in defense of Scopes--and the teaching of evolution.

Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, but he was also a key Founding Father, particularly when it came to establishing the importance of individual rights. Yep, irony.

So I don't know much about Jordan--that he was a fan of eugenics at a time when eugenics was popular isn't in and of itself a dealbreaker--but if it was more than that . . . well, that's more interesting to me than a couple of claims without context.

So?

Even today, there are still racists out there - it's ignorant to deny it. I've heard it behind closed doors, I've witnessed glass ceilings. Just look at some of those Republicans out there. Agree with OPar that we hail many as heroes, yet they were not all angels. No, it's not okay, but it is what it is. No one knows who Jordan was until some idealist begins publicizing it. There are other schools in the nation (elementary, middle, high schools)by the same name.

If the school is to be renamed, I propose renaming it to "David Downs Middle School".

David Downs taught industrial arts there from the 1940's when my father was in his class, at least to the 1970's. I think every boy and several girls who went through Jordan took industrial arts from Mr. Downs when he was teaching.

Mr. Downs was curmudgeonly and wore a shop coat to class with front pockets loaded with tennis balls. If he saw that a boy was daydreaming or wasn't paying attention, he flung a tennis ball at the inattentive pupil. He was quick on the draw -- no one ever saw it coming -- and he never missed his target. If he was out of tennis balls he used a chalkboard eraser.

During a major flood in December, 1955, Mr. Downs came to the school and opened up either the gymnasium or the cafeteria or both, where hundreds of evacuees sought shelter.

I doubt Mr. Downs had a racist bone in his body.

Web Link

Web Link

OPar,
yes, Jordan stood out in the Eugenics movement, as a leader and agitator, not someone caught up in unfortunate times. He also made it abundantly clear that only the great Nordic race was capable of intellectual achievement, thereby making the achievement gap a matter of fact that cannot be changed through educational policies. Quite a role model for our diverse students. More specifically:

David Starr Jordan was not a casual Eugenics bystander swept up in the moment. He was a leader of the movement, and agitated in favor of Eugencis for over 30 years. He used his connections as President of Stanford University to organize funding for Eugenics Research (from the likes of Carnegie, Rockefeller and the Harriman Railroad Foundation), and was the founding Chair of America's first Eugenics organization, the Eugenics Chapter of the American Breeders Association founded in 1906.
He wrote some of the earliest books about Eugenics, most notably his 1902 Eugenics bible “The Blood of the Nation, A Study of the Decay of Races through the survival of the unfit”. In that book he lays out his vision that “One of the great books of our new century will be some day written on the selection of men, the screening of human life through the actions of man and the operation of the institutions men have built up.”. 26 years later he was still working towards his Eugenics vision, this time as an incorporating member of the Human Betterment Foundation, which took pride in how their work positively shaped the Eugenics policies of Nazi Germany.
Going hand-in-hand with his Eugenics vision and leadership he made it clear that he had no respect for any person that was not a descendant of the Great Northern European race. US Historian Edward McNall Burns describes this in detail in his 1953 book: “David Starr Jordan: Prophet of Freedom”. In his book Burns makes it clear that Jordan summarily dismissed the argument that differences in intellectual capacity are the result of opportunity and education, citing Jordan “To say that one race is superior to another is merely to confirm the common observation of every intelligent citizen”. And Burns goes on to describe a discovery in Adelaide, Australia, where Jordan came across “a full-blooded bushman who had become a broad-minded and competent mechanical engineer. He did not imply that such an individual was a freak of almost impossible recurrence, but considered him rather as the product of a sudden but perfectly normal variation from a low-grade racial type.”

His blatant disregard that intellectual achievement are driven by education and opportunity, make him an impossible role-model for the Palo Alto Unified School district and its vision to “support all PAUSD students as they prepare themselves to thrive as global citizens in a rapidly changing world. We develop our students’ knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving skills, and nurture their curiosity, creativity, and resilience, empowering every child to reach his or her fullest intellectual, social, and creative potential.”

I went to Jordan, but it sounds good to me ... genocide and eugenics is not worthy or nostalgia.

> There are other schools in the nation (elementary, middle, high schools)by the same name.

So what? At some point shouldn't the citizens of our country be free of these kinds of memorials, because that is what they are, whether people know who they are or not. There is at least some fraction of racism that may not be dangerous or deliberately harmful, but arises from ignorance and thoughtlessness.

When I lived in the South for a year working for the government there was plenty of stuff like this. I never paid much attention to it, but now I just think it is about time to look at who we memorialize and flush away some bad karma - it's the right thing to do even if it is not much.

The eugenics movement was bad, and Hitler got a lot of ideas from America about eugentics ...

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black.
Amazon.com Review ( excerpt )
The plans of Adolf Hitler and the German Nazis to create a Nordic "master race" are often looked upon as a horrific but fairly isolated effort. Less notice has historically been given to the American eugenics movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although their methods were less violent, the methodology and rationale which the American eugenicists employed, as catalogued in Edwin Black's Against the Weak, were chilling nonetheless and, in fact, influential in the mindset of Hitler himself.


But, what is the claim about Jordan's supposed role in the eugenics movement?

According to Wikipedia Jordan was also a peace activist:

In addition to his work as Stanford president, Jordan was known for being a peace activist.

Jordan was president of the World Peace Foundation from 1910 to 1914 and president of the World Peace Conference in 1915, and opposed U.S. involvement in World War I.[4]


In terms of eugenics:
He argued that war was detrimental to the human species because it removed the strongest organisms from the gene pool.


Not only this, but Wikipedia tells of Jordan's role in the coverup of a murder?
Role in coverup of the murder of Jane Stanford[edit]
Eric Knight Jordan in 1920.
In 1905, Jordan launched an apparent coverup of the murder by poisoning of Jane Stanford. While vacationing in Oahu, Stanford had suddenly died of strychnine poisoning, according to the local coroner’s jury. Jordan then sailed to Hawaii, hired a physician to investigate the case, and declared she had in fact died of heart failure, a condition whose symptoms bear no relationship to those actually observed.[10][11] His motive for doing this has been a subject of speculation. One possibility is that he was simply acting to protect the reputation of the university;[10][12] its finances were precarious and a scandal might have damaged fundraising. However, given that Mrs. Stanford had had a difficult relationship with him, and at the time of her death was reportedly planning to remove him from his position at the university, a more personal motive has been suspected.[13] Jordan's version of Mrs. Stanford's demise[14] was largely accepted until the appearance of several publications in 2003 emphasizing the evidence for an unsolved crime.[10][12][13][15]

How about renaming it Shockley Middle School in honor of one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley, and co-inventor of the transistor, WIlliam Shockley?

Slow Down: You must be joking. If Jordan's involvement with eugenics is odious to the community, Shockley is sure to give them apoplexy.

David Downs was a fixture there who taught the boys who went through his (required) industrial arts classes to build metal boxes or light-bulb extractors. He didn't split the atom or invent a high-tech gadget. Teaching is just as worthwhile a calling as inventing or atom-splitting. I think it would be fitting to name the school after someone who was actually involved with the school rather than someone who never set foot on campus.

"David Downs Middle School".

"[Jordan] also made it abundantly clear that only the great Nordic race was capable of intellectual achievement"

Next target -- Paly "Vikings"

Terman Middle School is named after Lewis Terman, also a eugenicist and was a member of the Human Betterment Foundation, the same eugenics organization that David Starr Jordan belonged to. So why stop with Jordan? Terman should go too.
Web Link

How about we focus on decreasing the size of our middle and high schools (and elementary for that matter). Then we can fold in a name change, if so desired. I can almost guarantee that none of our students know of Jordan's background and it is having zero effect on their education. But, go by the middle and/or high schools and see how they're crammed in to the little space that is left. Try to walk down the hallways in between periods or hang out at the Paly Quad during lunch.

> How about we focus on decreasing the size of our middle and high schools
> (and elementary for that matter). Then we can fold in a name change, if so desired.

[Portion removed.]

I don't know why they just don't name schools after the streets they are on, instead
of memorializing people that are not voted on and may not be something that the
majority would agree with, at least that way people would know more or less where
they were?

--

But, hey, what about Gunn, I thought we were against guns in schools, and who
was this PALY character we hear so much about - whose pal is he. I was never
told about this while I was going there? ;-)

Serious, if this is offensive, and I think there is reason to believe it does memorialize
someone in a weakly inappropriate way. Why name a school after this guy. Change
it. I went to this school as a kid - I am not attached to the name. Why are people
so against such a modest change? Please explain.

Hey, Opar -- it's good to see that someone "gets it." I'm a student of history.

A century ago, it was fashionable in the US to advocate selective human breeding; many people thought the idea progressive, enlightened. "It's all scientific stuff -- it's been proved!" says a character in Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby" (1925) arguing the superiority of Nordic races.

Currently, it's fashionable in the US to selectively pull details from the lives of historic figures out of all context, both of their times, and of most of their life's work; to disdain the whole person thereby as morally inferior; and to consider this view progressive, enlightened.

I don't know what'll be fashionable 100 years from now, but people may look back at crusades such as this one from a wider perspective (as we today look back on Victorian morality's contradictions, or McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunting), roll their eyes, and sigh "how 2015!"

Agree this is a ludicrous idea. We name buildings after Christians and Catholics, which could be considered offensive too.

PAO .... please stop removing quotes from Wikipedia ... it is public domain.

My father knew Bill Shockley and I met him a few times as a small child.

He literally thought that violence ( in the sense of being war-mongering) and intelligence went hand-in-hand, therefore Asians and Caucasians were the most intelligent people, and blacks et al were inferior.

He claimed to have proven this genetically, yet had no education in genetics.

He also, in later life, founded the Genius Sperm Bank. Women who wanted to use this sperm to become hopeful mothers of future geniuses had to prove to be of high, genius-equivalent IQ themselves.

Shockley claimed to be the true father of Silicon Valley ( questionable). He was so mean and such a know-it -all he chased away all his best employees at Fairchild--in two large waves.

He also made claims to know better than anyone how to teach children, and many of his suppositions at the time ( the 60s), were falsely held to be fact. One of note was his " finding" that gifted children were always lazy by nature, and MUST be pushed HARD to achieve. As a result, at least two generations of. Right children were burned out by school and many refused to go to college. He allowed no room for late bloomers, since he felt bright children should start being loaded down with homework by first grade. I have always suspected this is the reason PAUSD pushes kids so hard, that Shockley's influence is still felt in the Stanford area .

My father, who knew him well, thought he was full of brown matter, and I agree. He tried to rationalize his racist views with phony genetics. As did Hitler! His genius sperm bank was just a breeding ground for eugenics.

DO NOT NAME ANYTHING after this creep!

To Palo Alto Parent: I remember reading some time ago that Terman Middle School,was "sort of" renamed to Fred Terman (Lewis' son)Middle School. Fred apparently disliked his father.

Fred Terman truly was one of the fathers of Silicon Valley. He was a Stanford Professor, and two of his students were Bill Hewlett and David Packard. Gordon Moore may very well have been a student. Apparently he was one of those rare teachers able to inspire his students to great things. At one time, Fred Terman championed the cause of the farm boy who figured out, in high school, how to design and build the first television ( the credit was later stolen by someone else who got rich from it).

Lewis was a rather mean guy who also tried to prove, through pseudo-science, that Caucasians were superior, blacks inferior, and Asians somewhere in the middle ( intellectually, that is).

Fred was pretty much Lewis' antithesis.

Why would we want to name our school after a racist when we could be giving our kids role models? Do we want to name our school after someone who thought that many of the students who attend the school are intellectually inferior by virtue of their race?

Ernest Johnson was Stanford's first black student. When Ernest graduated from High School in 1891 he applied to both Cal and Stanford. Johnson's application was accepted at Cal, but his application to Stanford was ignored until the abolitionist, Jane Stanford, interceded on his behalf with the University's President... David Starr Jordan.

"Regarding Ernest Johnson"
Stanford Alumni Magazine ~ Nov/Dec 2004(?) Web Link

Note: I think I read the above article in the print edition of the alumni magazine within the last two years, and the article's author is from the Stanford class of '99, so I don't believe the Nov/Dec 2004 publication date shown on the online version of the article is correct.

PS1 - PS20. Problem solved. Only problem is who gets to be PS13.

Anonymous: now I think I know why they do it that way back East! I do like that idea, very neutral!

LSJU79: I rather think that if we are gonna stay with names, per se, let's go with Ernest Johnson....we know he had to have been special!

"Knew Shockley", yes, Shockley had some definite ideas outside his
areas of expertise. I remember hearing about this as a kid, probably
when I went to Jordan coincidentally.

Here is a small video excerpt of the interview of Shockley on William
F. Buckley's Firing Line

Link to Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. "Shockley's Thesis"
Web Link

For those with Amazon Prime the full one hour video is rather
surprisingly poorly presented and thought out. At the time Shockley's
thesis was taken seriously, but it is interesting to here him present
his what seem to me to be very poorly thought out and presented
ideas on Buckley's program.

Have we, would we, name a school, park or other public place
after Shockley. He pretty much sullied his own name with this
wild conjecture, pushing his fame for one talent of inventing
the transistor into an unscientific and really ugly direction. I have
to wonder why he did that.

--

It is worth it also to point to another excellent Firing Line video
A Firing Line Debate: "Resolved: That the Flat Tax Is Better than the Income Tax"

This is an incredible program and debate, all the more incredible when
you realize it was taped on June 6th 1995.

Participants were
William F. Buckley Jr.
Delaware governor Pete Du Pont
California governor Jerry Brown,
Economist Lester Thurow
Author and Journalist Robert Kuttner
Senator George McGovern

The non nonsense get to the point opening salvo by Lester Thurow is not to be missed!
I would urge anyone interested in tax policy to view this debate, free on Amazon Prime.

David Starr Jordan also appears to be the prime suspect, in the murder of Jane Stanford.

"Who Killed Jane Stanford?"
Stanford Alumni Magazine ~ Sep/Oct 2003(?) Web Link

Note: I think I read the above article in the print edition of the alumni magazine within the last two years, and it appeared in the same edition of the magazine as the Ernest Johnson story, so the Sep/Oct 2003 publication date shown on the online version of the article may not be correct.

I recall reading in the SF Chronicle several years ago that Jane Stanford was poisoned unsuccessfully once before in her life, and that as soon as she had ingested the poisoned item she began having symptoms, screaming, " Help, I've been poisoned!"

Apparently, when she realized it had happened again in Hawaii, she screamed similarly, but help came too late.

"My father knew Bill Shockley and I met him a few times as a small child."

Well, that sure makes you an expert on Shockley, don't it. Even though you got basically all of your checkable facts wrong. Shockley was a very smart, complex person.

This is not the forum for uninformed slander. We got a school to name.

Well, I think Shockley's clearly a no-go--he was pushing racist views (and Vitamin C) well into the 1970s. Jordan still strikes me as having held views that were pretty common during his time--to the point, where the names of other schools are questionable for the same reason. Eugenics was sort of the child of the excitement over science and Nietzsche's writings on the coming Superman. Basically, eugenicists thought they could hasten evolution through selective breeding. I think we all know how dark the dark side of this turned out to be, but I don't know to what extent we judge someone for what happened later. Well, clearly, there's some debate about that right here. I find that I'm still in the undecided category--I wouldn't vote to name something after Jordan now, but that's not quite the same as removing the name.

As for Jane Stanford's death--the only evidence against Jordan involves a possible cover-up. He can't have poisoned her himself since he was thousands of miles away, so what you have is a conspiracy to murder with zero evidence. The companion, Bertha Berners, was the one person present at both poisonings--nothing shows that there was a link between her and Jordan or a motive on her part.

It is pretty funny, though, to think of having one middle school named after Jane Lathrop Stanford and another after Jordan. Clearly, the two were not BFFs. If I were a middle-school kid, I'd be so tempted to name some Jordan team "The Poisoners".

FOr a new team name, The Shockley Shockers, it has a nice ring to it.

I never said I knew Shockley well, though my father did. The stories I had heard, most of which were quite derogatory, were verified by people my father knew who worked under Shockley for years.

Some of those folks are still alive; my husband was mentored by some of them and also heard horror stories about Shockley. Even my father-in-law worked under him and had horror stories to tell of a sanctimonious martinet.

There were also taped and recorded interviews, some of which I have seen, and which went beyond confirming all I heard. He appeared to be worse than the worst rumors-- and very self-righteous.

Why not check out Plane Speakers's web links, for starters?