Education

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The Ideal Institution
Although David Starr Jordan spent most of his career at Stanford University, he firmly believed that public institutions of higher education were the center of a healthy and well-functioning democracy. Jordan preached that "the one great duty of a free nation is education--education, wise thorough, universal...the education no republic has ever given..." (#2 p. 60). He felt that it was the obligation of the state to provide every level of education to its population and he considered the public university the "coming glory of democracy" (#1 p. 156). Despite primarily writing about institutions of higher education, he contended that elementary and secondary schools were necessary to support a strong democracy, as well. He described the public school system of the US as teaching the masses lessons of "personal usefulness, friendship across race lines, of equality before the law, of efficiency based on personal initiative" (#1 p. 156).

His opinion of the current state of education was not one of approval. He criticized schools for producing intellectual pauperism through their attempts to give students truth rather than teach them the ways to search for it. Jordan believed that morality could not be taught but must be learned. The only way to inculcate students with morality was to make them wise. Wisdom was the only parent of virtue (#1 p. 158).

Education

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Education for Whom?
At the fourth Stanford senior commencement ceremony, Jordan lectured that he found higher education to be too narrow. The state of higher education at the time was fit only for the few and their needs. He predicted that the university of the future would be opened to the multitude in line with their universal right to higher education (#2 p. 160). He contended that the caste system had no place in the US democracy and as long as the admission into higher education depended upon wealth or social position, the basis for the caste system would survive. From the above speech, it is clear that Jordan held an egalitarian vision on education. His point that  "there is no man that would not be made better and stronger by continuous training" enforced his belief that morality could only be achieved through wisdom (#2 p. 68).

This recognition that common people had the right to higher education was revolutionary for his time. He admitted that even though common people were "ignorant, venal, and vacillating" they also have latent qualities of being "earnest, intelligent, and determined" (#2 p. 74). For this reason, he thought the "best-spent money of the present is that which is used for the future. The force which is used on the present is spent or wasted" (#2 p. 75). Money should be spent on raising the commoners to the educated, productive, and moral class rather than on social services that will not elevate their level of wisdom or utility to society. The poor will find material ease and comfort if they work to enhance their education. Not only did he believe education needed to impart to students practical skills of industry, but also enlighten their character and sense of purpose.  Specifically, he felt that if students learned to be more concerned  for their reputation and were dedicated to the making the word a better place, then they would demand no "form of special guardianship or protection from the state" because such demands would be demoralizing (#2 p. 62)

The Nation's Need of Educated Men
Jordan's ideas on education were inexorably connected to the betterment of state governance. He contended that wisdom must rise from the masses and not trickle down from the heads of state. He felt that whenever a republic needed wise rulers to rescue it from crisis, the nation had begun a process of degeneration. He feared that the United States had embarked on this process of degeneration. As a result of the uneducated masses incapability to discern right from wrong, he contended that the lawmakers were not functioning effectively. In the US republican system, lawmakers were forced to focus more on pandering their uneducated constituencies rather than legislating wisely. To remedy national degeneration, Jordan posited that the university could rescue the republic by educating the multitude and increasing the fund of common knowledge (#2 p. 170-172). He resolved that the state had a duty to enlarge university education in order to solve the social problems of the uneducated masses at their roots. If the state educate all of its citizens, its lawmakers could govern more wisely and they would not be forced to enact social services that did nothing to permanently uplift people or the nation.