WHO WAS DR. DANIEL C. JORDAN?
By Keith Bookwalter
October, 1992
On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the passing of Professor Daniel C. Jordan I feel moved and personally obligated to write a few words regarding the life of this unique man, this precious soul. For those who knew him personally he was something special for each of us. The following inadequate, yet heart-felt tribute will, I hope, expand your understanding and appreciation of his multi-faceted life. For those who know little about Dr. Jordan, it is my sincere wish that this paper will serve as an introduction to his work and purposes which you can explore further through his extensive writings (both published and unpublished) and through the various audio and video recordings of his presentations.[1] It is also my longing desire that this brief sketch will stimulate someone to take up the task of writing a biography of Dan Jordan’s life in order to better preserve his memory and to inspire the lives of succeeding generations of educators and spiritual-minded people all over the world.
The information presented here contains both fact and personal opinion drawn from various sources listed in the endnotes. Readers are invited to send to the author[2] any comments, corrections, additional information, personal memories, photos, etc.; anything which could serve a future biographer.
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Born June 2, 1932 into a large family in Alliance, Nebraska, Daniel Clyde Jordan was a child prodigy who at the age of nine was considerably on his own financially, paying, for example, for his own piano lessons. At the age of 13 he began his musical studies of the organ at the University of Nebraska from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music when he was 17. At the age of 18 Daniel Jordan became the first American to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for music.[3] At Oxford University in England he earned both a Bachelor and Master of Arts degree in the composition, theory, and history of music; and he began his doctoral studies in musicology at the same institution. Interrupting his studies he served in the U.S. Army for two years from 1956 to 1958.
At this point Daniel Jordan made a critical decision that would change the course of his life and which will change, I believe, the future course of education. Turning down an offer to play Beethoven's “Emperor's Concerto” with the Oslo Symphony, which most likely would have set him on the tour circuit as a concert pianist, Jordan changed his career direction to human development and began collegiate studies again at the University of Chicago.[4] In 1959 he completed the course work for his bachelor's degree but did not take the final exams because he already had two B.A.’s. From 1959 to 1960 he earned a master's degree in human development: an interdisciplinary course of study which examined the development of the human organism from conception to death from biological, psychological, sociological, and anthropological points of view. In 1964 he obtained a Ph.D. in human development with specialization in social anthropology and psychology. He went on to carry out a post-doctoral sequence in brain structure and brain chemistry and their relation to memory, emotion, and learning.
In 1965 Dr. Jordan became the Director of the Institute for Research in Human Behavior at Indiana State University in Terre Haute where his principle project was the Upward Bound Program for disadvantaged high school students. In 1968 he joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as the director of the Center for the Study of Aesthetics in Education, the director of the Tutorial Program for Minority Students, and the director of the Comprehensive Study of Compensatory Education in Massachusetts.
It was from 1971 until 1975 that Dr. Jordan, with the invaluable collaboration of his long-time friend, former doctoral student, and administrative assistant Dr. Donald T. Streets,[5] directed the Center for the Study of Human Potential at the University of Massachusetts. His principle endeavor at the Center was the ANISA[6] Project in which he guided the conceptualization of a comprehensive educational system organized around a philosophical base. From this process philosophy foundation a coherent body of theory concerning development, teaching, curriculum, evaluation, and administration was generated. Dr. Jordan also guided the successful fielding[7] of the ANISA Model of Education in Hampden, Maine; Suffield, Connecticut; Fall Rivers, Massachusetts; Kansas City, Missouri; and in southern Ohio.[8]
In 1978 Dr. Jordan became the Chairperson of the Department of Education at the California American University in Escondido, California. In 1979, via the timely intervention Dr. Donald T. Streets,[9] Dr. Jordan joined the faculty of National University, San Diego, founded the University's School of Education and became its Dean. During this same year he was appointed to a “blue ribbon” National Task Force on Nutrition Education for Pregnant Women, Lactating Mothers, Infants, Children, and Adolescents which was jointly sponsored by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the White House, the National Institute of Health, and the National Association for Nutrition Education.[10]
At the time of his passing in October of 1982 at the age of 50 Dr. Daniel Jordan was at the peak of his career. He had established at National University an accredited master's degree program; a university-based, laboratory school for kindergarten through high school; and was on the verge of obtaining accreditation for a doctoral program. He had obtained a contract with the Association for the World University to develop their curriculum and had founded the International Center for Human Development.[11] All of these programs were based on the concepts underlying the ANISA Model.[12]
This chronology of Daniel Jordan’s professional life needs to be supplemented with other miscellaneous notes of interest. During his undergraduate studies he was the recipient of several awards: Phi Sigma Iota Award for highest grade average in Modern Languages, Phi Mu Alpha Award for work in Music, Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa Awards for highest grade average in graduating class, and the Theodore Presser Award for Music. His doctoral dissertation, An Experimenta1 Approach to the Jungian Theory of the Archetypes won Honorable Mention in the Creative Talent Awards sponsored by the American Institute of Research. (In addition to being an authority on the work of Carl C. Jung, Dr. Jordan had a deep understanding and was an outstanding interpreter of the ideas and philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. He gave courses, conducted seminars, and lectured extensively on his work.) In 1959-1960 Jordan worked as an orderly on the Psychiatric Ward at the University of Chicago’s Medical Clinics and in 1975 he obtained a license to practice psychology. In addition to his extensive and varied consultant work (twenty-two projects are referred to in the documents on file), he was a guest lecturer at over seventy universities throughout the U.S. and other countries; and was a speaker or panelist on over two hundred television and radio programs including popular talk shows over national networks such as The Dinah Shore Show and The Mike Douglas Show.
In the area of the arts, in addition to being a virtuoso on the piano, Daniel Jordan had expertise in dance,[13] drawing, music-writing, and film-making. As part of his doctoral work he wrote and directed a ballet for which he wrote the musical score and scenario.
Dan Jordan, the husband, father, and family man is a story I am not able to tell. Someday I hope it will be told by his beloved wife Nancy and his three precious daughters, Melissa, Sarah, and Charlotte.
His religious life and services were deep and extensive. He served on the national board of directors of the Baha'i community of the United States. I recall one of our last conversations during which he mentioned that he would be entering upon his 20th year of service on the board of directors. He reminisced about all the changes he had seen take place. I asked him about his management of time and how much of it he dedicated to his religious activities. He estimated about 40 hours per month. But again, this fascinating aspect of Dan Jordan’s life will have to be told by those who have better access to the pertinent information.
What I am able to offer the readers are a few comments made by some of his students and colleagues. They are not extensive, yet they serve as flashes of light in the darkness, illuminating briefly the various facets of one of God’s very special souls as perceived by those who loved and admired him.
In the words of Lynn Laing, the news bureau director at the Vista Campus of National University, "... I would say the best way to describe him is to say he was a genius. He also had a good sense of humor. He laughed often. He was well-liked and respected... especially for his contributions to this university.[14] To this comment about Dr. Jordan’s genius I would add a further dimension. He was a genius who was fully conscious of both his God-given giftedness and his responsibility to serve humankind, which such genius entails. On one occasion, while he was speaking on some subject with his usual superb command of both concepts and pertinent data, he must have sensed my awe (or seen my jaw drop in wonder), for he stopped and commented to me, "But I am not even bilingual and YOU are” in an unsuccessful attempt to reduce my amazement.
The ANISA consultants, Gordon and Irene Hartley,[15] attributed Dr. Jordon’s power to attract and motivate people to his unique combination of genius and deep spirituality -- his ability to "touch people at the very center of their being." They were also amazed by his knowledge and expertise in such a wide variety of activities that were of a very practical and technological nature: cooking, baking, carpentry, mechanics, construction, and others.[16]
The late Dr. Magdalene Carney, a close friend of Dan Jordan, wrote the following memo which I found appended to her dissertation,[17] "Dan, your ideal of excellence is a constant lure. With grateful heart and abiding affection for all you have done for me. Mag."
Dr. Pattabi Raman, in his dissertation[18] wrote the following acknowledgement:
“Words cannot do full justice to the encouragement and constant guidance I received from Professor Daniel C. Jordan, Chairman of my Committee. His exemplary dedication to excellence in providing quality professional direction in all of his undertakings, a virtue on the wane in academic circles, has been one of the greatest sources of inspiration in this effort. His indefatigable energy, which met its ultimate test as he tried to read every sentence of the manuscript, and his constant emotional support during my periods of fatigue and depression will long be remembered and greatly appreciated.”
Another doctoral student, Lawrence N. McCullough, expressed his "deep feelings of indebtedness and gratitude" to "Dr. Daniel C. Jordan for his professional interest and friendship extending over many years and for the inspiration of his broad vision of possibilities in education."[19]
In the "Acknowledgements" section of his dissertation[20] Walter Leopold stated,
"...I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness, gratitude and love for Dr. Daniel C. Jordan, who by his personal example taught me that a teacher is not only responsible for the intellectual growth of his students, but must also be a physician of the soul."
Dr. George Bondra included the following words of acknowledgement in his doctoral dissertation:[21]
“I wish to express my deepest thanks to Dr. Daniel C. Jordan, chairman of my dissertation committee, for his substantial contribution to the growth of knowledge and his devotion to putting that knowledge into practice as he did in working with me. To experience the universal in the particular, as I did in each step of this work with Dr. Jordan, is unique indeed – beyond any explicit verbal thanks.”
In order to understand the profound and far-reaching effect that Jordan’s work has brought about and will continue to bring about on the development of education as a new science (and art), I think that it is worthwhile quoting the following section from Dr. Bondra’s dissertation, The ANISA Model: A Scientific Paradigm for Education and Its Implications for a Theory of Evaluation:
“Since scientific models are the creation of an inventive mind, it will be helpful in understanding the ANISA Model to discuss briefly some of the influences that have shaped the inventor’s view of reality. Daniel C. Jordan, a Rhodes Scholar, epitomizes C.P. Snow’s "two cultures." He has earned three degrees in music. He holds two advanced degrees from the University of Chicago in an interdisciplinary course of study involving human development from biological, psychological and anthropological perspectives. Post-doctoral study involved brain chemistry and its relationship to memory and learning. These influences contributed to his bridging the two cultures of art and science. He characterizes Kuhn’s observation about men who have invented new paradigms; they are either very young or new to the field and not fully committed to the traditional rules permitting them to be freer to conceive of another set. Professor Jordan became aware of gaps between theory and practice in education. He believed that education was dominated more by practice than theory. There was no organized knowledge about human growth and development that could be optimally used for practice by teachers.
His initial conceptual efforts began over eighteen years ago as Director of the Institute for Research in Human Behavior at Indiana State University. Initially, Jordan observed that educators were more concerned with curriculum and not the nature of the child for whom it was designed. Very early on, therefore, Jordan selected his basic unit of study – man. Toward that end, he studied man’s best thinking about the nature of man reviewing all major philosophers from Parmenides to the process philosophers of today.”
Over a ten year span, Jordan reviewed the most significant philosophic works as the basis for theory construction. The organismic philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead generated the best framework for analyzing and synthesizing knowledge about human growth and development, including the concept of purpose. In order to design a new educational system that is coherent and comprehensive (i.e., to be able to unite every aspect of human experience) required a philosophy that held promise for a new ideological base. Whitehead (1969) believed that “philosophy” is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted (p.21). His process philosophy, which is integrating and all-inclusive, nevertheless, keeps any system open to new data with no claim that this system is final. Whitehead’s system is a synthesis of both Eastern and Western streams of thought. However, it is not eclectic; the synthesis was seen as providing the basis for an educational model with cross-cultural implications.
Hartshorne (1950), currently the most outstanding process philosopher, makes the following observation on Whitehead’s philosophy:
"... one may say that the basic principles of our knowledge and experience, physical, biological, sociological, aesthetic, religious--are in this philosophy given an intellectual integration such as only a thousand or ten thousand years of further reflection and inquiry seem likely to exhaust or adequately evaluate.." (p.19).
Jordan in his review of the major philosophers, therefore, discovered an organizing principle for a science of education in specific form from the cosmology of Whitehead (1929), Process and Reality. For Whitehead, the most pervasive characteristic of the universe is change. Change means process, and process presupposes potentiality. This for Jordan served as his first principle; the concept of process as the translation of potentiality into actuality.
As noted in the Introduction (p.1), Jordan viewed science as more than knowledge. A science of education could not be created until the massive information available about human growth, development, learning, and behavior could be organized into usable form. Jordan found such a principle in Whitehead’s concept of process; this provided him with a basis for deriving a set of concepts that could be used to organize current knowledge about human development. This offered the possibility of translating it into a coherent body of theory that could serve as the substantive body of knowledge for professional educational practices. With such an empirical scientific footing, educational practices could be evaluated and continuously refined. Analogous to medical practices, which are based on the biological sciences, education could then make more accurate predictions with a consequence of improved accountability.
Jordan and his colleagues in establishing a coherent body of theory that addressed all aspects of education (i.e., human development, curriculum, pedagogy, administration, etc.) attempted to test every newly developed theoretical concept against relevant empirical studies available from the literature of the biological and behavioral sciences. Based on this broad philosophical and theoretical foundation, the beginning of a comprehensive and coherent model of education was generated. (pp.12O-123)
How did Jordan describe himself? As a specialist he considered himself to be an authority on human development.[22] But during one of his lectures[23] he used a term which is far more accurate. He referred to himself as an “integrative generalist”[24]. And indeed he was. His knowledge and expertise were far too vast for anyone to refer to him only as an authority on human development. He was also a psychologist (cognitive psychology was his area of specialization[25]), an educator, philosopher, brain/mind expert, administrator, dean, staff developer, curriculum specialist, school plant design consultant, educational and religious leader, visionary, theorist, writer, author, pianist, artist, dancer, husband, father, friend and much, much more. He exerted himself day and night to keep his mind on the cutting edge of new developments in any and all fields which offered possibilities for increasing the quality of human life: medicine, science, technology, parapsychology, psychiatry, brain research, social movements, government, religion, etc. Armed with this knowledge he not only moved the pre-paradigmatic field of education onto a scientific foundation, but also chose for that foundation the leading edge paradigm variously described as organismic, holistic, process-oriented, Whiteheadian--a new cosmology, a unified world view, a philosophy of reality which has already swept through the hard sciences and is bringing about radical changes in the human sciences and the traditional world religions. And beyond being a “man of powerful ideas” Dr. Jordan was also the epitome of the “man of action" who wanted to translate his new schemes of thought into viable, practical programs for the benefit of all peoples.
Dr. Nancy McCormick Rambusch, founder of the American Montessori Society and fellow founder of the ANISA Model makes reference to Dr. Jordan in her doctoral dissertation[26] (p.186) as follows:
The impulse behind the development of the ANISA model came from within Daniel Jordan, its architect. It was in response to the broadest assessment of existing cultural and moral conditions and existing education options within them, that he developed the model.
At the present time the world of humanity and the different cultures it represents are in the midst of the most extensive crises ever known to man. The ways we have learned to feel, think, and act are no longer functional….
These crises are forcing humanity to seek a new culture, one that is universal and therefore functional for all men everywhere; one that can create a new race of men, new social institutions, and new physical environments {Jordan, 1970, pp. 12-13).There was no external pressure on Daniel Jordan to develop the ANISA model. He was impelled by a personal sense of urgency to do this. The public problem which served as the basis for his action was his perception of the world as being in a state of collapse; his response was the formulation of an educational model which aspired to create a 'new race of men [Ibid.]."
In another section (p. 131) Nancy Rambusch states:
Dan Jordan was in a situation similar to that of Montessori before she left the University of Rome and struck out on her own to franchise her own educational model. The university setting represents a free market of inquiry. To work within a university setting is to invite criticism and evaluation. Dan Jordan was willing to do this, as Maria Montessori was not. He was the ANISA model; the ANISA model was he, in the sense that he was it’s ultimate interpreter as well as proximate "manager." The model was fully articulated in its essentials, prior to diffusion and it was fully realized in its essentials in the person of Daniel Jordan. Dan was the “center" of the center.
Dr. Rambusch made a sadly parallel yet inspiring comparison between Daniel Jordan and Mahatma Gandhi (p. 118):
"It [the Anisa Model] might also be considered, in its educational guise, as a social movement[27] . . . Those drawn to participate in the ANISA model came both because of the stunning intellectual clarity that informed it and because of the opportunity it offered them to work with Daniel Jordan, its propagator. A rare person and a genuine innovator, Jordan can be compared to Gandhi in his effect on those working close to him, as I perceived the relationship.
Whatever their identity when they met Gandhi.... their pasts have now become part of his life and his death… men and women forever living in a glorious past when historical actuality had been quickened to a rare intensity and pace... [Erickson, 1969, p.61]"
"They felt augmented in his presence beyond personal desert and native capacity... For the numinous[28] person has the strange power to make the participant feel part of him and yet also feel augmented in himself." [Ibid., 1969, p.63].
And now, looking back over these past ten years, it can be seen that the “augmented participants” have not failed to carry forward “historical actuality” towards the fulfillment of Daniel Jordan's dream of a new, universal cultural in which every person’s potential faculties and talents will be brought forth into the sunlight of worship of God and the service of humanity. His fellow colleagues, his students, and those who have been attracted to the elegance of his scheme of thought and his call for a "new way" of educating the future generations of humankind have taken up his ideas and applied them each in his or her own sphere of life: in their classrooms; the raising of their children; university research; professional associations; their writings; their school systems and communities; their way of thinking, feeling, and perceiving reality... their very way of living and being. No doubt the near future will see a resurgence of interest in his process-based system of education and the distant future, when the fruits are in hand, will see Dr. Daniel C. Jordan being paid the homage he deserves as one of the most outstanding and far-sighted leaders the field of education has ever seen.