Unteachable moment

In the New School Archives today I found the one and only brochure of the New School College, our current college's long forgotten forebear in offering seminar-style classes to traditional age students. It was published in 1969, three years in to the experiment - and a year before the plug was pulled. New School College disappeared without the fanfare with which it was introduced. The paper trail at the Archives suggests it may have collapsed under the weight of its own self-critique.

But there was also a New School College before there was a New School College! The idea to offer courses to traditional age students and during the day was first bruited in 1957, I learned. President Hans Simons got the blessing of the Board of Trustees to explore the possibilities, and the Archives still has the generally ambivalent responses of the trustees to his proposal. Most are concerned (as Trustees are wont) about financial matters but questions are also raised about adding younger people to the mix of America's first university for adults. One response - the draft in the Archives is unsigned - likes the idea of a 4-year college but for adults, indeed for pretty much anyone but the "college-age"!

Looking over the span of years preceding adulthood, it is probable that the college years are generally the least accessible to outside influences. The young man or woman, leaving home, is conscious of his independence and equality in the body politic, of the superiority that in this country belongs to the rising generation, and the corollary that anything worth listening to comes only from his peers. His teachers like his parents, with few exceptions, are taken on sufferance. The difficulties of this situation are intensified by “going steady” and early marriage. ...

One of the most gifted of contemporary mathematicians, the late Edward Kasner, discovered in his charmingly relaxed visits to nursery schools that it was by far easier to teach the pre-school child some of the concepts of higher mathematics than the graduate student…. Herbert Zipper, mentioned in Dr. Simons’ report, has introduced symphony concerts into the primary schools of the Chicago suburbs. The audience he seeks, ranges from four years to twelve; beyond that, he finds that understanding and taste have already been spoiled. ...

Might we as adult educators conceivably have a mission toward all of education? Namely to try to keep our native endowment in tact [sic], rather than the much more arduous and less rewarding assignment of trying to undo educational harm during the period of life, perhaps least receptive to the knowledge and experience of others. 

  

“Memorandum to President Simons in re Day College,"
Allen Austill Records NS.02.01.03, Box 1 folder 1.20: "New initiatives, 1957-1989.

New School College, 1957-1958, 1963-1970: Early history 1957-1958, 1962-1965"