Had the great pleasure today of talking with four New School lifers - current members of the Institute of Retired Profes- sionals (IRP) who had been attending classes at the New School for decades before that. Three started in the early 1960s, one in the late 50s. Their first classes? Painting, non-fiction writing, speed-reading - and Egyptology with a troop of "lady dentists" from Lithuania by way of Vienna or Switzerland! (One first attended a Human Relations Workshop and dropped it as its members reminded her of her mother-in-law.)I heard about courses with Alfred Kazin and John Cage, among others, but what came through even more clearly was the culture of the place: adults exploring interesting topics and developing new skills with other interesting adults. That's the social and intellectual world of IRP now, but, they helped me see, that of the Adult Division of half a century ago, too. "It's no longer my New School," they said, noting that the school in those days had had few degree-seeking students - or "young people." All of them had careers or families when they started. All had degrees, too, before or after that - though none from the New School! One took courses here for forty years while living with her husband in the suburbs of New Jersey - like two lives, she said, two lungs!
What was "American's original university for adults" (as it billed itself)? A culture center, an intellectual community, a social club? I heard nothing of "educated citizens" (though we did at one point deplore the bottom-line thinking of capitalism), and nothing of careers. These students - rather like their teachers - had lives and livelihoods and even degrees elsewhere, but needed this space as a second lung! How much did the New School form the experience of the generations who flourished there mid-century? Or was it itself the expression of the aspirations of those generations, "children of the depression," one noted, "and children of immigrants"?
Are there analogs today, at New School or beyond? Can there be?
