New College, Teachers College, Columbia University

New College was established in 1932 under the leadership of Dr. (Richard) Thomas Alexander (1887-1971). New College, as it became known, was originally designed to operate as an undergraduate college level unit granting a Bachelor of Science and/or a master's degree after a period of study from three to five years. It was to serve the dual purpose of preparing young people for teaching positions in elementary and secondary grades and of affording a demonstration college for graduate students in Teachers College. Students would ultimately become professors in colleges and universities with teacher training programs.

The nationally acclaimed New College would close within seven years under the pretext of financial hardship over the protestations of some of the country's leading academic, political, and social figures of the era. In reality, the school was closed because the students followed the ideals of the New College program which promoted participation in the creation of a “new social order” at the grassroots classroom level using the Concept of Community as a framework. Students were taught to solve the problems they encounter in society seeking solutions for the betterment of their students and community. Sometimes the solutions would put them at odds with powers that be, which preferred the status quo. The educational philosophies of New College, developed by Alexander, encouraged students to think critically, solve problems, and later, question the ruling hegemony and the status quo of the dominant social structure. The examination and analysis of the "Persistent Problems of Living", the "Concept of Community", and the creation of a "New Social Order" served as the philosophical springboard for action, steered by those social and economic conditions of the times.[1]

New College was an autonomous unit within Teachers College with its own advisory board, budget and faculty. If it was so advised, New College students could take classes at Teachers College if it fulfilled the objectives in their personal Long-Term View. New College students were young undergraduates, mostly teenagers, who were often at odds with the Teachers College students because of politics and youthful exuberance. Likewise, the Teachers College faculty was less than cooperative with New College with the exception of notable professors William Chandler Bagley, John Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick, and George S. Counts. In the minds of some faculty members, if New College was the best way to educate teachers, according to Alexander, what did that say about the traditional curriculum?[1]

Alexander knew that the curriculum pattern for New College would have to go beyond anything philosophically practiced before. It's not that there were no other experimental institutions in the nation; indeed, other educators with vision were taking advantage of the experimental nature of curriculum design offered by the social conditions of the time. Alexander Meiklejohn [2] at the University of Wisconsin, Bard College and Bennington College, were also introducing innovative curricular elements of a sound liberal arts education.[3] In 1930, Alexander saw the need was to train educational leaders and not just classroom teachers. He laid out his curricular philosophy at the opening meeting of the convention of the New York State Association of Teachers College and Normal School Faculties, declaring that more emphasis should be given to the objectives of life and less upon the stereotyped processes of teaching, such as those embracing psychologically scientific methods. He told the audience, "In the last twenty years we have measured everything in the school system. We have scales for this and that, but we have ignored the real objectives of human society. Teachers give more heed to measuring what they teach than to educating the children."[4] To his thinking, the inadequacy of training in the values of life was the greatest weakness in American teacher education. Alexander added, "Young teachers in training should be required to participate actively in some walks of life, and it would be extremely educative for them to pass a semester in a factory, on a farm, or in some industry. Their [the students'] ability to appreciate and understand the problems of life would be immeasurably increased." Those problems would be the basis of an innovative curriculum at New College. Alexander called them the "Persistent Problems of Living". He already had a global perspective from his travels all through Europe before and after the war and he traveled extensively in the United States lecturing and visiting schools. Alexander had the revelation that regardless of culture, social standing, religion and nationality that every person, every human on earth faced the same problems, in varying degrees in his journey down life's path. Colloquially speaking, everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time.

These problems were developed in relationship to and revolving around four aspects of human existence: human relationships, natural sciences, the arts and aesthetics, and philosophy.[5] The curriculum based on those persistent problems starts with Central Seminars in which the problems in these areas were generally analyzed and dissected. If the conversations found themselves heading off in two directions, Divisional Seminars were formed. The students met weekly as per schedule, or in private, and critically examined the coursework, the knowledge, and the skills necessary for the solution of the problem.[1] The student also met frequently with their faculty adviser. Every hour in every day was considered to be part of the college learning experience. In order to expand the breadth and depth of the knowledge that comes with experience, as part of the New College program, Alexander created three required elements. The Period of Foreign Study, The Period of Industry, and the New College Community. Alexander felt that extensive travel and study overseas would broaden one's global viewpoint and increase appreciation for home. To appreciate the hard work of parents in a learning community, Alexander placed students in factories and stores to do the same work for a semester. The real jewel of the experiential learning process was the New College Community in North Carolina, where cooperative learning and critical thinking were developed out of necessity for survival.[6]

The persistent problems of living that form the basis of such commonality through relevancy with both student and teacher have been around for most of human history, are trans-generational, and affect everyone on the planet. They were articulated and defined as the guiding force behind the core curriculum of New College by Dr. Alexander and his first faculty in 1931, then revisited in 1935 by Alexander, Dr. Florence Stratemeyer and Dr. William Scott Gray in the Twenty-third Yearbook of the National Society of College Teachers of Education as the third principle in their work entitled Principles of Curriculum Construction for the Education of Teachers.[7] Finally, they were again developed as a theme to a much greater degree than previously done by Dr. Stratemeyer resulting in the crowning achievement of her scholarship, the 1947 text, Developing a Curriculum for Modern Living, co-authored with Hamden L. Forkner and Margaret McKim.[8] In this influential textbook, Stratemeyer states that students develop understandings from facing recurring situations of everyday living, events she called “Persistent Life Situations.”

The original problems, as first determined by Dr. Alexander and the New College curriculum planners in 1931 were:

• Adjusting to and cooperating with other people.
• Maintaining physical and mental health.
• Achieving economic and political security.
• Adjusting to and controlling the natural environment.
• Interpreting and creating art and beauty.
• Searching for guiding principles and ultimate values.
• Acquiring and transmitting social heritage.

In order to develop an effective curriculum pattern for New College, Alexander knew that the nature of society and of the learner had to be considered as critical factors. For the curriculum to be effective learners of any age must see the relevancy of the instruction to themselves and that in some form or fashion; it will prove of some benefit or forestall some calamity. To be the most effective and to reach the widest student audience acceptance the curriculum content in any subject must be presented in terms that every person understands. The unspoken nod to another a complete stranger which confirms a mutual understanding would be an example. Once everyone has the same specific shared information and common knowledge of a problem, then a solution or understanding borne of the input of the collective might be found. To Alexander, the Persistent Problems represented a logical way to integrate the curriculum with relevancy and individual meaning. The causal effect of this curriculum, then, was looking for solutions to the common problems everyone in the world could understand, since they were so basic. They would examine them in critical terms and using the good of the community as support, discuss choices and possible outcomes.

• Dr. (Richard) Thomas Alexander (1887-1971), NC Chairman, education theorist, comparative education pioneer, founder of New College
• Dr. Winifred E. Bain (1889-1965), NC Education, taught kindergarten in Minnesota and Wisconsin for eleven years before graduating from the University of Chicago in 1924. A Rockefeller Foundation fellowship made it possible for her to study at Columbia University, where she received her Master's and Ph.D. degrees, and where she remained as an assistant professor, teaching at the experimental New College from 1932 until its closure in 1940. In 1935, her book Parents Look at Modern Education was awarded a best book of the year medal by Parents Magazine. The newly created Board of Trustees at Wheelock School chose Bain to succeed Lucy Wheelock as Principal in 1940. Under Bain's leadership, Wheelock School became Wheelock College in 1941 and was authorized to award a four-year Bachelor of Science in Education degree. Bain's new title became President of Wheelock College, a title she kept until her retirement in 1955. Bain served as the Editorial Board Chairman of the Association for Childhood Education (ACEI) from 1940-1947, as President of the ACEI from 1947-1949, and as Financial Consultant to ACEI from 1950 until her death in 1965. She was a trustee of Wheelock College, a member of the U.S. Commission for Early Childhood Education, and from 1950-1956 a member of the executive board of the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
• Dr. Raymond M. Burrows (1906-1946), NC Music, Professor of Music Education, Columbia University
• Dr. Wilbert L. Carr (1875-1974), NC Latin, Professor of Latin, first head of Teachers College Department of Teaching Foreign Languages, President of the American Classical League from 1931 to 1937
• Dr. Miles A. Dresskill, (1896-1970), NC Music; in 1945, founded the first band department at Arizona State University
• Dr. Walter E. Hager (1895-1990), NC Secretary 1938 to 1939, President of Wilson Teachers College 1941 to 1955, President of DC Teachers College 1955 to 1958
• Dr. Otto Koischwitz (1902-1944), NC German, taught German at Columbia University and became a professor of German Literature at Hunter College, New York City. In the fall of 1939 Koischwitz was required by Hunter College to take leave of absence after putting anti-Semitic material into his lectures. He returned to Germany, resigning his position in January 1940. By the spring of 1940 Koischwitz was working as a program director in the U.S. A. Zone at the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, German State Radio. He broadcast talks to the U.S. under the pseudonyms "Mister O. K." and "Doctor Anders". His propaganda was directed to college students and German-American listeners who might be susceptible to the Nazis. He spoke on literature, music, drama, philosophy and geopolitics, his broadcasts being anti-Semitic, anti-British, anti-Roosevelt and anti-communist in tone.
• Dr. Lois Coffey Mossman (1877-1944), at Columbia, she and Frederick Gordon Bonser established the new field of "industrial arts" or "technology education"
• Dr. Florence Stratemeyer (1900-1980), NC Education, founding figure in the field of teacher education and curriculum. The cornerstone of Stratemeyer's professional life was the preparation of principled teachers who act upon reasoned beliefs. Stratemeyer's influence in teacher education far exceeded that of anyone in the United States during her 41-year service as a faculty member in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University.
• Dr. Peter Sammartino (1904-1992), NC French, founder of Fairleigh Dickinson University
• Dr. Agnes Snyder (1885-1973), NC Education, faculty at Bank Street Schools and Mills Schools, 1941 to 1946. Chairman of the Department of Education at Adelphi College from 1948 to 1957. Snyder wrote Dauntless Women in Childhood Education, 1856-1931 published by the Association for Childhood Education International (First Edition - June 1972).
• Dr. John Wilkinson Taylor (1906-2001), Unesco deputy director general, acting director general from 1952 to 1953. President of the University of Louisville from 1947 to 1950, he founded Neighborhood Colleges, including one for blacks, in branches of the Louisville public library. He also helped spur repeal of Kentucky's school segregation law.
• Dr. Goodwin Watson (1899-1976), was part of Kilpatrick's "Social Frontier." During 1925-1942, Watson earned the reputation of being not only a thoughtful activist and innovator but also a scholar and researcher. After World War II, he became chief of the Analysis Division of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, but within two years was forced out of office as a "disloyal citizen" by what was then known as the Dies Committee. He had gone to the Soviet Union and to Nazi Germany and had reported on features of their systems, including educational, that he considered promising. He held a professorship at Newark State College until 1970. In 1963, Watson and James P. Dixon were founders of the Union of Experimenting Colleges, an outgrowth of which was the creation of the University Without Walls.

• Mercer Ellington, son of musician Duke Ellington
• Ruth Ellington, sister of musician Duke Ellington
• Nancy Frankel (Wechsler) (1916-2009), graduated at top of Columbia Law School Class of 1940, at a time when few women were admitted. Wechsler, a noted champion of civil liberties, was also a prominent copyright and intellectual property lawyer for seven decades. She won the John Ordronaux Prize, awarded annually for overall excellence and usually recognizes the student achieving the highest academic average in each graduating class.
• Isabel Lewis, niece of author Sinclair Lewis
• Sid Luckman (1916–1998), Hall of Fame NFL football player

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