Thomas’s Courses at the New School For Social Research

The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 as an experiment in community-based adult education.

Between 1923 and 1926, Thomas offered six courses through the New School. The calendars for the New School preserve the following Schedule and Course descriptions.

Thomas's biographical note in Who Was Who in America II, p. 529, states that Thomas was a lecturer at the New School for Social Research until 1928. A thorough review of existing New School records has not been able to identify any course taught after 1925-1926 academic term.

 

 


Year Term Course & Description
1923 Summer Course No. 6, Races and Cultures — Mr. Thomas. Tuesday and Thursday, 8:20 - 9:50 PM. August 6 - September 15
Development of mental and moral norms in races, nationalities and social classes. Types of historical experience through which individuals and cultures become characterized. Role of the individual, the community and the cult. Transference of cultural elements from group to group by migration and communication. The psychology of race-prejudice and the mechanism of assimilation. [1] [2]
1923 Fall Course No. 10. The Racial History of Mind — Mr. Thomas, Tuesday, 8:20 to 9:50 PM
(1) A preliminary comparison of human and animal mental behavior. (2) Determination of the most simple and universal patterns of mental activity in Man by an examination of the cultural life of the black and yellow races and of isolated white populations — the European peasant, [[16]] the “poor white,” and the lower strata of city life. (3) The relation of the Aryan, Semitic and African races to the origins of white civilization, and the contributions of the Teutonic, Alpine and Mediterranean stocks. (4) The role of the historical experience of social groups, the influence of migration, communication, crises, imitation and borrowing, in the development of mental life and cultural values. (5) Examination of the standpoint that progress is due solely to superior brain structure and mental endowment in favored races and that certain races are incapable of participating. (6) The bearings of the data of the course on the problems of race prejudice, race mixture, immigration, and on methods of mental testing.[3]
1924 Fall Course No. 7. Personality Development — Mr. Thomas. Friday, 8:20 to 9:50 PM.
Recent studies in several fields have established the point of view that human nature is not so definitely fixed at birth as we have heretofore assumed but is profoundly modifiable by individual experience and social influence. The behaviorists in particular have shown that the unlearned and instinctive behavior tendencies of the new-born child are relatively few, the psychiatrists have shown that many of the psychoneuroses formerly regarded as due to bad heredity actually arise in connection with unfortunate experiences in childhood, case workers are overcoming behavior difficulties of delinquent and so-called subnormal children by the use of the project method; and this disclosure of the great modifiability of individual behavior is most significant for problems of personality and programs of social change.
In the present course the socially learned behavior tendencies are defined as “attitudes,” and the problems is to trace the formation of attitudes as distinguished from but conditioned by the instinctive and dispositional factors, and to determine the relation of varieties of behavior to types of experience. The personality is regarded as the result of the organization of the attitudes among themselves.
Personality and it expression in behavior can best be understood in terms of what the individual wants, and certain of the attitudes representing the fundamental human desires are here called “wishes” and are examined with reference to their modifiability, their tendency to find expression in different fields of activity, their sublimations and perversions. The aversions and prejudices, the disparities between the preceptual moral code and behavior practices, the role of sex, and psychoneurotic behavior are considered in their relation to the wishes.
The method involves the analysis of life-histories and other behavior records, with the aim of viewing behavior not only as it exists in a cross-section of life but as it appears in a process of development. The cases are selected with a view to securing a sufficient number of behavior schemes for the purposes of comparison, and some attention is given to the behavior traits characterizing the different races, nationalities and social classes, including the abnormal and criminal. Types of social organization and collective influence — the family, the community, the acquaintance-group, the gang, the cult, the press, etc. — are viewed as sources of experience and as conditioning and regulating personality development.
There is not attempt to formulate a program of social reform, but the data of the course have a bearing on the problems of education, juvenile delinquency, crime, psychopathology, immigration and sex life, and more generally on the central problem of the social sciences: How can individual attitudes be so controlled by social organization as to produce socially desirable behavior, and how can social organization be so modified so as to permit a normal expression of individual wishes ? [4]
1925 Spring Course No. 6, The Formation of Racial and National Character — Mr. Thomas. Thursday, 8:20 to 9:50 [5]
The problem is approached from the standpoint of the newer psychology and anthropology, and the formation of racial and national character is viewed in terms of stimulus and response, habit formation, conditioning and reconditioning. Racial and national characteristics are regarded as fashions or psychological sets of greater and less durability, and the explanation of their formation and of the degree of their persistence is sought in the nature of the conditioning historical experience — geographical environment, emergence of dominant personalities, migrations and diffusion of cultural elements, the formation of particular cults, professions, interest-groups, bodies of art, literature, dogma, law, magic, and science.
The wide variety of behavior patterns possible in human societies is examined, as exemplified among the white, black and yellow races. The behavioral traits of the so-called Nordic, Mediterranean, Slavic, and Jewish “races” are viewed comparatively and in their historical development. An examination is made of the behavior schemes of certain nationalities, including the American, at different cross-sections of their history, some decades and centuries apart, with reference to determining the rate and laws of social change. Throughout the relation of personal behavior schemes to types of social organization is indicated.
The course is offered as a psychological introduction to history and a contribution to the problems of race-prejudice, racial superiority and inferiority, immigration and race adjustment. It will be given if the registrations reach the number of thirty.
1925 Fall Course No. 10. Psychological Foundations of Behavior — Dr. Thomas. Thursday, 8:20 to 9: 50 PM (page 13-14).
The object of the present course is to trace the formation of “attitudes” or socially learned behavior, as distinguished from but conditioned by the instinctive and dispositional factors, and to determine the relation of varieties of behavior to types of experience. The personality is regarded as the result of the organization of the attitudes among themselves.
Personality and its expression in behavior can best be understood in terms of what the individual wants, and certain of the attitudes representing the fundamental desires are her called “wishes” and are examined with reference to their modifiability, their tendency to find expression in different fields of activity, their sublimations and perversions. The aversions and prejudices, the disparities between the preceptual moral code and behavior practices, the role of sex, and psychoneurotic behavior are considered in their relation to the wishes.
The method involves the analysis of life-histories and other behavior records, with the aim of viewing behavior not only as it exists in a cross-section of life but as it appears in a process of development. The cases are selected with a view to securing a sufficient number of behavior schemes for the purpose of comparison, and some attention is given to the behavior traits characterizing the different races, nationalities and social classes, including the abnormal and criminal. Types of social organization and collective influence — the family, the community, the acquaintance-group, the gang, the cult, the press, etc. — are viewed as sources of experience and as conditioning and regulating personality development.
There is not attempt to formulate a program of social reform, but the data of the course have a bearing on the problems of education, juvenile delinquency, crime, psychopathology, immigration and sex life, and more generally on the central problem of the social sciences: How can individual attitudes be so controlled by social organizations as to permit a normal expression of individual wishes ? [6]
    Course No. 11. Orientation in Culture History — Dr. Thomas. Tuesday, 8:20 - 9:50 P. M.
This course is primarily bibliographical and is offered to those who are interested in behavior and its historical manifestations and development, who are seeking guidance in reading and in the purchase of a limited number of volumes, or which to identify themselves more particularly with some special field of intelligence.
An attempt is made to designate the volumes treating of the mental and cultural history of mankind which are of outstanding value. About three hundred works in the departments of biology, anthropology, psychology, social psychology, history, history of science and invention, comparative literature, comparative art, are described and characterized, and a smaller number are recommended as most desirable for reading and purchase. The literature bearing on the formation of individual, racial and national character, the earliest civilizations of the near east, the origins of white civilization, civilizations of the far east, and the psychology of the white, black, and yellow races will be given special attention.
The lectures are so organized that in connection with the criticism of the literature a history of the development of the human mind and cultural values is presented in outline. [7]

Acknowledgements: We wish to thank Carmen Hendershott of the New School, and the unnamed indexers who created the reference files from which this information was collected.

References

Notes

  1. New School for Social Research (1923a):. 11.
  2. [Editors’ note: The shortened duration of this offering suggested that it may have been a “half-course.”]
  3. New School for Social Research (1923b): 15-16.
  4. New School for Social Research (1924): 12-13.
  5. New School for Social Research (1925a): 13.
  6. New School for Social Research (1925b): 13-14.
  7. New School for Social Research (1925b): 14.

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