Adventure in Learning : Everywoman’s Village Set Out to Show Education Doesn’t Have to Stop When Working Life Begins
Sometime recently you may have opened your mailbox and found a thin, purple-and-white catalogue of courses from Everywoman’s Village in Van Nuys. Finger it. Hmmmm, flimsy paper. Another piece of junk mail? Perhaps not. It could be a ticket to tomorrow, worth five minutes of your time.
The Village’s 26th fall semester, the catalogue advises, begins Sept. 18; meanwhile, registration is in progress on the half-acre campus on Sepulveda Boulevard. After a quarter-century of success, the school is nationally known as a pioneer in the field of alternative education. But the name--Everywoman’s Village--is misleading, for as the catalogue cover promises, the school delivers an “adventure in learning for men and women,” with “kids’ classes too,” in a “relaxed, informal environment.”
A glance at the inside pages reveals 190 courses--such as stone carving, novel writing, desktop publishing, advanced French, Tarot-card reading and Italian gourmet cooking.
Fascinating reading indeed, that provokes more questions than answers. Are there no prerequisites, unit requirements, admission restrictions? What sort of school offers “Miracle Making” with one breath and a Saturday seminar on coping and recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & Candida (a.k.a. Chronic Epstein-Barr virus) with the next?
Putting a label on Everywoman’s Village is, in fact, a piece of work. Even the old-timers--students and teachers who have been regulars since 1963, when the village first opened--still grope for the right words to describe the learning experience that goes on in the irregular cluster of 11 stucco cottages shaded by trees and decorated with fanciful murals.
“It’s the original learning center, a place to grow, a school where learning is fun,” says Village spokeswoman Genny Tubridy. The joy in her administrative job, she says, is the chance to be on campus every day, taking different classes. It’s not easy to imagine the pre-Village Tubridy, who was formerly a public-relations director for a downtown company. One struggles to picture her driving the freeways in a neat power suit, her blond hair wound tight in a bun.
Nowadays, she resembles the other students: her hair hanging to her shoulders, sweat pants and a T-shirt that trumpets “Everywoman’s Village. A Touch of Classes.” Actress Kristy McNichol took a painting class at the village last summer, says Tubridy, and nobody--well, hardly anybody--recognized her.
But anonymity isn’t why so many come from so far, including a San Diego resident who drives up one day each week. Self-motivation is the key concept. Everywoman’s Village has no grades, no prerequisites and no academic demands. Students can do as little or as much homework as they want, and instructors encourage them to work at their own pace.
That doesn’t mean, however, that teachers don’t teach. The village has its pick of instructors, Tubridy says, and applicants are regularly turned away. “Teachers are dying to get in, because there’s no paper work, except to check names. They can be completely creative in their classes--do whatever they want to. These are professionals who charge lots of money for their time outside the village.”
Creative Atmosphere
The resulting lack of pressure creates an encouraging, cocooning atmosphere. “It’s comfortable and happy here,” says Margery Ramsdell, a 10-year veteran of the stone-carving class. Ramsdell, who recently won an award for one of her marble sculptures, works in the shop area five mornings a week.
“My hair looks like a dust mop when I’m working,” she says apologetically, scraping vigorously on her newest piece with a file and making stone particles fly. “The camaraderie of working with the same people is very special.”
Graduating to Stone
Beginning students interested in stone carving start as Ramsdell did, first studying clay sculpting with Bernice Schachter. After they learn the fundamentals, Schachter teaches them to use stone-carving tools and the school’s two air compressors.
The stone-carving class has limited registration, because only five sculptors can work with the compressor simultaneously. But with most classes, if there is an overflow, the school simply opens up another section. Conversely, classes are held with as few as five students.
Scriptwriter Milt Rosen, currently working on “Trial by Jury,” Raymond Burr’s new fall TV series, has been teaching writing at the village since the first year. He’s still here, he says, because of the complete academic freedom students and teachers enjoy.
“There’s no pressure of any sort on the students,” he says. “I had one student who came in for three years and never wrote one word. Then he went and produced three pictures. Not the best movies in the history of the world, but they were real movies.
“I can do anything I want to in class, which you can’t say about any other school. I taught at UCLA, and before you could take script writing you had to take a prerequisite. I think that’s a lot of baloney.”
The village, a nonprofit institution, was founded in 1963 by Lynn Selwyn, her sister, Chris Edwards, and Diane Rosner--three San Fernando Valley housewives who believed that lifelong learning leads to personal growth, an enriched intellect and better living and working skills.
Unable to find a school that suited the needs of busy adult women--and in the early ‘60s that usually meant women with families--they decided to start their own, an affordable school with no degree requirements and flexible hours. They bought a half-acre of San Fernando Valley land with three ramshackle buildings and invested $3,000 in supplies, paint and furniture--and they were in business.
A Place for Men
Although the growing women’s liberation movement of the early ‘60s contributed to the school’s first flood of students, from the beginning men have composed from 10% to 25% of the student body.
According to Laura Selwyn, executive director and Lynn Selwyn’s daughter, “People have always assumed that we are a feminist organization, but we have never really been aligned with that movement. Instead, from the beginning we’ve always believed that everyone, and in particular women, can be more well-rounded and develop their skills and talent by learning.”
Women apparently agreed, for by the village’s third birthday, enrollment stood at 800. Today, 1,500 to 2,000 students register at the village each semester.
While the village’s philosophy remains constant, classes are regularly updated, added or dropped to meet changing times.
“We have many more working women,” Selwyn says, “so our programs have expanded during the hours when working people can attend.” Classes are scheduled in the mornings, evenings and on Saturdays. Daytime students are predominantly women, and more men attend in the evenings.
Because of the village’s large dance department, Stephanie Read, a serious dancer since she was 8, has been able to continue studying despite the demands of marriage, a 5-year-old daughter and a part-time job with a valley law firm.
Classes at the Right Time
“I live in Valencia now, but I still come on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings for ballet, jazz and tap. I like Jon (Zerby), he’s a good teacher, and the time is right for me. I have a preschooler; she’s in school while I work. It’s hard to find morning ballet classes; classes are usually in the evenings.”
According to Read, Zerby’s ballet class succeeds because he puts all levels of ballet students together, motivating the beginners by showing them the advanced students, and challenging the advanced students with more complicated steps.
Zerby himself says he’s been absorbed by the village. “I had my own studio when Laura’s mother and aunt asked me to come and teach. I thought, ‘Well, maybe it’ll last six months and then the girls will get into something else.’ Twenty-six years later I’m still here, teaching eight classes a day.”
Starting at 8 a.m., Chopin melodies drift from the dance studio’s open door as warm-up begins. A peek inside reveals Zerby’s “kids,” women from ages 20 to 72, lined up at the bars (metal pipes painted black) in front of full-length mirrors. Zerby takes a break from 2 to 5 each afternoon, then resumes for evening classes, quitting at about 10 p.m. His night classes include Argentine Tango and Ballroom.
The dance department also offers belly-dancing classes with Diane Webber and Maryann Cappa. Students with especially versatile stomachs can aspire to membership in their performing group, “Perfumes of Araby.” Polynesian dance is taught by Jack Kineer, whose professional troupe performs throughout the United States.
Keeping Up on Trends
In addition to expanded class hours, the school continues to update subjects to meet modern tastes. “We’ve added more business-skill classes and classes for upgrading skills, like computer studies, for women who aren’t working yet but want to,” Selwyn says.
Though computer classes aren’t new at the village--they began a decade ago on Vic 20s--this year they’ll be taught on IBM PCs, thanks to a recent IBM grant. Another recent addition is photography: Nine classes are offered this semester. New this semester is a state-approved Nursing Program, offering classes in continuing education for licensed nurses.
By now, you’ve finished leafing through the course catalogue, and the aura of the “Village Experience” surrounds you. But you still can’t put your finger on a good one-word label. Flip to the back for the Village’s goal: “self-understanding and creative expression through the joy of learning.” It’s a very good start.
If you didn’t receive a catalogue, call (213) 873-4406 or (818) 787-5100 to request one by first-class mail. Prices for classes vary, but start at a $5 “contribution” for a half-day seminar, and range up to $144 for some of the nine-week courses. Everywoman’s Village is at 5650 Sepulveda Blvd. in Van Nuys.
