BY THE SAME AUTHOR

MOON-CALF, a Novel
THE BRIARY-BUSH, a Novel

Were You Ever
a Child?

by

Floyd Dell

Second Edition, with a New Preface

New York
Alfred · A · Knopf
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1921, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
THE SCHOOL TEACHERS
OF MY CHILDHOOD
IN TOKEN OF FORGIVENESS

This book is intended as an explanation of thenew educational ideals and methods now beingfostered and developed, under great difficulties,by courageous educators, in various schools forthe most part outside the public school system.These schools are “experimental” in the sense thatthey are demonstrating upon a small scale the vastpossibilities of a modern kind of education. Theimportance of these schools consists not so muchin the advantages which they are now able togive to a few of our children, but rather in theprophetic vision they afford of all youth growingup with the same advantages.

Before that can happen, the public must discoverwhat the new education signifies, and whythe old educational system is unable to keep upwith the demands of modern civilization.

This book attempts only a small part of sucha tremendous task of enlightenment. But it doesundertake a brief review of the educational situation[Pg viii]in the light of our present scientific knowledgeof human nature—and more especially, ofthe human nature of the child.

Education may be said to be, essentially, an adjustmentbetween the child and the age in whichhe lives. That adjustment can be a painless andhappy one; at present it is a sort of civil war.This book deals precisely with the special problemsinvolved in the difficult process of reconcilingthe nature of the child with the nature ofour twentieth-century machine-culture.

The method chosen in these pages for the expositionof this situation is one which many readerswill consider unduly flippant, particularly inthose passages which deal with the failure of theold educational system. But one might as welllaugh at that failure as cry over it; for it is aridiculous as well as a pathetic failure. The importantthing is to recognize that it is a failure,and to lend a hand if we can in the creating of abetter kind of education.

F. D.