Were You Ever a Child?

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
MOON-CALF, a Novel THE BRIARY-BUSH, a Novel
Were You Ever a Child?
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 the new educational ideals and methods now being fostered and developed, under great difficulties, by courageous educators, in various schools for the most part outside the public school system. These schools are “experimental” in the sense that they are demonstrating upon a small scale the vast possibilities of a modern kind of education. The importance of these schools consists not so much in the advantages which they are now able to give to a few of our children, but rather in the prophetic vision they afford of all youth growing up with the same advantages.
Before that can happen, the public must discover what the new education signifies, and why the old educational system is unable to keep up with the demands of modern civilization.