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Read Ebook: Were You Ever a Child? by Dell Floyd
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Ebook has 500 lines and 39631 words, and 10 pages
I The Child 13
II The School Building 22
V The Magic Theory of Education 47
VI The Caste System of Education 53
X Employer vs. Trade Unionist 74
XX Curiosity 137
Were You Ever a Child?
Were You Ever a Child?
Were you ever a child?...
I ask out of no indecent curiosity as to your past. But I wish to address only those who would naturally be interested in the subject of Education. Those who haven't been children themselves are in many respects fortunate beings; but they lack the background of bitter experience which makes this, to the rest of us, an acutely interesting theme--and they might just as well stop reading right here. I pause to allow them to put the book aside....
We ourselves, as products of an educational system, are sufficiently damning evidence against it. If we think of what we happily might have been, and then of what we are, we cannot but concede the total failure or the helpless inadequacy of our education to educe those possibilities of ours into actuality.
There was one bit of candour in our schooling--at its very end. They called that ending a Commencement. And so indeed we found it. Bewildered, unprepared, out of touch with the realities, we commenced then and there to learn what life is like. We found it discouraging or inspiriting in a thousand ways; but the thing which struck us at the time most forcibly was that it was in every respect quite unlike school. The values which had obtained there, did not exist outside. One could not cram for a job as if it were an examination; one could not get in the good graces of a machine as if it were a teacher; the docility which won high "marks" in school was called lack of enterprise in the business world, dulness in social life, stupidity in the realm of love. The values of real life were new and different. We had been quite carefully prepared to go on studying and attending classes and taking examinations; but the real world was not like that. It was full of adventure and agony and beauty; its politics were not in the least like the pages of the Civics Text-Book; its journalism and literature had purposes and methods undreamed of by the professor who compiled the English Composition Book; going on the road for a wholesale house was a geographical emprise into whose fearful darknesses even the Advanced Geography Course threw no assisting light; the economics of courtship and marriage and parenthood had somehow been overlooked by the man who Lectured upon that Subject.
Whether we had studied our lessons or not; whether we had passed our examinations triumphantly, or just got through by the skin of our teeth--what difference did it make, to us or to the world? And what to us now are those triumphs and humiliations, the failure or success of school, except a matter of occasional humorous reminiscence?
What would we think of a long and painful and expensive surgical operation of which it could be said afterward that it made not the slightest difference to the patient whether it succeeded or failed? Yet, judged by results in later life, the difference between failing and succeeding in school is merely the difference between a railroad collision and a steamboat explosion, as described by Uncle Tom:
"If you's in a railroad smash-up, why--thar yo' is! But if yo's in a steamboat bus'-up, why--whar is yo'?"
It is our task, however, to investigate this confused catastrophe, and fix the responsibility for its casualties.
Education, as popularly conceived, includes as its chief ingredients a Child, a Building, Text-Books, and a Teacher. Obviously, one of them must be to blame for its going wrong. Let us see if it is the Child. We will put him on the witness stand:
Q. Who are you?
A. I am a foreigner in a strange land.
Q. What!
A. Please, sir, that's what everybody says. Sometimes they call me a little angel; the poet Wordsworth says that I come trailing clouds of glory from Heaven which is my home. On the other hand, I am often called a little devil; and when you see the sort of things I do in the comic supplements, you will perhaps be inclined to accept that description. I really don't know which is right, but both opinions seem to agree that I am an immigrant.
Q. Speak up so that the jury can hear. Have you any friends in this country?
A. No, sir--not exactly. But there are two people, a woman and a man, natives of this land, who for some reason take an interest in me. It was they who taught me to speak the language. They also taught me many of the customs of the country, which at first I could not understand. For instance, my preoccupation with certain natural--.
Q. You need not go into such matters. I fear you still have many things to learn about the customs of the country. One of them is not to allude to that side of life in public.
A. Yes, sir; so those two people tell me. I'm sure I don't see why. It seems to me a very interesting and important--
Q. That will do. Now as to those people who are looking after you: Are your relations with them agreeable?
A. Nominally, yes. But I must say that they have treated me in a very peculiar way, which has aroused in me a deep resentment. You see, at first they treated me like a king--in fact, like a Kaiser. I had only to wave my hand and they came running to know what it was I wanted. I uttered certain magic syllables in my own language, and they prostrated themselves before me, offering me gifts. When they brought the wrong gifts, I doubled up my fists and twisted my face, and gave vent to loud cries--and they became still more abject, until at last I was placated.
Q. That is what is called parental love. What then?
A. I naturally regarded them as my slaves. But presently they rebelled. One of them, of whom I had been particularly fond, commenced to make me drink milk from a bottle instead of from--
Q. Yes, yes, we understand. And you resented that?
A. I withdrew the light of my favour from her for a long time. I expressed my disappointment in her. I offered freely to pardon her delinquency if she would acknowledge her fault and resume her familiar duties. But perhaps I did not succeed in conveying my meaning clearly, for at this time I had no command of her language. At any rate, my efforts were useless. And her reprehensible conduct was only the first of a series of what seemed to me indignities and insults. I was no longer a king. I was compelled to obey my own slaves. In vain I made the old magic gestures, uttered the old talismanic commands--in vain even my doubling up of fists and twisting of face and loud outcries; the power was gone from these things. Yet not quite all the power--for my crying was at least a sort of punishment to them, and as such I often inflicted it upon them.
Q. You were a naughty child.
A. So they told me. But I only felt aggrieved at my new helplessness, and wished to recover somewhat of my old sense of power over them. But as I gradually acquired new powers I lost in part my feeling of helplessness. I also found that there were other beings like myself, and we conducted magic ceremonies together in which we transformed ourselves and our surroundings at will. These delightful enterprises were continually being interrupted by those other people, our parents, who insisted on our learning ever more and more of their own customs. They wished us to be interested in their activities, and they were pleased when we asked questions about things we did not understand. Yet there were some questions which they would not answer, or which they rebuked us for asking, or to which they returned replies that, after consultation among ourselves, we decided were fabulous. So we were compelled to form our own theories about these things. We asked, for instance--
Q. Please confine your answers to the questions. That is another matter not spoken of in public; though to be quite frank with you, public taste seems to be changing somewhat in this respect.
A. I am very glad to hear it. I would like to know--
Q. Not now, not now.--You say you have learned by this time many of the customs of the country?
A. Oh, yes, sir! I can dress myself, and wash my face , count the change which the grocer gives me, tell the time by a clock, say "Yes, ma'am" and "Thank you"--and I am beginning to be adept in the great national game of baseball.
Q. Have you decided what you would do if you were permitted to take part in our adult activities?
A. I would like to be a truck-driver.
Q. Why?
A. Because he can whip the big horses.
Q. Do you know anything about machinery?
A. No, sir; I knew a boy who had a steam-engine, but he moved away before I got a chance to see how it worked.
Q. You spoke of truck-driving just now. Do you know where the truck-driver is going with his load?
A. No, sir.
Q. Do you know where he came from?
A. No, sir.
Q. Do you know what a factory is?
A. Yes, sir; Jim's father got three fingers cut off in a factory.
Q. Do you know where the sun rises and sets?
A. It rises in the East and sets in the West.
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