ABSTRACT
First, the nature of childhood itself was not fully understood and was certainly contested. On the one hand, running through European literature and underpinning much Christian thinking, was the view that the child was from birth intrinsically evil and in need of redemption and improvement. Only through the intervention of adults could the growing child be moulded, reformed, disciplined or saved, depending on the particular world-view in play in any particular situation. This view necessarily involved the belief that children needed to be ‘schooled’ and that schooling should be directed towards particular ends. On the other hand, there were those who took a much more idealistic view of childhood, seeing it as a period of innocence which was slowly eroded by the realities of growing up. One version of this view was expressed by the poet Wordsworth, who subscribed to a neo-Platonist view that it was possible to look back to an age of innocence during which various insights into the nature of being were possible in ways that were denied the corrupted adult. He wrote:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore – Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
