ABSTRACT
Children, born perfect, were 'damaged' between birth and school, in a way that maximum capabilities and potential for happiness would never be realized. The value of an educational intervention which covered the child from two to six years was seen by psychologists and educationalists to be self-evident. The kindergarten teacher was equipped for this task because her teaching was based on 'growth facts instead of "isms"'. This chapter focuses on the shape of the perfect child, the child produced through the knowledge of science. It explores the ways in which the failure of mothers to produce this child was understood in child psychology. The chapter also focuses on the kindergarten teacher herself, the construction of the practices of the 'good teacher' within child-centred pedagogy. The child of child psychology is a child stripped of social relations, a child who is constituted in science simply as 'child', not as daughter, son, friend, brother, sister, black, white, female, male and so on.
