ABSTRACT
For the lower classes the infant schools appear like guardian angels of innocence, like caring mothers. The children play a key role in the process of social reform because they are easier to educate than adults. Children are given a special place, the school, which protects them from the hard adult world. At the start of the nineteenth century schools for young children were set up experimentally in various places in Europe and America. The pedagogical experiments were set up or financed by liberal aristocrats and enlightened citizens in order to combat poverty and immorality amongst the population. The pedagogic aims of the infant school varied from Utopian to pragmatic. Long before the infant school developed there was a great deal of interest in the education of young children in the educated and better-off families. From the middle of the eighteenth century, a growing stream of publications led to a greater understanding of the meaning of early childhood and maternity.
