This text discusses how childhood was represented in the XVIIth century, when Humanism determined a shift from sacred models to real ones, and in the XVIIIth century, when idealized images of childhood hid the children's real conditions of living, in order to analyze the evolution of image production for pedagogical purposes. From Comenius on, the prevalent conception of image has been the representation of the real world, easier to read and understand than the written language and, therefore, useful as a pedagogical device. The text also discusses the meaning of the changes in such images as representative of the changes in the ways of thinking and conceiving knowledge itself and its transmission procedures.
Childhood; Image production; Pedagogical tool
