The article analyzes the conceptions of childhood and examining practices in the pedagogical treatises of Quintilianus, Clement of Alexandria, Vives, Comenius, Pestalozzi and Dewey.
It presents three central arguments: 1) that childhood was primarily constituted as a concept and object of knowledge in the field of pedagogy: 2) that the conception of the specificity of childhood, as well as the practices for the development of knowledge on pupils were constitutive of pedagogical practices, and preceded the birth of the modern school and of scientific psychology: 3) that the historical trajectory of the concept of childhood is one of recurrences, discontinuities and "involutions", rather than one of continuous and gradual "progress".