Pedagogy

Any art historian can point to paintings where children are painted as miniature adults with adult proportions as in 13th century representations of the Madonna and child.

Children of the period , once they had passed infancy would have been treated as mini adults, dressed in adult clothing, and from the age of about 7 or 8 , been expected to learn a trade and to work. They would also have been punished for their misdeeds in the same way as an adult on the same charge. From 1597 child criminals were being sent to the colonies as punishment as described on the adoption.com webpage Transportees. This was an alternative to being hung.

Yet it is obvious to even a casual observer that children do develop gradually  physically, psychologically and mentally. They are small and aware of the world in only a limited measure. At first they possess  little or no understanding of other people as being separate from themselves and so cannot  understand social relationships and have no sense of  morality. The idea of child development is a way of giving order and meaning to observed chronological changes in childrens development. It is this gradual development which then provides the reasoning behind the many practices and policies which are related directly to children and the ways in which they differ from adults. Many educational programs are based upon the belief that children should be taught at the  level of their developmentally capabilities. Child protection policies, ages of consent, legal drinking ages and so on are all examples of things based upon the rationale of gradual development. They presume that development is teleological i.e. it has a beginning, a direction and an end as described by Emily Cahan( 1980).

19th Century
It was really only in the 19th century that the idea of human development began to be widely considered in a serious way. Robert Chambers published in 1844 his influential work , Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation He believed that  apart from gravity there was only  great law the law of development. He related this to all kinds of things such as planetary motion (Chapter 1), but his ideas were basically evolutionary. In a chapter entitled the Origin of the Animated Tribes he says the operation of the laws may be modified by conditions. and we cannot but agree with him when cases of arrested development are considered. Later in the same work he states that development is dependent upon physical circumstances.

20th Century
The name that stands out in 20th century ideas about child development is that of Jean Piaget (1896-1980) who, as early as 1919, as described by Booree in 1999, was beginning to ask questions about how children reasoned. It was he who came up with terms such as schema and assimilation as used in works such as his1971 work Biology and Knowledge An Essay on the Relations Between Organic Regulations and Cognitive Processes. The first term he used to describe how an infant does something, the second how he then is able to uses this process in a slightly different way. He saw children as going through various stages as they developed intellectually e.g. the sensorimotor stag e which is followed by the preoperational stage, a period when for instance they can engage in creative play. This would normally be followed by a stage entitled concrete operations. This means using logic to solve problems. Finally comes the formal operations stage when a child is able to cope with abstract ideas. Much of his work was based upon observation mainly of his own and other middle class children, often today considered to be an unrepresentative sample. Also he fixes firm ages to stages whereas all children do not necessarily develop at the same rate even within one family and there are those who have difficulty throughout their lives with formal operations. Mike Baker wrote in 2009 about  how genetic differences mean that some have greater abilities than other naturally.

Lawrence Kohlberg was able to come up with a theory of moral development as in 1976 Moral stages and moralization The cognitive-developmental approach which extended Piagets ideas, as described by Crain in 1985. Both men have received criticism because they tended to universalize principles across all peoples of the world. It should be pointed out that both agree development progresses and later is more complicated and better than early. John Dewey (1859-1952) worked during approximately the same time period as Piaget. He believed that development could be rather more variable than the flower opening so often used as analogy at the time.  He preferred to use the imagery of a child with a seed within him, but it could develop into a cactus or an oak tree depending upon circumstances.

In more recent times William Kessen (1990) has discussed the value laden idea of development. By which he means that the end of development as man perceives it  serves to reflect those things and ideas which people value and toward which childrens development is therefore guided.

There have obviously been many changes in ideas over the years and presumably this will continue to happen and will be reflected in such things as legislation and the ways in which children are both cared for and expected to behave. Modern biological science and psychology are opening up new knowledge. More is known about such things as genetics, infants can be observed from the time of conception, but children will continue to develop and to explore their world, from putting that fist in the mouth for the first time to passing their driving test and making adult judgments. Whether or not these fit into the generally accepted will depend upon many factors, as it has always done.