Looking at the voices of the child. Ideas, challenges, and derailments in the educational space of the past

•The concept of educational space can explain educational derailments and challenges across time.•The historical method of analyzing observations of contemporary people packed in sources – texts and images - brings us nearer to children and their perspectives in the past.•The expanded educational space in the nineteenth century stimulated a two-side educational mindset of more educational discipline and more attention for the child’s perspective.•Neglect, maltreatment, and an emotionless educational approach probably occurred more frequently in the past than today. This, however, was not because of a basically different educational mindset, but because of more and stronger limits and less favorable conditions for the educational space. In this article first the perspectives of children in early modern Europe’s educational space will be explored by looking to children through the eyes of artists and by reading the warning against child maltreatment in an influential educational tractate, written by the famous humanist Erasmus. Then we will turn to the nineteenth century paradox: on the one hand a longing after more educational discipline in the school and in residential institutions, and on the other hand more attention for the child’s perspective by pedagogues such as Friedrich Fröbel and Ellen Key. Finally it will be asked to which extent warnings by Erasmus and other humanists were taken seriously five hundred years later by looking at recent research on post Second World War child maltreatment and abuse in out-of-home child care.