C. 1600-1700 "[All children] are inclined by nature toward knowledge of real things (Realia) and putting what they know into practice." 1 n recent years, largely in response to a historiography focused on rupture and the notion of childhood as a distinctly modern phenomenon, scholars have stressed the continuity of ideas about children and their "natures" across time and space. 2 Historians of early modernity, too, recognize the myriad ways in which the period (1400-1800) was one of gradual transformation, where old ideas about children's natures (as sinful, in need of correction) came into conversation with-but were not entirely replaced by-newer ones (children as innocent, blank slates) still associated with the writings of John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau and their followers. 3 Reframed in light of the recent emphasis on continuity, explanations for why a new consensus about children and their natures came to replace the old have become more nuanced and focused on variety and simultaneity. Recent work by Adriana Benzaquen, for example, has drawn much-needed attention to the resounding interest in the "sciences of childhood" by the middle of the eighteenth century, a phenomenon that involved a "multiplicity of interests, questions, observations, descriptions and practices enveloping childhood in this period." 4 This article continues the exploration of how a multiplicity of interests, questions, ideas, practices, and things resulted in provocative reassessments of children's natures by the end of the early modern period using the lens of educational reform. 5 Elite early modern Europeans were resoundingly interested in practical reform (social, scientific, political) and experimentation as a way of responding to regular crises of war, governance, and public health. 6 Indeed, the very act of promoting educational reform initiatives, especially reform of the practice of