The pedagogical assumptions about learning and learner were,therefore,based initially on observations by the monks in teaching very young children relatively simple skills – originally mostly reading and writing. With the spread of elementary schools throughout Europe and North America – and much of the rest of the world , especially by missionaries – in the eighteenth century they further contributed to the enthronement of the pedagogical model by limiting their research mostly to the reactions of children and animals to didactic teaching. In fact, as we shall see later, we didn’t get much knowledge about learning (in contrast to reactions to teaching) until studies on adult learning began to appear after World War II.