In this paper we present hints that allow us to reveal the ways poor children, or the children of poor inhabitants, from the city of Bogota were excluded from the "normal" childhood in the first half of the 20th century. Based on specialists' statements as well as opinions from educational reformers and journalists it is clear that this exclusion was created due to the stigmatization of the social places belonging to the poor children through the image of the urchins and street boys.. Such images were a model that could reveal the illegitimacy of the family structures, of the school history and of the way children from the popular areas lived, given the articulation, mistaken and dangerous, that was established between the life of poor people and children delinquency.
childhood; childhood history; city; poverty; education