This text examines how practices of the self, after being part of a set of practices that schools have appropriated since the 15th century (such as aristocratic courtesy, knowledge practices at university, practices of Christian governance and self-governance), lost their centrality in the pedagogical discourse of Comenius, disappeared in that of Pestalozzi, and were attacked as dangerous in the pedagogical discourse of Dewey. The transformations in these practices are linked with those of conceptions of the subject, truth, morality, the aims of education and practices of knowledge and government in schools. The text also examines the meaning of the recent re-emergence of practices of the self in schools.