Polly Toynbee writes about government plans for child care in today's Guardian - complete article here - and claims that 'a whole new profession is born - the pedagogue, combining nurturing and teaching.' Here's the relevant paragraph:

In the beginning Labour women only persuaded Gordon Brown to invest in childcare as a welfare-to-work way to get single mothers into jobs, which helped the children indirectly by lifting their households out of poverty. Now the success of Sure Start has shifted the emphasis. It is child development that matters above all. So a whole new profession is born - the pedagogue, combining nurturing and teaching; all childcare, state or private, must be led by someone with a relevant degree, moving away from low-paid, untrained 16- and 17-year-old childcare assistants who themselves failed at school. Giving every child the same jump start in life is the prime goal and the research is absolutely conclusive.

This makes me wonder how much is known about the Athenian paidagogus. (By the way, there's a web site called Paidagogos, to teach the basics of New Testament Greek, here.)

The Oxford Classical Dictionary gives them one line, in the article on Education. I can find no mention in Lempriere. Here's William Smith's Dictionary (1869):

PAEDAGOGUS. A tutor. The office of tutor in a Grecian family of rank and opulence (Plato, de Repub. i. p. 87, ed. Bekker, de Leg. vii. pp. 41,42) was assigned to one of the most trustworthy of the slaves.

The sons of his master were committed to his care on attaining their sixth or seventh year, their previous education having been conducted by females. They remained with the tutor (magister) until they attained the age of puberty. (Ter. Andr. i. 1. 24.)

His duty was rather to guard them from evil, both physical and moral, than to communicate instruction, to cultivate their minds, or to impart accomplishments. He went with them to and from the school or the GYMNASIUM (Plato, Lysias p. 118); he accompanied them out of doors on all occasions ; he was responsible for their personal safety, and for their avoidance of bad company, (Bato. ap. Athen. vii. p. 279.) The formation of their morals by direct superintendence belonged to the paidonomoi as public officers, and their instruction in the various branches of learning, i. e. in grammar, music, and gymnastics, to the didaskaloi or praeceptores, whom Plato (ll.. cc.), Xenophon (de Lac. Rep. ii. 1, iii. 2), Plutarch (de Lib. Ed. 7), and Quintilian (Inst. Or. 1. 8,9) expressly distinguish from the paedagogi. These latter even carried the books and instruments which were requisite for their young masters in studying under the sophists and professors.

This account of the office is sufficient to explain why the paidagogos so often appears on the Greek stage, both in tragedy, as in the Medea, Phoenissae, and Ion of Euripides, and in comedy, as in the Bacchides of Plautus. The condition of slavery accounts for the circumstance, that the tutor was often a Thracian (Plato, Alcib. i p. 341, d. Bekker), an Asiatic, as is indicated by such names as Lydus (Plaut I. c.), and sometimes an eunuch. (Herod, viii. 75 ; Corn. Nep. Themist. iv. Polyaen. i. 30. § 2.) Hence also we see why these persons spoke Greek with a foreign accent (hupobarbarizontes, Plato,Lysis, p. 145,ed. Bekker). On rare occasions, the tutor was admitted to the presence of the daughters, as when the slave, sustaining this office in the royal palace at Thebes, accompanies Antigone while she surveys the besieging army from the tower. (Eurip. Phoen. 87— 210.)

Among the Romans the attendance of the tutor on girls as well as boys was much more frequent, as they were not confined at home according to the Grecian custom. (Val. Max. vi. 1. § 3.) As luxury advanced under the emperors, it was strikingly manifested in the dress and training of the beautiful young slaves who were destined to become paedagogi, or, as they were also termed, paedagogia and pueri paedagogiani. (Plin. H. X. xxxiii. 12. s. 54; Sen. Epist. 124, De Vita beata, 17 ; Tertull. Apol. 13.) Augustus assigned to them a separate place, near his own, at the public spectacles. (Sueton. Aug. 44.) Nero gave offence by causing free boys to be brought up in the delicate habits of paedagogi. (Sueton. Ner. 28). After this period numbers of them were attached to the imperial family for the sake of state and ornament, and not only is the modern word page a corruption of the ancient appellation, but it aptly expresses the nature of the service which the paedagogia at this later era afforded.

In palaces and other great houses the pages slept and lived in a separate apartment, which was also called paedagogium. (Plin. Epist. vii. 27.) [J. Y.]