European vocational schools aimed to deter working-class youth from trade unions

Evidence

Some historians have argued that such schools had another purpose altogether: namely, to deter working-class youth from the growing trade union movement. Here too assessments of indolence and insolence converged. Not infrequently, supporters and critics of the Indies ambacht initiative noted a working-class “preference for leisure” and lack of workdrive (werklust) in the Netherlands, as well. Authorities who questioned whether the Netherlands was up to the technical and motivational challenge of industrialization saw the pairing of “insolence” and “indolence” as a dangerous political expression of the Dutch working class. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 733

Categorization

• XREF: Moralizing about ‘indolence and insolence’ resonates with the reader’s interest in colonial moral panics and respectability.