Official policy shifted from remolding delinquents to shaping toddlers

Evidence

The small-scale proposals made for industrial schools in the 1860s now seemed totally out of line with the numbers at risk. By the time of the 1872 commission there was widespread official agreement that the Inlandsche kinderen were neither “inclined nor suitable for manual labor,” and that the plan to make them into craftsmen had failed. Instead, recommendations turned to nurseries and children’s agricultural colonies. The emphasis was less on remolding the recalcitrant than on the shaping of children at an earlier stage. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 758

Categorization

• XREF: The shift in emphasis to earlier-age intervention parallels modern developmental-timing arguments — an epistemic echo worth connecting.