Officials disputed whether children’s agricultural colonies reformed or punished indigent Europeans

Evidence

Critics saw these isolated agricultural children’s colonies, so lauded as ideal sites to nurture independence and self-sufficiency, as a harsh and punitive means to reform the colony’s European poor. Director of Education Stortenbeker, writing in 1876, was amazed at how benign the Mettray model was considered by other authorities, and labeled the projected plan what he thought it really was: Such plans force a question. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 781