The Dutch closed the Soerabaja craft school because it was succeeding, not failing

Evidence

If a work ethic dominated these debates, at least one person saw it as a distraction from what was the real concern of authorities. Van Hoëvell, that outspoken and seasoned critic of the Indies administration, characteristically veered from the normative discourse and turned the story on its head. He contended that the government had systematically sabotaged the first craft school in Soerabaja from the start. The school was closed not because it was failing but because it promised to be a resounding success. He described a flourishing experiment in 1853, enthusiastically supported by the then Governor-General Duymaer van Twist. There were more private donors each year, a stream of committed and energetic students, and evident confidence in the pedagogic venture among the families whose sons were enrolled. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 693

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the colonial state’s fear of autonomous, educated mixed-race subjects — a case study in development blocked by political anxiety rather than failure.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the ‘On Sacrifice’ piece’s theme of colonial/sacral power fearing autonomous subjects — and to ‘Grafting & Growth’ insofar as education-as-trees analogy could run.