Amish America

When was school ever this much fun?

Amish school gets the job done.  At the same time, the kids have a blast.  After hearing about some of the stuff they get to do, I think I'm ready to re-enroll in fifth grade.

On Friday Daniel and Mary's kids had a spelling quiz (not fun), and made gingerbread houses (fun and tasty).  An excited Lizzie described an unfortunate scooter collision on the way home which resulted in the demise of Dorothy's house and some serious roof damage to Elmer's. 

Lizzie's remained intact though, and she encouraged me to pick off a piece of candy for myself.  I chose a purple gumdrop.

At school, the teacher employs a motivational system that keeps the kids interested and doing a good job.  They are awarded points as a group for completing certain activities.  One example has to do with singing and visitors.

Amish parents, who collectively fund their schools, make time to visit and catch up with the kids' progress.  Daniel plans to go this week, as a matter of fact. 

The kids explained that when visitors drop by they will take time to sing for them.  If the visitor approves, by saying 'good singing', they earn 10 points. 

By completing other exercises--reading tasks, for example--they can tally up points fairly quickly. 

On reaching 100 points, the children pop one of a number of balloons which have descriptions of different activities inside.

One of the balloons contains an activity called 'mix-up' day.  On 'mix-up' day, the school is split into two groups--grades 1-4 and 5-8.  Each student is then randomly assigned a different grade within their group.  He or she then does the work of that grade.          

Little Elmer got bumped up from second to fourth grade.  Dorothy was downgraded from fourth to first. 

One lucky student even gets the role of teacher, who herself becomes a student.  Lord-of-the-flies chaos then ensues.   

(I call it mix-up day, though something tells me this doesn't last a full day.  But I could be wrong.  I forgot to ask).

   

Another balloon activity is 'no time' day.  On 'no time' day, they turn off the clocks and have to guess when certain activities, such as mid-morning recess, begin and end.

The incentive to stretch and shorten time is obvious, and the kids do their best to thwart the teacher's sense of time.

Daniel explained how last time a couple of kids snuck a watch into the school.  The teacher was apparently aware of the watch, but never actually saw it.  The watch-keepers relayed the 'actual' time to the teacher.

School got out a bit early that day.   

Raised Amish, headed to Med school

I quite liked this story on a Sugarcreek, Ohio man who was raised Amish and is now planning to attend medical school at Ohio State.  Obviously, it's not typical for someone who only went through eight grades to have such high educational goals.  In fact, Andy Yoder completed his GED and is now finishing his final semester at Goshen College in Indiana.

The first reason that I found this article appealing was that the family involved seems to have a healthy approach to the idea of their children not being members of the Amish church.  As Andy points out, in some communities people who leave the Amish are shunned...though here it is unclear whether Andy was baptized or not, which would make the difference.  The unbaptized, Amish-raised person is not supposed to be shunned.

Certain Amish churches in the diverse Holmes County, Ohio community are more permissive regarding shunning, while others are more strict.  In practice, certain families having both children that are members of the Amish church and ones that are not may consciously or unconsciously treat them differently, even favoring the baptized ones.

Across the nation, different Amish communities approach shunning differently. Click to read about the different types of shunning.

On the other hand, shunning is one of the main reasons the Amish have been growing at such a fast pace.  If the Amish begin to ignore the practice, it would likely result in decreased growth.  Shunning has been a major point of contention since the Amish group was led away from the Mennonites by Jakob Amman over 300 years ago.  And it remains a point of contention today between different Amish groups. 

The other reason that I liked the story was learning of Andy's plans--to study oncology and return to serve the Amish community.  While you may occasionally meet the home-grown Amish chiropractor or herbalist, the Amish depend on services of the modern medical community just like any other Americans.  Having someone that is fluent in their first language and familiar with their culture can only be a plus. 

Swartzentruber to New Order: Donald Kraybill breaks down four Ohio Amish affiliations

One of my favorite pieces on the Amish is a Donald Kraybill deconstruction of the four main affiliations of Holmes County, Ohio.  This work does a great job of describing the cultural variety found within the Amish world.  Reading it one is reminded of the difficulty of making broad generalizations about Amish society.

The Amish in Holmes County follow a conservative-to-progressive arc that starts with the highly conservative Swartzentrubers, ratchets up a notch on the progressiveness scale with the Andy Weaver affiliated churches, moves into what you may call 'mainstream' Amish territory with the Old Order groups, by far outnumbering the other major affiliations, and closes out with the New Order, which are essentially a horse-and-buggy driving, plain-clothes wearing subset of the Old Order.  These are the four major affiliations and the arc they take (with a number of stops along the way), in the largest and arguably most diverse Anabaptist settlement in the world.

How do the groups compare?  A few excerpts from Kraybill's Plotting Social Change Across Four Affiliations, found in the compilation The Amish Struggle with Modernity:

Schooling:

'One minister estimates that about 75 percent of the New Order children and perhaps 20 percent of the Old Order children attend public schools, but very few if any of the Swartzentrubers do.'

Daylight Savings Time:

'The Amish have historically not adopted "fast" time (daylight saving time), preferring instead the traditional slow time.  This not only enforces Amish separation from the world, but also symbolizes their preference for a traditional pace that rejects what some Amish call "crazy time" and avoids "the rat race."  This measure of separation from the world is also eroding.  The Swartzentrubers, however, continue to reject "fast" time and the Andy Weaver group preaches against it and holds its church services on slow time, but as a result of their involvement in nonfarm work some members are following "fast" time.  The Old Orders and the New Orders, with their growing entanglements in the larger society, have for all practical purposes adopted "fast" time--even for their church services.'

Dress:

'Although the four groups embody distinctive Amish patterns, their costume reflects shrinking separation from the world as one moves toward the New Orders.  Near the progressive end of the continuum men's hair gets shorter, beards are trimmed tighter, hat brims shrink, bonnets get smaller, and brighter colors flourish.  The Swartzentrubers are more likely to go barefoot in the summer and their women to wear the high-top black shoes.  The Swartzentrubers prefer to use as little plastic as possible, forbidding plastic eyeglasses as well as rubber panties for babies.'

Related Posts:

Amish diversity in 'the two Lancaster Counties'

Amish diversity nationwide, and the 'approachability scale'

Daylight savings time and the northern Indiana Amish rat race

Pony Cart: the Amish ATV

Driving the backroads of Amish America you find yourself passing the horse-and-buggy in miniature, with little Amish pilots egging on their diminutive yet sturdy ponies, whipping across front yards or up the shoulder and down to the neighbor's, perhaps to collect a missing ingredient for the casserole mom is working on back at home.

Photo:  Randall Persing

The pony cart serves a useful function in certain parts of Amish society, allowing their 'owners' to practice the skills needed to handle an animal-and-wheeled-vehicle combination.  You don't see them in all places, but they tend to be popular especially in the larger settlements, places such as Holmes County or northern Indiana. 

To be honest, I am not sure if the presence of the pony cart is dictated by the local Ordnung, or more by a particular family's finances and/or sensibilities. 

In a sense, the pony cart is the All-Terrain Vehicle of Amish society--not that the pony cart can go just anywhere (though Amish youth may wish it were so). 

Rather, just as modern country kids tear around on their ATVs, the pony cart is a fun ride for Amish youngsters, and at the same time a fairly hefty expenditure--a luxury item that not all Amish kids will get.

Were I an eight-year old Amish boy, however, I would really be hoping for one of these.  The kids always seem to be having a blast.

'sheep cart' courtesy of Bill Coleman

An insider's opinion on the Amish school

The eight-grades-and-out system has been criticized by some.  One Amish teacher's opinion, (taken from The Amish School, co-authored by Amish schoolteacher Sara E. Fisher and European Mennonite transplant Rachel K. Stahl):

But do Amish schools prepare their children for life?

Amish schools prepare their children to be God-fearing, hardworking, and self-spporting persons. They do not, however, teach them to be self-seeking, ambitious, and competitive.

Amish children learn to support themselves by the work of their hands.  They learn basic business principles, how to borrow and lend money, how to sew their own clothes, plan and cook meals, prepare a field, and drive a horse and buggy team.  Not all of this education happens in the schoolroom, however.  The farm and home are seen as viable places for learning also.

An Amish child is taught not to have selfish needs of privacy, space, recognition, admiration, ambition, and rewards that a child in the larger society absorbs as its birthright.  At a meeting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, commemorating the 1972 Supreme Court ruling on the Amish school sytem, a former Amishman, now with a doctorate in psychology, expressed regrets that he as an Amish child had been born before the Supreme Court ruling.  Consequently, his parents were forced to send him to high school where he learned to have social and personal needs that he had never tasted before.  His sorrowful conclusion was that it is not possible for most Amish children to go to high school and remain Amish.

An Amish child has an enormous sense of security in community.  The practice of mutual aid and caring for one another assures children that they will be supported and kept from complete loneliness, from the time they are born until the time they die.  Leaving that security for the fleeting pleasures of higher education is not only risky, but fearsome for most.

If children do leave the Amish community, their skills and ethics are a solid base for making a living.  In every community where Amish are settled one can find want-ads in the local paper requesting Amish women to help cook, bake, and clean.  The skills of these hardworking people and their conscientious honesty are greatly sought after.

Too rosy a picture?  In any case I think some good points are made here.

'Learned needs' seems to me an interesting concept.  I for one have definitely picked up a few of those I could probably do without!

Recent related posts:

The no-school blues

Back to school (my visit to an Ohio Amish school)

Men in the schoolhouse

The freshman class (Amish 'ninth-grade')

The no-school blues

The Amish commitment to restricting schooling to eight grades is well-known.  But what happens with those individuals who are driven to go further?

In Amish Society, John Hostetler examines the issue. 

'Before the Amish operated their own schools, more Amish youths were exposed to the possibilities of higher education and to teachers who inspired them to continue their education than is the case today.  To become a committed Amish person, a boy or girl who likes school for its own sake must learn to be indifferent toward it.'

Hostetler goes on to look at the stories of three Amish-born individuals who had a profound struggle with their culture's restriction on learning.



Rebecca's story

One of them, 'Rebecca', 'at the age of eighteen turned from her Amish background without having been baptized.   "I read a great many books and anything I could get my hands on.  I tried to persuade my father to let me go to high school.  But he would not.  After grade school I was Amish another six years and this was a very difficult time in my life.  My dissatisfaction began to show in physical ways.  I had no energy, I was anemic.  Nothing interested me.  I didn't fit in with the Amish young people and I sort of despised them for their lack of learning.  I made attempts to be popular among the Amish and dated a few times, but I didn't like it very much.  I was the oldest of eight, and mother kept on having children, and this tied me down and I was constantly resenting this.  I was always running away to read, and I hid books.  When mother was not watching I would read everything I could.'

'When I was eighteen, I thought mother had reached the age when she could have no more children.  Finally, I thought, I could begin to see daylight, have a little more time to myself, and to keep the house neat without working so hard.  Then I learned that mother was pregnant again, and this was the last straw.  I simply could not face this.  I went to the basement and just cried.  I told father I had had enough, I was leaving.  While I packed my suitcase, mother became very upset.  Father knew that mother needed my help.  So we worked out a compromise.  Father said if I would stay until the baby was born, the next year I could go to Bible school.  This was enough for me;  then I could get away and go where there was a library and read.'

Hostetler finishes the tale:  'Rebecca went to college and left the Amish way of life.  Later her brothers and sisters followed her example, and after several more years the whole family left the Old Order Amish faith and joined a Mennonite group.  It is not uncommon for one or two children in a family to break with the tradition with the result that the parents do so later.'

Personally I'm of two minds on this issue.  I lean much more strongly towards the idea that the Amish are doing the right thing with the eighth-grade limit.  As a whole the society produces productive, content individuals.  In many ways they are model citizens.  And if getting to heaven really is the most important task we are engaged in on this planet, well, maybe cutting out some questionable influences is not such a bad idea.

On the other hand, for the ones that truly love learning, I imagine it must be an agonising position to be in, or at least one that doesn't lend itself to an easy resolution.  To choose the Amish path and try to blunt your instincts, to leave or never join and cut yourself out of your cultural base, or to become Amish and hopefully try to figure out acceptable ways to quench your desire for education--it doesn't seem an easy choice.

(Photos today of Lancaster Amish courtesy of Mylene.  Thanks Mylene!  I hope you all keep them coming, also if anyone has a link they would like me to include, feel free to mention that as well.)
 

Book Review: The Happening by Harvey Yoder

Today marks a year since the Nickel Mines School shooting.  Ten girls were shot.  Five perished.  Five lived on.  A community was rocked by an unthinkable loss.  The world watched and learned a rare lesson in forgiveness and grace.

 

'The happening' is the name local Amish attached to the event, and The Happening is author Harvey Yoder's attempt to reconstruct, order, and make sense of the goings-on of that day and of what followed.  Told from the perspective of a student shot that day, 'Rebecca Sue', the work weaves elements of a few girls' factual experiences into the story of an eighth-grader who, wounded herself, also lost a little sister that day.

Why is this a good read?  Shouldn't we move on, as local Amish have implored the media and onlookers to allow them to do?

Yoder has done an excellent job of respectfully telling a story that, as is evident from the telling, some have a deep need to discuss and detail and grieve over, but which others instinctively avoid engaging.

The Amish portrayed here are simply trying to repair themselves, the best they know how.

Much of the work is on that healing process.  Lessons are learned, by English and Amish alike.  Forgiveness is not something that happens one time.  The happening, in essence, does not necessarily refer to one day's events.  The happening is something that continues to happen. 

Nightmares and fear plague the families affected, and not just the ones directly affected:  "The teacher from the Crossroads School said she couldn't understand why one of her third-grade girls did not want to go to the blackboard to do her lessons like usual.  Then she remembered the girl is Miriam's cousin and realized that she's afraid to turn her back to the school door.'

All this underscores something that should be obvious by now:  the Amish are living, breathing human, just like the rest of us.  They forgave--and yes, it was quick--but it wasn't a one-off thing, and it certainly wasn't easy.  They had to do it over, and over, and over again. 

Over time, all the same questions anyone else would have popped up in their minds--they whys and the wondering and the regrets.  Christian teachings of acceptance and faith temper the emotion.  Some feel deeply for the one who caused all their pain, as Rebecca Sue's brother Benuel says:  'For me, I sorrow most of all for Mr. Roberts' soul.  I think of the terrible place where he is now.'

Did the event open the Amish up to outsiders, and vice versa, as some have said has been one unforeseen blessing?  Yoder finds evidence for it here.  A local officer who carried the wounded out of the school that day describes the unity while visiting with Rebecca Sue:  'There were no differences between us.  It did not matter who was Amish or non-Amish.  We were all one, trying to pull ourselves together.'

One year on, the community continues to mend.  Books on the happening were to be expected;  this is one of at least three that have been published so far.  Hopefully this will be one that keeps the lesson of forgiveness alive, and that helps some to continue to heal as well.  As the people in this book discover, holding it in may not be the best way to deal with it.  Going over it all again may just help. 

Rebecca Sue describes one episode of a kindly Mennonite woman's visit to her home, and her outpouring of tears, for the umpteenth time, over the loss of her little sister:

'It was then that I found out how healing tears can be.  Yes, I had cried before, especially at night.  I had cried tears that had bound me all up inside.  This time it was different.  Something opened up within me that day that I had not realized I had been holding back.  When, minutes later, my sobbing had almost stopped, I think the first thing I realized was that the weight inside me was gone.  I heaved a sigh of relief--a great, huge, shaky sigh.'

Get the book at Harvey Yoder's site, harveyyoderbooks.com.

Back to School

The nine-year-old daughter of my friends 'Aden' and 'Elizabeth' invited me to visit her school last Monday.  I couldn't pass that up.  Elizabeth and I walked up a few minutes beforehand;  'Naomi' was already there, so not to miss out on the half-hour of playtime before the first bell.

A vigorous game of six-square was in session when we arrived.  The kids let me join.  We played til 830, when the teacher rang for the kids to come in. 

School began with a prayer in German and then two songs in English. The songs were catchy and had an uplifting spiritual message.  Elizabeth shared her songbook with me as we sat on a bench in the back of the classroom.

Elizabeth had let me know on the way up that I was to be the guest speaker of the day.  The kids got a quick lesson on Poland and learned a few words in Polish.  It went over well.  They were a well-behaved, attentive bunch.

The first subject on tap for the day was math.  The teacher summoned each grade to the front, where they sat in front of her desk and reviewed their lesson.  Meanwhile, the other grades worked diligently at their desks.  She had to hustle towards the end but finished up with the eighth graders just in time for recess.

Amish schools are simple and functional.

They generally are one or two stories, often including a basement, and have playground equipment, usually a softball diamond and swings. Bathroom facilities are outdoor, segregated by gender. 

But there is no standard blueprint for the Amish school.  Steven Nolt and Thomas Meyers in 'An Amish Patchwork' point out some variations in Indiana schools.  They range from very austere structures, resembling glorified sheds, in the ultraconservative Orange County settlement, to big brick 'mega-schools' among the Swiss Amish of Allen County.

In Orange County, you will find no softball diamond, see-saw or swings outside the schools.   No telling what children there do for recess.  Tag?  Hide-and-seek?  No recess?

 
And why are Allen County schoolhouses about double the norm of typical ones?

Nolt and Meyers say this resulted from an arrangement with local authorities to provide bussing.  I've seen some of these Allen schools and they remind one more of the 'mini-factories' or warehouses some Amish industrialists have on their properties.  On certain issues the Amish have proven to be a very adaptive people and this is a good example of that.

Softball was fun.  The kids play hard.  They choose different teams to prevent rivalries from developing, but they still go at it.  And there are some sluggers out there, girls and boys alike.  I got pitching duty and got pummeled. 

One of my first pitches was fouled off, rocketing into the busy thoroughfare that runs past Naomi's school.  Had a car been traveling by at that time, it would have been out a windshield.  Wonder how often that happens.

My morning ended at that, and Elizabeth and I headed home.  Amish schools generally get good marks, and if this little visit was any indication of how they usually run, I can see why. 

The children were well-disciplined and the teacher maintained order as she worked through the material.  The kids get the basics and very few frills, but in Amish society, that seems to do the job pretty well.

Men in the schoolhouse

Male teachers are a rarity in the Amish schoolhouse.

Primarily an occupation for young unmarried women, one father, ‘Robert’, estimated that there were only about a half-dozen male teachers in the Holmes County vicinity, out of approximately 170 one-room schools.  A quick count in the 2005 church directory actually turned up closer to 20, but with many schools having more than one teacher, males still account for only about 6% of the total. 

 

Robert's kids attend one of the few schools taught by a male.  Other parents whom I spoke with seemed to be pleased with this particular teacher. Robert said his boys have a blast on the softball field with him.

But the main reason probably has to do with his experience, being his fifth year of teaching. More experience of course means fewer problems and challenges that the school board, (which consists of local parents) and the other parents would have to deal with.

 

Young women typically will teach for a couple of years before getting hitched. Marriage and the demands of home usually put an end to teaching.

 

I’ve always had the impression that if you can get a male teacher, you take him, rather than a young girl or an ‘old maid’ as Robert, a former teacher himself, put it to me. (in the non-PC Amish world, terms like ‘old maid’ get tossed around all the time). Also a non-PC practice, you end up paying more for a male teacher, especially if he has a family to support.

 

Non-material rewards

Why teach in a one-room schoolhouse? Probably for the same non-material reasons teachers anywhere take up the occupation. Robert acknowledged that it’s not an occupation for everyone, but that ‘when you see the light go on in their eyes’ after trying to get them to understand something, it makes it all worth it.

 

I asked Robert how he managed eight grades in one room. He said you can usually get the older ones going on an assignment while you devote more attention to the younger ones. The first and second graders require the most work; you have to get it right with them or otherwise you’ll have ‘stress all the way through’. Trying to handle so much at once causes time to really fly, he said, and you have to hustle to get a lesson done before the next recess break.

 

How do the Amish react to the idea of outsiders teaching in their schools?  Teachers are almost always from the community. Occasionally a Mennonite person or, very rarely, an English person may teach.

 

I was asked last summer if I would consider teaching for a certain Indiana school which was having a tough time finding someone in time for the start of school. One of the fathers was going to have to cover in the meantime. After speaking with Robert, now I kind of wish I’d taken them up on the offer.

 

Earlier this week I had the chance to visit an Amish schoolhouse and observe classes.  I also pulled pitching duty for softball at recess.  More on that in the next post. 

Not that Winesburg

 

WHEN I was in college, I read a book by Sherwood Anderson called Winesburg, Ohio.  I remember it as a mostly downbeat collection of vignettes of small town life.  As I recall it was firmly entrenched in the university Lit canon.  Inspired Hemingway or something like that.

This is not that Winesburg.  Anderson's town was fictional.

The real Winesburg, Ohio also happens to be a sleepy little spot on the map.  It's got some very nice old homes, a museum, family-style restaurant and a general store that dishes out free coffee.  Buggies pass by frequently.  The public school in town, like many in Eastern Holmes County, educates a number of Amish children along with the English ones.

It's one of my favorite spots in the settlement--a bit off the map but a lovely place to stroll through.

Auctions, sales, auctions

I dropped in on a local auction last week, set up to benefit a Winesburg-area school.  The attendance breakdown was about 90% Amish, 10% English and Mennonite.  I grabbed a paper bag full of salty-sweet kettle corn, an ice water and plopped down.  The auction was in full swing.  Bows, boots, lots of hunting stuff.  Two auctioneers, one Amish, one a youth who could have been Amish as well.  How do they speak that fast?

Auctions, or simply, 'sales', are a chance for Amish to socialize, grab some good food, and maybe get a good deal on something while raising money for a good cause.  They're often held for schools or families in need or even for international causes, as in the long-running Haiti auction, held in Ohio each year as well as in Pennsylvania and Indiana.  I had a chance to drop in on the Haiti event as well about two weeks ago in Mount Hope. 

Delicious Haitan rice and beans with fried plantains was among the food on offer, along with the standard rhubarb pies and barbecued chicken and so on.

A local Amish woman mentioned that she enjoys the Haiti Auction because it draws so many types of Anabaptist peoples--not only Amish from other states but many different Mennonite groups--from the Old Order to the more progressive affiliations.  There was certainly a diverse mix of garb on display that day.