An Amish Paradox

by Charles E. Hurst

  Meeting the health care needs of these individuals can be very expensive, however, especially since the state government began requiring that families receiving health insurance from the Bureau for Children with Medical Handicaps apply for Medicaid first. This state-run insurance program had covered more than five hundred Amish children with birth defects and special needs such as cystic fibrosis and bleeding disorders. Unwilling to officially sanction enrollment in Medicaid, Amish have had to solicit donations to a newly created Ohio Crippled Children’s Fund to offset the loss of funds. Nevertheless, “we do have some bishops who are willing to approve Medicaid,” noted the administrator of the Holmes County Training Center. “I would guess about 20 percent of the Amish here at the Center are on Medicaid, and several have done it without the bishop’s consent.” An Old Order mother whose son was suffering from bipolar disorder told us that it was not impossible for Amish to get government assistance when the bills got too high. She recounted a visit from the bishop about her son’s medical bills after the church had recommended they not use Medicaid. “How are you doing financially? Did you get help?” he asked. To her reply that, yes, they were getting assistance, he simply said, “I’m glad.”

  According to a staff member who makes visits to Amish homes, Amish clients at the Holmes County Training Center are easy to work with because “they have such good genealogy records and because families are so close—we can do the histories very easily.” Once in a while the Amish inclination to use alternative treatments strikes staff members as misguided. “We’ve had infants with seizure conditions that were being treated with herbs and chiropractors,” noted one teacher. On the Amish side, support has been very strong, though there have been a few issues around exposure to televisions in the facility or unwanted publicity. “We had a basketball team that went to state for the Special Olympics in 2004, and we had two Amish players,” remembered the director. “Their picture was in the paper, and I had to write a letter of apology because one of the kids said his dad was upset.” But the support of Amish family members can be inspirational. The director of the center recalled a client whose parents passed away suddenly. “We had to change the bus route every week because his siblings were sharing the burden of taking care of him, one week at a time.” In another case, a couple had not had a vacation in all their married life because of taking care of their son. Plans are under way to build a respite home, where families can drop off their loved ones for short-term overnight stays when they need relief from the burden of care.

  The Amish approach to education of special-needs children is thus indicative of their ongoing negotiation with the outside world. They are extremely grateful for the public school options for their children and for the care provided by doctors and nurses in area hospitals and clinics. Many avail themselves of these facilities if they are convinced it will make a difference, and a few even accept Medicaid. At the same time, the cost, the distances to travel, and the unwanted outside influences that come with repeated exposure to public institutions have led to a growing attempt within the Amish community to provide services for special-needs children in their own schools. This trend is likely to continue in the foreseeable future, as the Amish nurture a cadre of special-education teachers who are skilled at working with mildly handicapped children.

  Diverse Responses to Educational Choice

  The Amish have worked to minimize their contact with non-Amish society for the purpose of keeping their community intact and tightly integrated. This high degree of cultural cohesion and insularity is one factor behind the relative success they have had in resisting mainstream schooling compared to other ethnic-religious minorities. The favorable economic environment—access to sizable markets, a large tourist industry, and the positive public perception of Amish products—has also enhanced the attractiveness of Amish schooling and the Amish faith to young people.40

  But macroeconomic, technological, and legal changes continue to impinge on the Amish community, voluntarily or involuntarily, directly or indirectly. Their infiltration results in the creation of “weak ties” between some Amish and some English, which construct a bridge between the two groups. These ties into a community with strong bonds like the Amish essentially create a conduit through which new ideas and material goods can flow. A bridge that admits outsiders into a tight-knit community, in other words, can create wide diffusion within it. On the micro level, such a bridge emerges when Amish men have to seek out new kinds of employment because of the unavailability of land or the high costs associated with farming. Another bridge is formed when Amish choose to send their children to public schools. While this link creates greater integration, and perhaps greater trust, between the Amish and English communities, it has the potential to lead to fragmentation and dissent within the Amish community.

  The increasing number of weak ties appearing in the Amish community encourage the development of numerous internal contradictions, which manifest themselves, in part, in the variety of educational responses elicited among the Amish. In reaction to these contradictions, the Amish have gone down several different educational paths, all of which probably have different levels of effectiveness in keeping the Amish community insulated or, conversely, helping create fissures within it.

  At least two of these educational responses are seen by the relevant constituents as promoting continuity among the Amish. Amish parochial schools are controlled by an Amish board, Amish parents, and Amish teachers. It is probably in this situation that the greatest isomorphism exists between schooling and the Amish way of life. Consequently, it is here that the reproduction of Amish social and cultural capital is most likely to occur.41

  A second major response that encourages perpetuation of the Amish way of life is the public school composed entirely of Amish students. It is worth noting that the Amish exodus from public schools from the 1940s on was primarily a reaction to the consolidation of public schools.42 When schools remain small, and community values trump individual agency, Amish parents are often happy to keep their children in public schools, because the exposure to non-Amish students and a more varied curriculum occurs in limited doses.

  A third response, homeschooling, privileges agency over structure by putting a child’s education directly into the hands of his or her parents. It is debatable whether this approach encourages cultural continuity. Parents who homeschool make the argument, consistent with the thinking of many New Order congregations, that this approach allows for a more self-conscious articulation and deeper understanding of the values on which Amish community rests. Criticisms of homeschooling, more common among the Old Order Amish, emphasize that community is a lived experience, which is threatened when families withdraw from the schooling process.

  A fourth Amish educational response is to send their children to public schools that also serve significant numbers of English children. This is the response that is most accommodating to the outside pressures that the Amish increasingly face and yet may intensify internal contradictions within their community. For example, in our survey of Amish adults, we found that, on the one hand, “obedience to parents” and “self control” were considered most important as qualities in their children, while “taking the name of the Lord in vain,” and “mocking other children” were considered to be the most serious infractions. On the other hand, individuality, free thought, and creativity are cherished in public schools, resulting in a contradiction between Amish and some public school values. The public school also creates another dilemma for the Amish in that the latter desire to retain a certain “ideal” world, whereas the public school’s emphasis is on the need to adapt to the “real” world in which they may have to seek employment. A third dilemma follows when Amish adults see the need for new skills and training but want to avoid becoming too “smart.” As one Amish woman put it: “We’re not into school to get smart … we can’t get too smart if we are to avoid ‘bad pride.’” One way that the Amish navigate this dilemma is by selecting courses cafeteria-styl
e or by pursuing a GED. In effect, these actions constitute a fifth educational response to the social, economic, and cultural pressures the Amish have encountered.

  Walking an Educational Tightrope

  To maintain the integrity of their community, the Amish are walking a very thin tightrope on both sides of which are hazards that can undermine the gemeinschaft quality of their settlement. There is a desire to maintain control over education so as to ensure continuity of Amish lifestyles but also a pragmatic concern to provide for children an education that will serve them well economically in a changing occupational and technological context. Simultaneous emphases on tradition and pragmatism encourage the proliferation of educational choices, including the “straddling approach”: sending one’s children to public schools in the early years and shifting to the parochial schools in later years—“the best of both worlds,” as one Amish parent put it. One outcome of this tendency among Holmes County Amish to use public schools is that it “exerts pressure on the private schools to offer a comparable education.”43

  The diversification of educational strategies is further intensified because Amish of different affiliations view the crosscutting pressures for tradition and economic pragmatism differently. For each group, the question is not whether to change, but which version of change is most acceptable. The Swartzentruber Amish have opted for a “batten down the hatches” approach that allows for only the smallest degree of change. The Andy Weaver, Old Order, and New Order Amish view such an approach as a recipe for cultural and economic obsolescence, preferring instead, to varying degrees, to make greater accommodations to the changing world around them. But since each group has a different view of what counts as “tradition” as well as what counts as “economic pragmatism,” their educational strategies necessarily differ.

  In this respect, it is worth noting the relative silence of Old Order and New Order church leaders on the issue of school choice, a silence that has indirectly allowed these varying modes of accommodation to play out.44 If the control of their children’s socialization is so important to the Amish, why have church leaders refrained from adding to the Ordnung a requirement that parents send their children to private Amish schools? Part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that some Amish parents and many grandparents, including church leaders, were educated in the public schools and had very positive experiences. They value the quality of education they received from certified teachers and the worldly “know-how” and English friends that came from exposure to this outside institution. They see no reason to change course as long as the public schools continue to meet their needs. In addition, practicality and timing undoubtedly play a role. Although a rule to require parochial school attendance would certainly have many supporters, it is much easier for church leaders to ban a new practice than one that has a long history. Ultimately, however, the preservation of the right to school choice among the Amish reflects the recognition that some measure of individual and family autonomy is necessary for the healthy functioning of a collectivist society.

  CHAPTER 6

  Work Within and Outside Tradition

  They are the farm. The farm is them.

  —An Old Order farmer

  The dynamic and shifting nature of the Amish economic structure has been well documented,1 and the Holmes County Settlement has not been immune to these broad changes. As they work to maintain core cultural values, the Amish are also among those leading in the development of new economic methods and technologies. They struggle to remain true to their Christian beliefs while being buffeted by a storm of economic changes. How have they negotiated the pressures that continually confront them?

  This chapter offers an overview of Amish economic activities in Holmes County2 and how those activities widen and deepen ties with outside society; it then explores in more detail the consequences that have followed the movement out of farming and examines variations that exist among different Amish orders with respect to work choices, wages, and uses of technology. The final two sections of the chapter consider how the Amish have addressed the potential dangers of growing wealth within their community and discuss new areas of enterprise that serve as models for many people in the English community.

  The Amish in the Holmes County Context

  In 2006 Holmes County had an estimated population of more than forty-one thousand, of which less than 2 percent were members of racial or ethnic minority groups. Just over 70 percent (195,000 acres) of the county’s area is composed of farms averaging 109 acres in size. Although the farms in Holmes County are smaller, on average, than those in Ohio as a whole, they have proved to be among the most productive and energy-efficient farms in the United States.3 In 2002 the average farm in Holmes County yielded sales of $53,645, and total sales for all farms exceeded $97 million.4

  Despite the past and continuing success of agriculture in the county, the proportion of Amish in full-time farming has dropped significantly. Between 1988 and 2000, the percentage of men who were farmers fell from 33 percent to 17 percent,5 and it has continued to decline to below 10 percent. The trend away from farming in Holmes County is consistent with that found in Pennsylvania and Indiana Amish communities,6 but the specific patterns of change have varied among the states. In the Elkhart-LaGrange Settlement in Indiana, a large proportion of Amish have taken factory jobs; in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, because of its proximity to major metropolitan areas, the shift away from farming has been accompanied by greater dependency on tourism, commercialism, and large-scale Amish enterprises.

  As land costs have soared, it has become increasingly expensive to farm full time. In discussing how local Amish farmers scramble to survive, an Amish business leader concluded that “the biggest thing that probably has affected us is the price of land. You know, it’s really difficult for farmers to survive without it.” Land costs have been driven up by business growth and home developers, but in addition, demand by the Amish themselves for land has created higher costs.

  A local real estate representative who has worked with the Amish for decades says that the “Amish dictate the land prices in the area,” and as a result many of them have sought residences in counties in other parts of the state. Amish “will buy hunting land as a retirement plan … they’d rather buy land than stocks … A 22-year-old buys land as an investment, buys for $30,000 and sells three years later for $60,000.” A young Amish wife agrees, contending that “the reason the land prices are so high is because the Amish have money. They view it as a good investment.”

  There are some differences among the Amish, however, in the selling and buying of land. Swartzentruber Amish are more likely than others to buy and sell among themselves. Even if they could make more money by selling land to someone else, they will probably keep it in their family if they can. “One Swartzentruber family could have got $1–2 million for their Wayne County farm and moved to southern Ohio and bought eight farms, but they sold it to one of their own for $200,000.”7 Another factor, however, is that the lack of plumbing and septic systems on Swartzentruber properties makes it very difficult to sell them to anyone except another Swartzentruber family.

  Consequently, despite the heavily rural nature of Holmes County, 93 percent of the 26,897 employees in the county in 2005 were nonfarm wage or salary workers because of the high cost of land; only about 7 percent of employees worked on farms. The same trend is found among proprietors. Three-fourths of Holmes County’s 8,280 proprietors were in nonfarm businesses in 2005. Some Amish churches have no farmers among their ranks, and some families have no farmers among six or more brothers. Referring to three churches with which he is familiar, an Old Order Amish man commented that “most heads of families … work in lumber mills, building crews, furniture factories, saw mills and … I’ll bet there is a dozen that we’d call millionaires.” Manufacturing is the dominant employer in the county. In 2005, when just over 12 percent of Ohio’s employment was in manufacturing, 28 percent, or 7,530, of the employees in Holmes County worked in
manufacturing. Manufacturing was by far the dominant type of industrial employment.8 Wayne-Dalton Corporation, which produces garage doors and openers; Weaver Leather Goods Inc., which makes custom leather products; and Case Farms Inc., a poultry-processing plant, are among the major manufacturing firms.

  Employment in retail trade has also grown as tourism continues to increase. In 2002, for example, retail sales totaled almost $351 million, compared to $242 million just five years earlier. In 2005 visitors alone spent more than $300 million in Wayne and Holmes Counties.9 Hotel accommodations and restaurants, which cater heavily to visitors, had sales exceeding $34 million in 2002, an increase of about 25 percent over 1997. The number of nonfarm businesses grew in Holmes County from 623 in 1990 to 1,049 in 2004.10 In the communities of Berlin and Walnut Creek, two of the major tourist hubs in Holmes County, retail trade, manufacturing, hotels, and food establishments constituted more than half of all the industries present in 2005.11 In that same year, about four thousand people were employed in the tourism industry in Holmes County.12