The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  TABLE 7.1

  Turning Points in the Amish School Controversy

  Under the vocational program, an Amish teacher held classes three hours per week for a dozen or so fourteen-year-olds in an Amish home. The youth recorded their work activities and studied English, math, spelling, and vocational subjects. Attendance records were submitted to the state. But in essence the children were under the guidance of their parents for most of the week, an astonishing victory for the Amish.22 It was a victory that Lancaster County School Superintendent Arthur Mylin called “ridiculous.” Nevertheless, the vocational school arrangement continues today.

  The inauguration of the vocational program silenced debate on high school attendance, but it camouflaged a more serious issue stalking the Amish—the consolidation of public elementary schools. Elementary consolidation was gaining momentum by the mid-1950s. The Amish refused to send their children to the consolidated schools or, in some townships, to new junior high schools.23 They had always resisted busing children to faraway classrooms with strange teachers and children, but it was the use of television in public elementary schools that incensed them, according to one Amishman. Beleaguered by political fights and imprisonment, the Amish decided to withdraw from the bargaining table once and for all and build their own schools. Thus, over the years, the Amish of Lancaster County have built and operated some 160 one-room elementary schools.

  THE FEAR OF EDUCATION

  Back to our riddle: Why did the Amish, in the words of preacher Jacob Zook, make such a “big stink” about education? Why were these gentle people willing to be arrested, fined, and imprisoned? What provoked them to hire attorneys, lobby legislators, solicit signatures, and circulate petitions? A scrutiny of the statements they wrote during the struggle reveals their objections to modern education. In short, they did not want to lose control of education, to have it pulled out of their rural cultural context. For religious endorsement, they appealed to the Bible, the teachings of Christ, the examples of the apostles, the witness of Anabaptist martyrs, their Amish forebears, tradition, and conscience as well as religious liberty granted by the Constitution.

  Numerous themes echoed throughout their litany of protest:24

  (1) Location. The Amish wanted a local school, preferably one within walking distance. They did not want their children bused away.

  (2) Size. They objected to large consolidated schools where pupils were sorted into separate rooms and assigned different teachers each year. The Amish repeatedly pled for the one-room school, which had served them so well in the past.

  (3) Control. They believed that schools should be under the local community’s control. According to their interpretation of the Bible, parents were responsible for nurturing and training their children.

  (4) Length. While they supported local one-room elementary education, the Amish felt that children belonged at home after the elementary grades. Parents also campaigned for a shorter (eight-month) school year so that children could help with spring planting.

  (5) Teachers. They wanted teachers who were trustworthy and also sympathetic to Amish values and rural ways. The Amish refused, in their words, to just “hand their children over” to professional educators.

  (6) Curriculum. They argued that high schools lauded “worldly wisdom,” a phrase they borrowed from the Martyrs Mirror. Worldly wisdom clashed with “wisdom from above.” A favorite scripture stated clearly that the wisdom of man was foolishness in the eyes of God (1 Cor. 1:18–28). Furthermore, knowledge “puffeth up” and makes one proud (1 Cor. 8:1). Citing still another scripture, the Amish insisted that worldly philosophy would spoil their children (Col. 2:8). Evolution, science, and sex education in the public school curriculum symbolized the vanity of worldly wisdom.

  (7) Mode. Although they use textbooks in their own schools today, the Amish have always stressed the limits of “book learning.” They repeatedly argued for practical training guided by example and experience. They stressed learning manual skills, for they believed that they should earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Book learning, they feared, would lead their youth away from manual work. They wanted an Amish equivalent of internships and apprenticeships supervised by parents.

  (8) Peers. Too much association with worldly friends, they feared, would corrupt their youth and lead to marriage and other forms of “unequal yoking” with outsiders.

  (9) Consequences. The paramount fear lurking beneath all the concerns was that modern education would lead Amish youth away from farm and faith and would undermine the church. The wisdom of the world, said Amish sages, “makes you restless, wanting to leap and jump and not knowing where you will land.” In the final analysis, they knew that modern education would deplete their cultural and social capital and, in the long run, ruin the church.

  Religious reasons undergirded Amish objections to consolidated modern education. But could not these spiritual explanations be brushed aside for economic ones? Were not children essential to the maintenance of a labor-intensive farm economy? Both religious and economic factors partially explain the stubborn Amish resistance to modern education; however, a deeper reading of the bargaining sessions provides some additional clues to why these gentle people resorted to political action in order to preserve humility.

  SOLVING THE RIDDLE

  An Amish leader provided hints to the deeper reason for rejecting progressive education when he described Amish opposition to high school: “With us, our religion is inseparable with a day’s work, a night’s rest, a meal, or any other practice; therefore, our education can much less be separated from our religious practices.”25 An Amish farmer said: “They tell me that in college you have to pull everything apart, analyze it and try to build it up from a scientific standpoint. That runs counter to what we’ve been taught on mother’s knee” (emphasis added). Although few articulated it as eloquently as these people, the Amish realized that the consolidated high school, designed to homogenize different cultures, would also destroy them. Indeed, a major purpose of public education is to integrate diverse students into a common national culture.

  The engineering logic of specialization and efficiency—so successful in producing radios and Model T Fords on the assembly line—was being applied to education, resulting in large educational factories for hundreds of students. Having rejected the Model T, the Amish also feared the new model of education. They intuitively grasped that modern schools would immerse their youth in mainstream culture. Such an education, outside an Amish context, would divorce Amish youth from their ethnic past. Despite their eighth-grade education, Amish parents realized that progressive education would fracture their traditional culture. Today dozens of one-room Amish schools, woven into Amish culture, stand as the antithesis of modern, specialized education.

  An embodiment of modernity, the consolidated school was a Great Separator. High school education would separate children from their parents, their traditions, and their values. Education would become decontextualized—separated from the daily setting of Amish life. The Amish world, tied together by religious threads of meaning, would be divided into component parts: academic disciplines, courses, classes, grades, and multiple teachers. Even religion would be studied, analyzed, and eventually separated from family, history, and daily life. It would become just another subject for critical analysis. Professional specialists—educated in worldly universities and separated from the Amish in time, culture, and training—would be entrusted with nurturing their precious children. Such experts would encourage Amish youth to maximize their potential by pursuing more education to “liberate” themselves from the shackles of parochialism. By stirring aspirations and raising occupational hopes, the experts would steer Amish youth away from farm and family or would certainly encourage restlessness if they did decide to stay at home.

  Passing from teacher to teacher and from subject to subject in an educational assembly line, Amish students would encounter bewildering ideas that would challenge their folk wisdom. The same t
eacher would not trace a child’s performance in several subjects or have the delight of seeing a student mature over several years. Moreover, Amish parents would be severed from the curriculum, policies, and authorities that would indoctrinate their youth. Abstract textbooks, written by distant specialists, would encourage intellectual pursuits that surely would turn manual labor into drudgery. Most importantly, public schools would plunge Amish youth into social settings teeming with non-Amish. High school friendships with outsiders would make it easier to leave the church in later years. Finally, high school would separate Amish children from humility. In an environment that champions individuality, they would become self-confident, arrogant, and proud. Academic competition would foster individual achievement and independence, which in turn would diminish Gelassenheit and sever dependency on the ethnic community.

  In sum, the high school, a merchant of modernity, would sell young Amish a new set of values that would pull them from their past. The intellectual climate—rational thought, critical thinking, scientific methods, symbolic abstractions—would breed impatience with the slow pace of Amish life and erode the authority of Amish tradition. Amish youth would learn to scrutinize their culture with an analytic coolness that would threaten the bishops’ power. In all of these ways, high schools would cultivate a friendship with modernity and encourage youth to leave their birthright church. The Amish did not define the threat in such rational ways, but they understood its menace.

  The goals of Amish education differ drastically from the agenda of contemporary education. Amish schools are designed to prepare Amish youth for successful careers in Amish life, not in mainstream society. By all accounts, Amish schools meet their objectives well. Amish schools create cultural and social capital by controlling the flow of ideas and social interaction. The schools build upon ethnic ties and stifle relationships with outsiders—all of which increases dependence on the church. The boycott of high school obstructs the path leading to marriage with outsiders, preparation for professional careers, and participation in civic life.

  Abstract and analytical modes of thought are simply not encouraged in Amish schools. The teachers propagate ideas and values that undergird the ethnic social system. Overlapping networks of like-minded others within the small school insulate the child from rival explanations of reality and help to keep Amish ideology intact. The schools are an important link in the process of socialization that reproduces the values and structures of Amish society.

  School children practice for a parents’ day program. Colorful chalk artwork is on the blackboard. The teacher is on the far right, her assistant is on the left.

  To Moderns, this is indeed a provincial education that restricts consciousness—and so it is. But in a society where an expanded consciousness is not the highest virtue, Amish schools have ably passed on the traditions of faith to new generations. Indeed, they are one of the prime reasons for the growth and vitality of Amish life. These islands of provincialism may not stretch Amish consciousness, but they do provide secure and safe settings for the emotional and social development of children. And that is the solution to our riddle. In order to protect the meek ways of Gelassenheit, these normally gentle people had to bargain aggressively with imperialistic forces that sought to enlighten them with a worldly education, an education that in time might have destroyed them.

  AMISH SCHOOLS TODAY

  Today, with few exceptions, children in the Lancaster settlement attend one-room private schools staffed by Amish teachers.26 In some cases, the Amish bought one-room schoolhouses when the public townships discarded them. Most recently, they have built their own schools. However, the twenty-year transition to Amish schools (1955–75) provoked some internal debate. Some Amish parents wanted to send their children to public elementary schools to give them more opportunities to interact with outsiders. However, the interest of such parents in public education quickly waned upon the arrival of sex education, television, and the teaching of evolution. These developments prodded the rapid growth of Amish schools. In 1950 there were only three Amish schools, but by 1975 there were sixty-two.

  Today more than 4,700 Amish pupils attend nearly 160 private schools in the Lancaster settlement, as shown in Figure 7.1.27 On average, thirty-one students attend the one-room schools, which are typically built on the edge of an Amish farm. Throughout eight grades they learn spelling, English, German, mathematics, geography, and history. Although taught by Amish teachers, classes are conducted in English. Practical skills, applicable to everyday Amish life, are emphasized rather than abstract and analytic ones. Science is excluded from the curriculum.

  The values of obedience, tradition, and humility eclipse rationality, competition, and diversity. Whereas modern high school students write analytical essays, conduct scientific experiments, and learn to think critically, Amish youth prepare for apprenticeships in farming, crafts, business, and manual trades—where experience counts more than a degree. Devotional exercises—Scripture reading, singing, and repeating the Lord’s Prayer—are held each morning, but religion is not taught. To teach religion as an academic subject would objectify it and open the door for critical analysis. The Amish believe that formal religious training belongs in the domain of the family and church. They hope that religion permeates the school “all day long in our curriculum and in the playgrounds.” This goal is accomplished “by not cheating in arithmetic, by teaching cleanliness and thrift in health, by saying what we mean in English, by learning to make an honest living from the soil in geography, and by teaching honesty, respect, sincerity, humbleness, and the golden rule on the playground.”28

  A one-room Amish school is a beehive of orderly activity as a teacher moves around the room teaching about thirty pupils in eight grades. Fresh cut flowers sit on the teacher’s desk, colorful chalk art decorates a side of the blackboard, smiley stickers adorn pages of completed homework, seventeen straw hats hang in a row on the back wall, and a paddle stands near the teacher’s desk. Some teachers work with two grades at a time. While some students come forward to work on the blackboard or recite answers, others quietly do their lessons or help each other. Hands are frequently in the air, asking permission to sharpen pencils, clarify an assignment, or go to the outhouse. Order prevails amidst the hum of activity, and students receive a great deal of personal attention from the teacher as well as help from peers. At recess a mother brings Popsicles to celebrate her daughter’s birthday. A middle-aged professional photographer seeing this sight for the first time was moved to tears as he muttered quietly, “This is the way it should be compared to our modern commotion.”

  FIGURE 7.1 The Growth of Schools in the Lancaster Settlement, 1940–2010. Source: Blackboard Bulletin, November 2000. Estimate for 2010 based on current trends.

  Amish schools lack the educational trappings taken for granted in public schools—sports programs, dances, physical education, cafeterias, field trips, clubs, bands, choruses, computers, guidance counselors, and principals. Even new Amish schools are copycat buildings—all constructed alike from an 1877 blueprint for a cost of about $35,000, which includes books and other supplies. Battery-operated clocks, gas lanterns, coal stoves, hand-pumped water, and outdoor toilets are the typical accessories in an Amish school. Many of the textbooks are produced by Amish publishers.29 Recess breaks in the morning and afternoon provide “time-out” for recreation. Spelling bees and recitation by class groups are common. Children usually carry their lunches in colorful plastic lunch boxes. Since 1975 the Amish have also operated several “special schools” for students with various physical and learning disabilities.30

  Amish parents control their schools. They elect a three- to five-member school board that oversees the school’s operation. In some cases a board may administer up to three schools. The school board hires and fires teachers, maintains the building, and advises on curriculum. Other parents are involved with the school through visits, work “frolics,” and special programs. The Amish support their own schools through two t
axes collected by the treasurer of the board. Members pay a head tax to support the schools, and in addition, parents pay a fee for each pupil. On the average it costs about $400 per year to educate an Amish child, about one-twentieth of the $8,000 it costs to educate one in a local public school. Nevertheless, the Amish in Lancaster County also pay millions of dollars each year in real estate taxes to support public education. In contrast to some public schools, where parents are kept at arm’s length by professional educators, Amish schools give parents free access to the curriculum, instruction, and administration. In all ways, the schools are locally owned and operated.

  The teachers are typically single Amish women who were educated through the eighth grade in Amish schools. Teachers typically earn $40 to $50 per day, or about $8,000 per year. This is about one-sixth of the pay of their public school counterparts, not to mention their lack of benefits. They are not state certified but are selected on the basis of their natural interest in teaching, their academic ability, and their endorsement of esteemed Amish values—faith, sincerity, and willingness to learn from other teachers.31 Whereas modern school administrators recruit teachers on the basis of degrees, certification, and professional skills, the Amish believe the foremost qualification is “good Christian character.”32 Ironically, these nonprofessional Amish teachers—free of the typical restrictions imposed by principals, professional organizations, and bureaucratic classroom policies—have great latitude to shape curriculum and policies according to their best judgment.