Students enjoy the delights of community over lunch.
The Old Order Book Society provides guidelines for curriculum and administration to encourage uniformity across the schools.33 Amish teachers must support church values, but in contrast to professional teachers, they have an astonishing amount of freedom to shape their instructional setting. Typically, teachers are on probation for the first three years until they have proven themselves.34 Each year several countywide teachers’ meetings provide opportunities to receive teaching tips from experienced teachers. In addition, an Amish teachers’ magazine, the Blackboard Bulletin, is a helpful source of ideas and encouragement for teachers. In Amish schools, cultural integrity triumphs over specialized expertise.
What are the outcomes of Amish schools? Research evidence from other settlements suggests that, on the average, Amish students perform as well as other rural non-Amish students in basic quantitative skills, spelling, and word usage.35 While Moderns ask whether Amish schools compare favorably with public ones, the more important question is how well an education prepares pupils for adulthood in their society. On that issue, Amish schools fare as well as if not better than many public schools. The vitality of Amish culture certifies the ability of its schools to prepare its pupils for a successful life in Amish society.
THE MELLOW YEARS
The social continuity in an Amish school is astonishing. In some instances, all the children in one family will have the same teacher for all eight grades. And unlike modern children, who may have as many as fifty different teachers by the time they graduate from high school, many Amish children have had only one teacher. Parents relate to one teacher, who over the years develops a keen understanding of the family’s idiosyncracies. A teacher may relate to as few as ten families in a school year because several children come from the same family. Older children tutor younger ones. On the playground, like-minded Amish play together with cousins and neighbors, insulated from the contamination of outside culture. In the Amish school, sacred and secular, moral and academic, spiritual and intellectual, public and private spheres are not mixed together; they have never been separated.
Although some may occasionally take high school correspondence courses, Amish children rarely attend high school. Even Amish teachers are urged to prepare for teaching through self-education rather than correspondence courses. Young shop workers occasionally take short courses in specialized mechanics, but few Amish youth aspire to go to high school. Describing high school, a minister said: “There’s no longing for it, no call for it. It’s rarely mentioned. I don’t know of anybody who would want to go.” For the occasional youth who does attend high school or college, separation from the church is painful if the youth is a member.
A professional social worker, excommunicated by the Amish church prior to her senior year in college, described trying to dissuade her bishop from excommunicating her: “He was a just and deeply caring person. I met him out in the field. I asked questions about education and sin and tried my best to make him understand that I wanted to continue both my education and my membership in the Amish community. He would not say that further education was a sin and he agonized in his efforts to explain why excommunication was necessary if I would not repent. Both of us were sensitive and hurt deeply; we cried unashamedly.”36
The relationship between the Amish and public education officials mellowed after the Amish received the blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972. Some legislators share pending regulations with Amish leaders for reaction and counsel. In some cases, informal agreements spell out mutual expectations. Amish schools, for instance, are typically heated by coal stoves in the classroom because they rarely have basements. Building basements for the sole purpose of housing furnaces would have been quite costly. However, state fire regulations prohibit furnaces in open classrooms. After several discussions, state officials agreed to overlook the furnace requirements. In addition to heating systems, a variety of other issues have been quietly solved behind the scenes with state officials over the years in favor of the Amish—water testing, teacher certification, attendance reports, immunization, Worker’s Compensation, and unemployment benefits among others.37
In the mid-1980s new regulations called for schools to be state certified. This was a rather perfunctory process for the Amish. According to an Amish spokesman, state officials agreed to honor past informal agreements and not impose new regulations if the Amish, in turn, would agree not to obstruct the pending legislation. Free to set their own standards, the Amish designed and printed their own certification forms. A few descriptive facts on each school are reported on the certification form, which is sent to the state each year. Schools are required to be open 180 days a year. “For many things,” an Amish spokesman said, “it is better if we don’t even ask state officials because it just puts them on the spot.” The bitter struggles of early years have been replaced with benign neglect and mutual respect.
All things considered, the Amish have held the upper hand in the thirty-six-year dispute that finally ended with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1972. Following that decisive judgment, the Old Order Amish Steering Committee “fully accepted and approved” the Supreme Court’s ruling, leaving no doubt about the hierarchy of judicial authority in Amish minds.38 The only issue they had to concede was a longer (180-day) school year. Even so, with fewer holidays and shorter vacations, Amish schools are able to end early to honor spring planting. Thus, on all the key issues—location, size, control, compulsory age, and curriculum—Amish convictions held sway.
SOWING AND REAPING WILD OATS
In March 1989, President George Bush and drug czar William Bennett visited Lancaster County to promote a national campaign against illegal drugs. After making a speech at a local high school, the president’s entourage met with Amish and Old Order Mennonite leaders in an Old Order school.39 Meeting with Old Order leaders in a simple classroom without television cameras, the president said, “We came here to salute you” because the national drug problem is “hopefully nonexistent” in communities like yours.40 He was wrong.
According to one Amishman, a few Amish youth had begun dabbling with drugs in the 1970s. The problem hit the national press in the summer of 1998 when two Amish boys were arrested for dealing cocaine with the Pagans motorcycle gang. The sensational story prompted a feeding frenzy by the national media as news of the story spread.41 Television, newspapers, and news magazines from around the world covered the story, almost with glee, at the discovery of sin among the Amish. Parents and elders were embarrassed by the stigma and the media attention. Some of them were quick to note that although the two lads had been raised Amish, they were not members of the church and thus were “really not Amish.” The two men were eventually sentenced to twelve months in prison with immediate work release privileges, a sentence that some Amish considered far too lenient.
The whole event was a sobering wake-up call for the church and for many Amish teens as well. Indeed, the crop of baptismal candidates hit an all-time high in the fall of 1998, when more than four hundred entered the church. Concerned parents, in cooperation with the FBI, helped to arrange a series of informal meetings in the Amish community to tell Amish parents and teens about the dangers of drugs. The sad episode reminded church leaders that the evils of the world were not always found in faraway places but were sometimes lurking behind their own barns.
The arrested youth and their drug-using friends are a small minority within the Amish community, but they pose a perplexing riddle. Why do the Amish, who fought so hard for the right to teach their children, permit rebellious teens to flirt with the world? And why do some youth, educated in the ways of obedience, turn to mischief just a few years later? Rowdy youth are an embarrassment to church leaders and a stigma in the larger community. The rebellious antics, often called “sowing wild oats,” have become a rite of passage for some youth during rumspringa, the “running around” years that begin at age sixteen. In some cases, the mischief is carefully hidd
en from parents; but in other instances, church rules are openly mocked. Sometimes Amish parents, themselves constrained by the rules of the church, may vicariously participate in their offspring’s misconduct. Although all Amish youth join a gang and “run around” before marriage, the majority of them enjoy their freedom in fairly traditional and quiet ways.42
An unbaptized Amish youth dressed in contemporary clothing adjusts the sunroof on his car.
Rumspringa is an awkward moment in Amish life—a liminal stage when youth are neither in the church nor out of it. They are truly betwixt and between; no longer under the control of their parents, yet still free from the church. Although socialized in an Amish environment, they have not taken their baptismal vow. Amish leaders, chagrined by the worldly behavior of some teens, point out that they are helpless to control the problem because the youth are unbaptized. They attribute this slippage in the social system to poor parental guidance and lax enforcement.
To both insider and outsider, the rowdiness appears, at first glance, as a tatter on the quilt of Amish culture. There is, however, a compelling sociological explanation for this persistent tradition. Most of the rowdy youth eventually settle down to become humble Amish adults. There are exceptions, but for the most part the youth that flirt with the world eventually return to the church. Flirting with the world serves as a form of social immunization. Teenage mischief provides a minimal dosage of worldliness that strengthens resistance in adulthood. Indeed, this apparent quirk in Amish culture has a redeeming function in the social system that may partially explain its persistence.
A fling with worldliness gives Amish youth the impression that they have a choice regarding church membership. The open space before baptism underscores the perception that they are free to leave the Amish if they choose. The evidence, however, suggests that the perceived choice is partially an illusion. Amish youth have been thoroughly immersed in a total ethnic world with its own language, symbols, and worldview. Moreover, all of their significant friendships are within the Amish community. To leave the Amish fold would mean severing cherished friendships and family ties, although if unbaptized, they would not be shunned. Rejecting their birthright culture would thrust them into an entirely different world—a foreign world and a foreign culture. Even on escapades to faraway cities, Amish youth travel together. These portable peer groups insulate even the would-be rebels from the terror of a solitary encounter with the larger world.
In many ways, Amish youth do not have a real choice because their upbringing and all the social forces around them funnel them toward church membership. This is likely why more than 90 percent of them do, in fact, embrace Amish ways. A few youth do not join the church, and they appear to fare quite well as they move into mainstream society. But for the majority who do join, the illusion of a choice serves a critical function in adult life. Thinking they had a choice, adults are more likely to comply with the demands of the Ordnung later in life. Members might reason this way: After all, because I chose to be baptized and vowed on my knees to support the church with the full knowledge of its requirements, I should now be willing as an adult to obey the demands of the Ordnung.
Without the perception of choice—the opportunity to sow wild oats—adult members might be less willing to comply with church rules, and in the long run this would weaken the community’s ability to exercise social control. Many rowdy youth are “reaped” later by the church in the form of obedient adults who willingly comply with the Ordnung because they believe they had a choice. Thus, the wild oats tradition yields a rich harvest for the church—a cornerstone in the group’s ability to develop compliant adults. And that may be the reason that parents who were willing to suffer imprisonment for the sake of their youths’ education are also willing to let them flirt with the world.
CHAPTER 8
The Riddles of Technology
We’ve had trouble with phones for twenty-five years.
—Amish deacon
THE BREACH OF 1910
Some stereotypes of Amish life imply that they reject technology and live in a nineteenth-century cocoon. Such images are false. The Amish adopt technology selectively, hoping that the tools they use will build community rather than harm it. In short, they prefer technology that preserves social capital, rather than depletes it.
The positive marks of Amish identity—horse, buggy, dress—have their negative counterparts in cars, computers, and televisions. Wary of the impact of certain forms of technology, the Amish have categorically rejected things like televisions and video cameras. In other cases, they have made a distinction between ownership and use. For example, they have been willing to negotiate selective use of telephones, electricity, cars, and other types of technology. The bargaining sessions, stretching over the decades, have produced what appear today as perplexing riddles. This chapter and the following one explore some of these puzzles. Solving them requires a brief historical excursion into the breach of 1910—a turning point in the Amish saga that sets the stage for many of the riddles.
The roots of the 1910 schism go back to the early 1890s. An Amish minister, Moses Hartz Sr., had a son by the same name who became a traveling agent for a milling company. Finding Amish ways too restrictive, the son stopped attending services and, among other things, began wearing pockets on the outside of his coat—a convenience forbidden by the Amish. In April 1895, without the unanimous consent of his congregation, the presiding Amish bishop excommunicated Moses Jr. and placed him under the ban. As an Amish minister, Moses Sr. was expected to uphold church rules. Caught between church and family, he balked and refused to shun his son. After futile efforts by the church to change the father’s mind, he was “silenced” as a minister and, along with his wife, was placed under the ban.1
Eventually the Hartzes were received into a progressive Amish-Mennonite congregation, following a “kneeling” confession. Upon hearing of their confession, Amish leaders called a special meeting and decided to lift the ban. However, a minister who had missed the special meeting was perturbed by the decision. He promptly contacted other Amish leaders and persuaded them to renew the ban. The Amish leaders eventually reversed their decision, and the Hartzes were once again shunned. They remained in social exile for the rest of their lives.2 This action in the late 1890s marked the enforcement of “strict shunning” on members who left the Amish to join similar but more progressive Anabaptist churches. The episode triggered intense debate on the practice of shunning, a discussion that smoldered for twenty-five years, until the bishops reaffirmed the practice in a special statement in 1921.3
The Hartz incident, however, is only a prelude to the real story. The controversy was still brewing in 1909 when electricity and telephones were making their debut. Some disenchanted families had already been dabbling with progressive changes, but the strict enforcement of shunning galvanized their dissent. In the fall of 1909, about thirty-five families, disturbed by the Hartz incident, began holding separate services every three or four weeks for singing and Bible reading. The group petitioned the bishops for a more lenient use of the ban and announced their intention to withdraw if the request was not granted.4 Meeting on 12 October 1909, the Amish bishops denied their request. The splinter group, composed of some eighty-five people, represented about one-fifth of the membership in the settlement at the time. The new group held its first worship service in February 1910 and ordained two ministers in April 1911.5
The progressive faction was eventually dubbed the Peachey church, for it was assisted by two ministers named Peachey from an Amish congregation in central Pennsylvania.6 In contrast to the mild separation of 1877, the breach of 1910 stirred strong emotional feelings. Even some seventy-five years later, an Amish minister dismissed the dissenting group as “just a bunch of hotheads.” Although it followed some Amish practices, the Peachey church adopted new technology more readily than the Old Order Amish. Soon the renegades began using telephones, tractors, and electric lights. They permitted cars by 1928, and by 1930 they were
worshiping in a church. In 1950 the Peachey church became affiliated with a larger national body, the Beachy Amish Church. Today six congregations are affiliated with the Beachy Amish Church in Lancaster County.7 They conduct their worship services in English, hold Sunday school, drive cars, and use electricity. The men wear an abbreviated beard, and members dress in Plain garb, although not as Plain as that of the Old Order Amish.
An intriguing aspect of this historical milestone is the contrasting interpretations used by the two factions to explain the schism. Most printed interpretations were written by those on the progressive side, Beachy Amish or Mennonites. These accounts attribute the 1910 split to the strict shunning of the Hartzes.8 An Old Order Amish document verifies that shunning was central in the dispute.9 However, as often happens in oral history, various explanations evolve over time. It is striking that Amish leaders, even seventy-five years later, insisted that telephones and the use of electricity were key issues, or “handles,” in the 1910 cleavage. While acknowledging that shunning was an issue, the Old Order Amish contend that technological changes were the key irritants. Other members suggest that although the telephone may not have been the catalytic factor, the Peachey church began to use telephones at about the same time that the Old Order Amish forbade them. Regardless of the historical facts, the important thing is that the Amish still perceive the telephone as a symbol of the breach of 1910. The division cast a long shadow on the phone and shaped the Amish view of it for many decades.10
THE TELEPHONE RIDDLE
The use of telephones has been a contentious issue among the Amish for many years.11 To this day, phones are forbidden in their homes. Why would the telephone—that indispensable modern mouthpiece—be stigmatized as worldly? Why would God frown on a phone?
The Riddle of Amish Culture Page 21
