Does public school attendance influence whether or not an Amish young person decides to join the church? We were not able to gather data on this question in this study, but an earlier study in the Elkhart-LaGrange Settlement in Indiana found that the rate of defection was higher for Amish persons who had attended public schools than for those who had attended Amish schools. Meyers argues that Amish schools “not only protect children from non-Amish influences, they reinforce Amish values and help to insure that peer groups will primarily include other Amish children.”29 It is unclear from his study whether the content of the public school experience led to defection, or whether parents who send their children to Amish schools are less committed to being Amish in the first place (and thus less effective in instilling loyalty in their children). It is clear, however, that many Amish parents worry about excessive contact between their children and those of the English. Two-thirds of the respondents in our survey, for example, were against the idea of having their children “sleep over” at an English neighbor’s house.
Dissenters? The Homeschooling Option
A third option that is becoming increasingly common among the Amish is homeschooling. Our survey of Amish adults confirmed that this is a relatively new phenomenon. None of the sixty-five adult respondents had been homeschooled themselves, yet nearly 7 percent indicated that it was the preferred method for educating their own children.30 Of the forty families we interviewed, 5 percent had homeschooled their children. Parents who favored this alternative generally believed that a homeschool education was superior to that given in the parochial schools, in which teachers are not demanding enough, and superior to the public schools, in which the role of the government is too pronounced. One New Order Fellowship parent reflected:
In our case, we started home schooling because there were no parochial schools in the area, only public schools. That’s not the reason we continue to do it today. Most families have begun to home school because they don’t believe the academic level is high enough in the parochial schools. You know, you’ll have [mothers] who used to be teachers and they’ll say, “Hey, I can do this myself.” It’s not about the curriculum of the parochial schools, it’s a concern about the quality of teachers. And we don’t think the state is necessarily the best teacher of our children.
A 34-year old New Order mother added:
We home school mainly because of the bond that it makes. You know, I see our children bonding to me in a way that I never did with my mother because I wasn’t there most of the time. I want to hold our children’s hearts in my hand in order to guard them, and I see [homeschooling] as a very effective way of doing that. And I also think it’s a great protection for them as far as not being exposed to impurity, that sort of thing.
A New New Order father summed up this concern:
Family, control over our own child’s education, and personal responsibility—these values undergird home schooling. We see it as a maintainer of Amish culture. To critics, it is seen as a threat to the collective mindset.
To many Amish with whom we talked, the mention of homeschooling evoked much stronger negative comments than did the idea of public schooling. One of the most frequently mentioned arguments against it was that it isolates children from those with whom they will have to learn to live once their education is completed. A second argument suggests a “know-it-all” arrogance on the part of homeschooling parents. “They think we’re not reaching out enough to compromise when we have disagreements,” noted one parent who homeschools. Another concurred: “Amish generally don’t promote home schooling because they’re community minded. The home schoolers tend to be more radical—a little extreme on family.” In general, we found that the New Order Amish are more likely to homeschool than the Old Order, who tend to see homeschoolers as “dissenters.”
Formal Education and Informal Learning after Age Fourteen
An important question to ask as a follow-up to Wisconsin v. Yoder is whether the Amish community has held firm on the prohibition against formal education after the age of fourteen. Our research from the Holmes County Settlement suggests that the answer is a qualified yes. We found no Amish family that had enrolled their children in a full-time public or private school after the eighth grade. In addition, the Amish we interviewed gave remarkably consistent responses to our queries about why higher education was prohibited. All emphasized the dangers of “bad” pride that develops when one group of individuals has more schooling than another. Pride is “bad” if it gives you “the sense of feeling that you’re better than someone else.” A New Order bishop explained, “We don’t want people coming back to our community and thinking they’re owed a higher standard of living.”
But Amish views about education are neither one-dimensional nor simple. When asked, most of our survey respondents did not hold persons with college educations in any higher or lower regard than persons with less education. The Amish are also aware that advanced education may be required for those who have professional jobs: “Doctors have to go through school … That’s great if they have to do that because I wouldn’t want no doctor working on me that’s making five bucks an hour.” At the same time, given the restrictions on education enforced among the Amish, many of those we interviewed either saw no need in their work for more than an eighth-grade education, or argued that any additional education could be acquired in specific vocational courses or on the job. Implicit is the conviction that real wisdom and know-how come from experience rather than from mere “book knowledge.” This is a belief that appears to be most strongly held by the more conservative Amish orders, and it is one that they share with other individuals who have little formal education and who have spent much of their lives in hard physical labor.31
The general Amish view of education is very pragmatic: it should teach specific skills required for a job. Simply having a college education with no focus on training for a given occupation is not seen as relevant: “If you’re at the workplace, and the guy shows up with a college education, there’s a good chance that he won’t know how to work … Overall, the idea of getting more and more education, and then not being able to find a job, after you’ve studied for years and years … you know, that’s kind of a total waste,” said a New Order employee. Moreover, a degree itself is not what is important and may not mean you can perform adequately when employed. An Old Order Amish business owner stated directly: “A diploma and a degree in and of itself means nothing to me. Show me what you can do. Show up on time. And do your job. Follow directions. Put out quality work. Give me a day’s worth of work. That’s what counts. I don’t care what your degree says.” He went on to say that the Amish consider education just as important as the English, but that it is in the kind of education and the manner and place of its implementation that differences exist. This view is echoed by another Old Order businessman: what’s important is “how you treat it, how you administer it … if you use it as a tool to do the right things, it’s beneficial.”
One controversy that erupted when the College of Wooster awarded an honorary degree to a local Amish farmer and author illustrates the complexity of Amish views of higher education. The Amish recipient of the degree, who was recognized for his inspirational efforts to increase faculty and student understanding of the Amish and of how human communities relate to the land, had asked that there be no publicity associated with his receipt of the award. Owing to a miscommunication between the college’s public relations office and the local newspaper, however, his photo (in cap and gown) appeared on the front page of the newspaper the morning after the ceremony. Reactions in the Amish community were surprisingly varied, however. Some were aghast that he had accepted the degree in the first place and felt that his participation in the pomp and circumstance of a graduation ceremony was completely incompatible with Amish values. Others, noting the letter of apology from the college president that ran in the paper the following day, said they mostly felt sorry for him and regretted the shame he had to bear because his wish
es had not been honored. Still others congratulated him on his achievement, and at least a few privately expressed satisfaction that an Amish individual had been recognized in this way. “That’s just [his] work,” explained one Old Order man. “We don’t look down on him for it.” Indeed, a handful of Amish individuals in the Holmes County Settlement and elsewhere have carved out a distinctive niche for themselves as published authors, speakers, and public spokespersons for the Amish.32
Part of the problem with receiving an education in a college or university setting is that broad skills such as critical thinking and unwanted values (for example, individualism) and cultural capital (knowledge, experiences, and attitudes) are taught or learned inadvertently that undermine foundational Amish values and contribute nothing directly to job performance. Whereas English adults use higher education as a badge of higher social status, the Amish, like other persons who engage in manual labor, use moral criteria to evaluate what they do for a living. Doing so places a mantle of worthiness on their lives and helps define the cultural and religious boundaries that distinguish them from those who use more secular criteria.33 One Amish respondent argued that the Amish teach “an alternate set of the 3Rs … Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness” and that these “are taught by vocational and apprentice-type training.”
Upon completing eighth grade, most boys find jobs in woodworking shops or other small businesses, while girls often take positions in restaurants or do office work for a small company. Particularly for the boys, these positions often follow the apprenticeship model. At a time when their English counterparts are just beginning high school, Amish adolescents are working alongside adults on a daily basis. In addition to receiving on-the-job training in a particular skill or craft, they are taught the work ethic, as well as proper attitudes toward one’s co-workers and customers. By the age of twenty or twenty-one, these young men are not trying to figure out the “color of their parachute” and to chart the direction of their lives, but are already committed to a job where they make a decent wage and are well versed in a particular craft. The mobilization of knowledge in these Amish small businesses is also formidable. Many woodworking shops and other cottage industries form “communities of practice,” where knowledge and experience are intertwined and where “everyday practice is a more powerful source of socialization than intentional pedagogy.”34
Not all learning after eighth grade involves on-the-job training, however. Accompanying the increased interest in nonfarm occupations is the enrollment of young Amish in short courses aimed at training them for jobs. The Holmes County Amish Vocational Training Program began in 1999 at the request of the Amish Advisory Committee, which oversees parochial schools in the settlement. Since its inception, approximately one hundred Amish students, most of them Old Order, have enrolled in nineteen courses that include welding, engine repair, tractor restoration, book-keeping, and computers. Welding and engine repair have been the most popular, and some students have taken as many as four of the classes.35 In addition, we met an Amish auctioneer who had attended night classes at Kent State University as well as extended, on-site training in Columbus and in Kansas before getting his state license as an auctioneer. Other Amish persons have participated in training of a shorter duration to become lumber inspectors, accountants, and real estate agents. Differences among the affiliations regarding their views on what constitutes appropriate employment accentuate the economic variations between them and help to shape their future financial fates.
We also found evidence of some slippage around the edges of the prohibition against formal education after age fourteen, in the form of pursuit of the GED (General Equivalency Diploma), the equivalent of a high school diploma. In 2003–4 the Adult Basic and Literacy Education Program in Wayne County counted 23 Amish students enrolled in evening classes to prepare for the GED examination. Almost all of them were working full- or part-time. These were very capable students: 9 of the 23 tested at a grade level of 11.0–12.9 in terms of literacy, and 10 of the 23 tested at a grade level of 9.0–10.9. Their motivations for obtaining the GED were sometimes tied to job prospects (some employers require workers to have at least a high school education) but not necessarily. Several students commented that they were simply curious to know how their Amish education stacked up against state standards. One man we met who belonged to the conservative Andy Weaver affiliation was so intellectually curious (one of his fascinations was particle physics) that he completed several correspondence courses and received college credit.
We found more than a few Amish teachers and parents who truly lamented the end of formal schooling. “I cried the day school was over,” commented a former teacher. Perhaps it is this longing that accounts for the voracious appetite for books in the Amish community. The Holmes County Public Library’s bookmobile, with an annual circulation of nearly two hundred thousand volumes (predominantly to Amish families), is one of the most active in the nation.36 It is clearly a mistake to equate the end of formal schooling with the end of learning in the Amish community.
Taking Care of Special-Needs Children
One of the educational challenges facing the Amish community is the comparatively high number of children who have special needs. In the Holmes County Settlement and elsewhere, the general philosophy toward these children is that they can be special blessings who serve as reminders that everyone has a different level of needs.37 As Mark Dewalt notes, since the Amish do not stress individual achievement, it is easier for them to build a community that supports special-needs children.38 Nevertheless, the care required of children with physical or mental handicaps can be overwhelming, especially when that care falls disproportionately on the mother. “I’ve seen a lot of parents struggle with that issue of balancing self-sufficiency versus the burden of care,” commented a public school administrator. “The women give their lives to these kids.” Until very recently, most Amish families with mildly handicapped children have preferred to send their children to public schools because of the perception that they offered superior services for their children who are “hard to learn.”
Over the past decade, however, the Amish have made a concerted effort to increase the accommodation of special-needs children at some of their private schools, with the result that nearly twenty schools in the Holmes County Settlement now offer special-education classes. In addition, there is now a settlement-wide special-education committee that coordinates the hiring of special-education teachers and the provision of services for children with mild handicaps. Usually placements of special-education children will occur without a formal evaluation, because “they don’t go by the same rules as public schools.” Teachers try to integrate the children with the rest of the class in singing, devotions, recess, and school outings, but they may be pulled aside for separate instruction during the day. At some schools, they are tutored in the basement, while in others a curtain is pulled across the corner of the room where the special-education teacher works with the student(s). Although Amish special-education teachers have no advanced degrees, they do hold regular six-week meetings to share ideas and information about their work. They also avail themselves of print resources and of specialists in the non-Amish community.
The way the Amish schools have gradually taken over aspects of special education that in the past were left to the public schools is illustrative of their openness to learning from the English while developing their own capacity for mastery of a subject. One public school psychologist in the area is regularly asked by the Amish special-education committee to evaluate Amish children and to give seminars to Amish teachers and parents on different types of mental and physical disorders. Reflecting on the first talk he gave on attention deficit disorder, he remembers asking the head of the Amish special-education committee how the audience might react to a recommendation that medication is the best treatment. The man replied that it would be fine, because some Amish children were already taking Ritalin. More than two hundred Amish from three counties showed up for thi
s school psychologist’s evening talk in a local Amish shop. “And I will tell you that every single talk I gave, I normally spoke for an hour and then answered written questions that were put in a hat that was passed around. And I was always there another hour after that with people coming up.” He concluded, “They’re such a wonderful population to speak to … Their attention is superb … so much better than teachers I talk to in public schools. Ten times better.” This Amish capacity to scan the external environment for useful insights is crucial to the successful, if selective, borrowing of “best practices,” not only in special education but in economic enterprises as well.
For severely handicapped children, Amish-run private schools are usually not an option. Such children either are placed in multiple handicapped units in the public schools or they attend a county-run educational facility. Even though about one-third of the counties in Ohio “have gotten out of the [special-education] school business because parents can demand services at their local schools,” separate public facilities for children and adults who have multiple disabilities still exist in both Wayne and Holmes counties: the Ida Sue School in Wayne County and the Holmes County Training Center. About 60 percent of clients at the Holmes County Training Center are Amish, including both medically fragile adults and children in school programs. To attend, one must live in Holmes County and the disability must have been diagnosed before age twenty-two. Part of the funding for these facilities comes from property taxes, and thus both transportation and the educational programming are free to Amish parents. However, a Parents’ Association, composed primarily of Amish members, holds an annual spring festival, including an auction, to raise additional funds for activities like the Special Olympics and horseback riding or facilities such as a handicraft workshop and a pavilion.39 The Holmes County Training Center also provides medical services, among them therapy, dentistry, and genetic counseling. Therapists even work with families in their homes to help children overcome problems associated with their disabilities. In short, the center has served as a unifier among the Amish, who are deeply involved in its activities.
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