At school, children are to be further prepared for the Amish way of living and the responsibilties of adulthood, which are instilled at home as well. In both settings they are taught to become a society of useful, God-fearing and law-abiding citizens.
Reading, in this writer's view [co-author sara E. Fisher] is the most important subject, since it is the foundation of every other school subject. Since English is not the native tongue of Amish children, it takes special effort to teach word meanings, comprehension and pronunciation skills. Teachers usually begin by teaching phonics so that pronunciation is simplified and, when once understood becomes a lifetime assest. Word comprehension, then sentence comprehension are worked at so that pupils can read a story, and form a picture of what the story is about.
Enthusiasm for reading means better understanding in arithmetic thought problems, better grades in writing essays, more inteerest in geography and history, and better spelling. Pupils who learn to read well grow up to be men and women who appreciate good books, understand instructions on a label, and read and understand the Word of God.
It is important to train children to be observant. It is an everyday need, a habit that will help them all through life. They need to be inspired to open their eyes and see what there is to see, to keep an ear ready for the thousands of meaningful sounds breaking around them, to train their noses to identify hundreds of smells.
Competition is Not Stressed
What goals and assumptions do Amish teachers work with? Some teachers have charts on the schoolroom wall with gold paper stars showing perfect scores. These charts can be an incentive for the child to try harder to have a perfect score. However, while these stars are a way of rewarding intelligence, they are also a way of displaying ignorance. A child who senses that he has been labeled a failure, often proceeds to live up to that expectation. At some time or another, children need to learn to work without being rewarded, to learn that achievement in itself is a reward. Competition has its place in the classroom, but too often it is overdone and proves unfair to the less fortunate pupil. A goal each pupil can work for is to make a higher score than he did the day before.
Since written messages are the main means of communication among Amish families, it is important that the school child be taught to have legible handwriting. Due to the lack of telephones in their homes and limited transportation facilities, the Amish rely on the postal system to relay birth announcements, invitations to weddings, quiltings, reunions, barn raisings and more. Writing legibly is even more important than proper English, since Amish people understand each other's "Dutchified" phrases quite well.
Before children can appreciate arithmetic, they must be taught its value as a workable and necessary skill. After they get out of school, they will use math to count fruit jars or corn shocks, measure baking powder or calf feed, figure how much paint is needed to paint a room, and the amount of fertilizer and seed corn needed for a ten-acre field. They will need to know how to keep farm records, income and expenses, and how to compare food prices to shop economically.
Lumbermen, carpenters and masons need to measure lumber, compute accurately and give fair estimates. Books must be kept and records filed systematically. Our changing times demand added records in any occupation. Therefore, getting pupils to realize the importance of math in the future is a major priority for every teacher.
More Differences With the Public Schools
One Old Order woman reflected in Blackboard Bulletin on the public school education some of her relatives were receiving. "My nieces and nephws are of average iritelligence, yet one of them is in the seventh grade and cannot do simple arithrnetic problems without the aid of a calculator. A ninth grader copies word for word from the encyclopedia to make reports and cannot write a book report that's not a paraphrasing of the book jacket. The teachers do not collect or correct even half of the homework assigrnents.
''Courses range from learning about computers to experimenting with rockets in air chambers. Homework assignments include watching certain TV programs. Then when these young people come to visit my husband and me, they are bored because we don't have anything interesting to do!
"Last summer one niece learned how to bandage a cow's foot, how to help with the feeding in the barn, and how to prepare and can vegetables. By her teacher's comments and class placement, she was in a remedial group because of 'lack of interest.' This year she is taking home economics (sewing and cooking) and plans to go for vocational technical classes in agriculture next year. Hopefully with encouragement and help from parents and teachers, she will get away from copying and calculators and use her mind.
"I have friends whose children attend parochial school, and grade for grade they are further advanced than my relatives who attend public school.
"I think the parochial schools are good, and hope my children can attend one of them and receive their education there."
Group Identity Reinforced
Standards of dress are very important to the Amish society, as they immediately declare identity to members of the group as well as to outsiders. Parents are admonished to have their schoolchildren adhere to the accepted standards of dress. Teachers need to see that they are carried out on the school grounds by reminding boys to wear their hats on the playground and keep their shirt collars buttoned in the schoolroom, Older girls are encouraged to wear their coverings to school.
In Lancaster County, one school board has forbidden the use of baseball gloves and hard balls at school. By the children's playing with a sponge ball or other soft ball, and no gloves, baseball does not become a competitive game with worldly methods which might range out of control among teenagers and be carried on into adulthood.
Supreme Court Acknowledges Amish Ways
The Supreme Court decision of 1972 acknowledged the centuries old traditional way of life of the Amish, their deeply rooted belief and practice of caring for their own, and self-supporting style of life that needs no higher education to survive. Wrote Chief Justice Warren Burger, "There is nothing to suggest that the Amish qualities of reliability, self-reliance and dedication to work would fail to find ready markets in today's society. Absent some contrary evidence supporting the state's position, we are unwilling to assume that persons possessing such valuable vocational skills and habits are doomed to become burdens on society should they determine to leave the Amish faith, nor is there any basis in the record to warrant a finding that an additional one or two years of formal school education beyond the eighth grade would serve to eliminate any such problem that might exist.
"Amish objection to formal education beyond the eighth grade is firmly grounded in central religious beliefs. They object to the high school and higher education generally because the values it teaches are in marked variance with Amish values and the Amish way of life. The high school tends to emphasize intellectual and scientific accomplishments, self-distinction, competitiveness, worldly success, and social life with other students. Amish society emphasizes informal learning-through-doing, a life of 'goodness,' rather than a life of intellect; wisdom, rather than technical knowledge; community welfare, rather than competition; and separation, rather than integration with contemporary worldly society."
The Amish community would never have pursued a case to the Supreme Court but they are deeply grateful for the peace the 1972 decision brought. They were surprised, but full of appreciation for the way outsiders verbally expressed those deeply held beliefs which they as a community live, but do not often speak. The Supreme Court decision eased the schooling problems for the Amish, but did not totally erase them. There are still some states today where the Amish are harassed for their refusal to send their children beyond eighth grade.
In the wintertime the teacher tries to arrive at school about an hour before school starts to fire up the stove and have the schoolroom warm and cozy when the children arrive. (It is important to master the art of taking care of a coal or wood furnace!)
Sometimes children bring potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil to roast on the ledge inside the top furnace door. Or they may bring a TV-dinner made from leftovers from their meal the night before and placed in a pie plate that can be heated on the stove for lunch. Some bring soup in a glass jar to put on the grate to beat. Others have sandwiches, hot dogs or pizza to warm on the stove. All kinds of delicious smells fill the schoolroom as lunchtime nears. (A kettle of water is usually placed on top of the stove as well to provide moisture in the air.)
After taking care of the furnace, the teacher concentrates on the schedule for the day. On the blackboard at the front of the room she writes: "Today is Monday, January 24, 198--." On the calendar on the wall each bygone day is shaded with a red marker and the current date is outlined in red.
Next, the arithmetic assignments are posted on the board: Tuesday, January 25 Sth grade - p. 377 7th grade - p. 148 6th grade - p. 378: 23-45 Each succeeding grade's assignment is also posted.
Then the children start arriving, each one with a cheery "Good morning!" and usually with announcements: "Teacher, Uncle Omar brought us with his pony cart!"; "Teacher, I saw a robin on the way to school", "Teacher, when we got up this morning there was snow on the floor." (In Pennsylvania German, the same word "bodda," is used for ground and floor and the Amish children often make a literal translation from pennsylvania German into English.)
[The researcher's Great-Aunt Anna Hornberger Griffith taught in a one-room schoolhouse in the vicinity of Ephrata her entire working life.]