Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools (Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies)

305 Pages·2006·2.59 MB·English

by  Karen M. Johnson-Weiner

Train Up a Child
Young Center Books in Anabaptist Pietist Studies
&
Donald B. Kraybill,
Series Editor
K L
Train Up a Child
Old Order Amish & Mennonite Schools
Karen M. Johnson-Weiner
z
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
© 2007 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2007
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson-Weiner, Karen M.
Train up a child : Old Order Amish and Mennonite schools / Karen M. Johnson-Weiner.
p. cm. — (Young Center books in Anabaptist and Pietist studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-8018-8495-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Amish children—Education. 2. Mennonite children—Education. 3. Amish—
Social life and customs. 4. Old Order Mennonites—Social life and customs.
I. Title. II. Series.
lc586.a45j64 2007
371.071′97—dc22 2006007079
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Contents
Preface vii
chapter 1. Private Schools and Old Order Life 1
chapter 2. Old Order Schools and Old Order Identities 21
chapter 3. The Swartzentruber Schools 40
chapter 4. Small Schools in Small Settlements 72
chapter 5. Mainstream Amish Schools 103
chapter 6. Progressive Amish Schools 130
chapter 7. Old Order Mennonite Schools in Lancaster County 167
chapter 8. Publish or Perish 206
chapter 9. What’s Education For? 229
appendixes
A. Informants 247
B. Schools and Locations 250
C. Hectograph Recipe 252
D. Representative School Schedules 253
Notes 255
Bibliography 273
Index 283
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
T
he average North American sees little difference between one Old
Order Amish person and another, or between an Old Order Amish
person and an Old Order Mennonite. In their plain, archaic-look-
ing clothes and horse-drawn buggies, they all seem fi rmly anchored in the
nineteenth century, as ignorant of mainstream culture as any pioneer from
a forgotten past.
The different Old Order church-communities1 are not lost in time,
however, nor are their members naïve Luddites. United by history, these
groups trace their roots to the radical Anabaptist movement of the sixteenth-
century Swiss Reformation. Each remains a voluntary church of believers,
marked by adherence to the principles of nonresistance, pacifi sm, and
nonconformity to the dominant society. They reject mainstream American
values of individualism, personal success, and civic responsibility.
Yet Old Order church-communities vary considerably in how they re-
alize this rejection and how they position themselves vis-à-vis one another
and non–Old Order society. They all belong to the broad category of “Old
Order” because their members chose in the nineteenth century to remain
faithful to the (old order) of their forebears rather than suc-
Alte Ordnung
cumb to pressure to change and assimilate. However, within the category of
Old Order there are groups such as the Swartzentruber Amish, who have
been among the most adamant in their rejection of technological change;
the Groffdale Conference of Mennonites, also known as Wenger Menno-
nites, who have permitted electricity and telephones in their homes while
rejecting the automobile; and the Stauffer Mennonites, who continue to
viii K preface L
reject electricity. Some Old Order Amish church-communities permit gas
refrigerators, bicycles, and telephones in shops. Other Old Order Amish
groups, in company with the Swartzentruber Amish, reject all of these in-
novations.
In short, all Old Order groups stand apart from the world but not all
in the same way. The boundaries of an Old Order church-community are
established by the practices of its members. Each church-community de-
fi nes itself in opposition to other Old Order groups and to the world by its
choices of dress, lifestyle, and technology use.
As Hostetler (1989, 130) has noted, “Amish elementary schools sup-
port the values taught in the family. The school helps the child to become
a part of his or her community and to remain within it.” Thus, in their dif-
ference and similarities, Old Order schools offer a window to the diversity
of Old Order life. Founded by church-communities to resist unacceptable
developments in public education, Old Order schools have become agents
of change as well as agents of resistance to change. In his study of language
shift in the Papua New Guinean village of Gapun, Don Kulick notes that
“villagers’ ideas about literacy, the millennium, and Christianity form a
framework into which all aspects of the modern world are fi tted. One do-
main in which all these themes coalesce is in the villagers’ understanding
of schooling” (1992, 175). Similarly, in Old Order communities, private
schools are defi ned by particular beliefs about the place and practices of
church members within the church-community and within the larger
society. Each group’s understanding of what it means to be Old Order
shapes its educational philosophy, strategies, and tools; and these, in turn,
reinforce distinctive community values.
Asking how Old Order education refl ects and shapes Old Order val-
ues and reinforces social and linguistic norms, this book explores the way
Old Order schools function within the larger symbolic framework that
structures everyday Old Order life. It is based on archival research, inter-
views, and fi eldwork conducted in eight areas of Old Order settlement:
the Elkhart-LaGrange Counties, Indiana; Centreville, Michigan; Perry
County, Ohio; Fredericktown, Ohio; Ashland, Ohio; Holmes and Wayne
Counties, Ohio; St. Lawrence County, New York; and Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania. The Old Order communities in these regions vary in size,
proximity to other communities, and interaction with the non–Old Order
world; thus, they represent the diversity of the Old Order world.
K preface L ix
In this ethnographic study, I describe Old Order schools in the context
of Old Order culture. In her study of bilingual education among Quechua
speakers in Southern Peru, Nancy Hornberger (1988, 4) refers to the eth-
nographer as a “marginal native” who should “participate with the com-
munity without judging it, and . . . without forgetting to observe it.”2 This
I have tried to do.
Conducting fi eld research in Old Order communities is challenging.
In my experience, members of Old Order communities favor personal
interaction, tending to be suspicious of questionnaires and surveys and
generally declining to take part. Most Old Order groups will not permit
photography or sound or video taping in their homes or in schools while
school is in session, believing that these violate the commandment against
the making of “graven images” (Exodus 20:4). As Enninger (1987) notes,
“In this culture, the choice the fi eld worker has is to work on the basis of
the obtainable data or to gain no insights at all” (149–50).
In researching schools, I drew on personal connections established over
a number of years of participant observation in the Amish communities of
upstate New York and in Old Order Mennonite communities in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania. These connections enabled me to stay with Old Or-
der friends in the different communities, to eat with them, play with their
children, and accompany them to church services. I visited schools; talked
with students, parents, teachers, and school board members; attended
teachers’ meetings and teachers’ suppers; helped children with spelling;
and graded workbooks. I interviewed parents at home while helping to
prepare meals or wash dishes, and I interviewed teachers while we stood
together on the playground to supervise children or eat lunch. I had a very
interesting conversation with a teacher while we waited our turn to bat in
a game of “rounders.” Perhaps the most formal interview I conducted took
place in Indiana, when we gathered around the kitchen table after a meal
to drink coffee and to talk about schools.
These interactions led to a valuable correspondence with members of
the different communities. In personal letters, Old Order teachers and oth-
ers responded to my observations about what I had seen in their schools and
to my questions about testing, discipline, textbooks, and teaching religion. I
often asked in letters many of the same questions I had asked in person, fi nd-
ing that my correspondents gave far more elaborate answers in writing. The
insights of this lively correspondence have richly informed this project.