Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools

Preface

Preface T he average North American sees little difference between one Old OrderAmishpersonandanother,orbetweenanOldOrderAmish person and an Old Order Mennonite. In their plain, archaic-looking clothes and horse-drawn buggies, they all seem firmly 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 groupstracetheirrootstotheradicalAnabaptistmovementofthesixteenthcentury Swiss Reformation. Each remains a voluntary church of believers, marked by adherence to the principles of nonresistance, pacifism, 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 realize 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 Alte Ordnung (old order) of their forebears rather than succumbtopressuretochangeandassimilate .However,withinthecategoryof 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 Mennonites , who have permitted electricity and telephones in their homes while rejecting the automobile; and the Stauffer Mennonites, who continue to 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 innovations . 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- fines 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 support 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 differenceandsimilarities ,OldOrderschoolsofferawindowtothediversity 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 fitted. One domain in which all these themes coalesce is in the villagers’ understanding of schooling” (1992, 175). Similarly, in Old Order communities, private schools are defined 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 reflects and shapes Old Order values 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, interviews , and fieldwork 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. viii K preface L 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 ethnographer as a “marginal native” who should “participate with the community without judging it, and . . . without forgetting to observe it.”2 This I have tried to do. Conducting field 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...