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CHAPTER 7. Old Order Mennonite Schools in Lancaster County
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K chapter 7 L Old Order Mennonite Schools in Lancaster County The goal of the Old Order [ . . . ] parochial schools is to prepare for usefulness by preparing for eternity. —Pennsylvania Standards The Old Order School Movement in Lancaster T he Holmes County area boasts the largest Old Order Amish settlement in the world, yet when people think of the Old Order Amish, they most often think of Lancaster County, which Klimuska (1998, 42) has called “the homeland of the Amish church.” Since the first Mennonite settlers began to arrive in Pennsylvania in 1710, and the Amish not long after in 1737, the Lancaster area has been home to Anabaptist settlement, and today the Amish and Mennonite communities remain intertwined in Lancaster County. With roughly 6,100 adult baptized members, the Old Order Mennonites are far outnumbered by the nearly 11,000 baptized Amish adults in the Lancaster area (Kraybill 2001) and are not nearly as well known to the general public. Yet although few tourists distinguish the Old Order Mennonites from the Old Order Amish, there are obvious differences between the two. For example, whereas the Old Order Amish continue to worship in each other’s homes, Old Order Mennonites worship in meetinghouses.1 168 K train up a child L In addition, some Old Order Mennonite groups have sanctioned the use of electricity and telephones in members’ homes. Moreover, in some respects, the Old Order Mennonites are a more varied population than their Old Order Amish cousins. While the majority of the 150+ Old Order Amish congregations (see Kraybill 2001, 15) of the Lancaster Old Order Amish settlement fellowship with each other, that is, they have similar Ordnungs, the Old Order Mennonites comprise several distinct groups or conferences, including the Groffdale Conference , or Wenger Mennonites; the Weaverland Conference, or Horning Mennonites; the Stauffer, or Pike Mennonites; and the various churches of the Reidenbach Mennonites, known as the “35ers.” While individual churches within a conference are similar and share Ordnungs, the conferences themselves are different from each other. For example, the Wenger, Stauffer, and Reidenbach Mennonites are “team Mennonites,” meaning that they continue to rely on the “team” of horse and buggy for transportation , whereas the Horning Mennonites have cars.2 Despite their different lifestyles, Lancaster County’s Old Order church-communities have often found themselves allies in struggles with non–Old Order society, particularly in their efforts to educate their children for Old Order life. In 1834, for example, when the passage of the School Law provided for state-funded elementary or common school education of all young people in the state of Pennsylvania and for supervision by locally elected officials, the majority of districts in Pennsylvania welcomed it; but there was considerable opposition, particularly “from supporters of German church schools, mainly Mennonites,” and others who contended that “the law would remove their children from instruction in their own faith” (Fletcher 1950; rpt. in Lapp 1991, 66). One hundred years later, plans to consolidate one-room schools, extend the school year from eight to nine months, and raise the age of compulsory education from 14 to 15 for farm youths again brought the Old Order churches into conflict with the state. With the Old Order Amish taking the lead, the Old Orders began to establish their own schools.3 At first the Amish and Mennonites were united under Amish leadership, but in 1968, with the school committee becoming too large to be workable, the Old Order Mennonites established the Committee for the Mennonite Parochial Schools of Pennsylvania, which continues to work within the structure established by their Amish counterparts. [44.222.104.49] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:29 GMT) Today there are more than 150 private schools run by the Old Order Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County.4 The formal organization of Old Order parochial schools into Amish and Mennonite districts was undertaken in part “to stimulate the unity among the Parochial school boards to adhere to the elementary standards, which are not to exceed the eighth grade.”5 It has resulted in a cooperative effort between the Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities. Schools are Amish if they were built by Amish, and Mennonite if built by Mennonites. Where both Mennonites and Amish are involved in setting up a new school, the school will “belong” to the group in the majority. Childrenattendtheschoolsnearesttheirhomes,sotheclassroompopulation reflects the settlement patterns of the immediate area. Where the population is predominantly Amish, the schools have a...