These new Amish neighbors have brought many helpful things into our area. Many useful home businesses have opened up on some of our back country roads. It is also good to know that teams of skilled Amish carpenters are readily available.

I have become friends with Emma, an Amish mother of seven, who lives nearby. Our friendship has been developed in small, careful, increments over the past few years as I’ve stopped by her husband’s home business. We have talked about pregnancies and discussed local midwives. When anyone in my family is ill, she sympathizes and offers suggestions. She often has small gifts for me to take home–a ripe watermelon from her garden, a pound of homemade butter, extra tomatoes. Sometimes she offers a small treat from her kitchen.

We’ve discussed cooking, canning, gardening, herbal medicine, the best way to churn butter and how she prefers working outdoors to being inside. She’s asked me into her home to show me the new flooring her husband installed the week before it was their turn to host their two-hundred member church. This is always a time that the host family fills with a great flurry of cleaning and fixing up.

I’ve discovered that even though we dress differently, there really isn’t a lot of difference between Emma and me. She loves her family, and I love mine. She worries about feeding them well and keeping them healthy, just like me. She loves being outdoors and I do, too. Both of us absolutely love a bargain. She tries to live a Christian life, and so do I.

As our friendship has deepened, we’ve become comfortable enough with one another to have some fun together. We’ve gone garage sale shopping and celebrated our good purchases. One summer day she introduced me to her special place—a cold, deep spring that never goes dry.

There is one big difference between us though. She is much more competent in domestic matters than I can ever aspire to be. Emma grows and cans a huge garden every year. She raises chickens and sells eggs. She milks a cow morning and night and processes all the milk, cheese, cottage cheese, and butter her family can eat. Plus, she does all this with no electricity while raising seven children.

It was months before I met her fifteen-year-old daughter, Leah, who is in great demand within the Amish community. When local Amish women have babies, they ask for Leah to come help care for the other children and run the household while they recuperate from childbirth. Leah can do practically anything. She often sews up a new outfit or two for the family on the treadle sewing machine, and will happily can the new mother’s garden produce if she’s there during harvest season. All this while also caring for the rest of the household.

When I found out how competent she is, I asked if I could possibly hire her once a week to come work for me. Emma and Leah conferred and gave me the good news that Leah did have one free day a week that she could come clean for me….unless someone had a baby.

It was a good decision on my part. The girl can do more in one afternoon than I get done in a week. And she does it so cheerfully!

Part of our deal is that lunch will be included. The first time we sat down to eat together, I realized that I was going to have a problem because Leah is not a big talker and I’ve never developed the knack of being comfortable with eating in silence if there is another person sitting across from me.

“Would your parents be upset if I turned on the television?” I asked her one day when the silence had gone on too long.

“Oh, no,” she quickly assured me. “They won’t mind.”

I had my doubts about that, but I was careful about what I selected. After some thought, I chose the program where the professional nanny goes into people’s homes to help them get their children and themselves straightened out. I figured with so many children in the family, learning about methods of child care would be interesting to her.

It was interesting, all right. Leah watched with slack-jawed amazement as the badly behaved children on television screamed and cried and threw things at their parents.

“Not all Englisch children are like that,” I said. “Honest.”

She looked doubtful.

A few weeks later, Leah informed me that she would be bringing her three-year-old sister, Maria, with her while she cleaned. Her mother was going to go to a Tupperware party and thought it would be easier to not take Maria with her since she was also taking six-month-old Luke along. I didn’t expect Leah to get much done with Maria to care for, but I was wrong. Little sister was all big-eyed amazement at my non-Amish home. She sat quietly, gazed around, and played with a small toy the entire three hours she was here. Aside from taking her little sister to go potty, Leah didn’t miss a beat with her cleaning.

The Amish people I’ve known seem to have developed a steady rhythm to their work. Male or female they know how to go at tasks with a pace that they can sustain for hours. Not only can they work steadily over many hours, like Leah, they do so cheerfully. I think that might be because most Amish people are not raised to consider work punishment or drudgery. They are taught to see work as a gift from God.

Whether washing windows, pulling weeds, wiping down cabinets, scrubbing floors, vacuuming carpet or any other myriad of tasks I give her, Leah does them all without complaint and she does them well.

She charges so little, I always give her a bonus each week. This seems to worry her.

“But I took time out to eat lunch,” she would say. “And you have to come and pick me up. You should deduct something from my pay for that.”

I don’t, of course. After all, I’m competing against the draw of Amish newborn babies for her attention.

One other thing I can add to the list of Leah’s many accomplishments is that she also fills in as a substitute school teacher whenever one of the two Amish teachers are ill. When I found this out, I asked her if teaching was hard work.

“No,” she answered. “It’s not hard at all. I enjoy it.”

This was a surprise. I have many friends who teach in the public schools. None of them say that the work isn’t hard.

“Do you ever have any discipline problems?” I asked.

“Not usually,” she said. “The children know if they give me any trouble their parents will hear about it and they will take care of it. Besides, the children like to learn, just like I did. I loved school.”

So, getting back to how I was allowed to go into an Amish schoolhouse. It was Leah’s house cleaning day with me a few weeks ago and after she finished, I was dropping her off at her house as usual. Just then, her younger siblings came running up the driveway from school carrying their lunch boxes. School had just let out and they were all excited about the upcoming yearly Christmas program at their school. They were chattering about how nervous they were to get up in front of people and recite their pieces for the program.

“I’d love to see that,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll all do great.”

I was not asking for an invitation, nor was I expecting one. It was nothing more than wishful thinking. I didn’t give my comment a second thought.

Emma must have either found out what I had said from the children, or overhead the exchange, because a couple days later, she called (from the family’s phone shanty at the far end of the field where the family cow grazes) and invited me to her children’s Christmas program. There would actually be two programs, she explained.

One night was specifically for parents because the schoolhouse wasn’t large enough to hold everyone who wanted to come. That night there would be presents and snacks and much social mingling afterward. However, I could come to the program they would have the day before if I wanted. It was a dress rehearsal of sorts held in the middle of the day for other people who might want to see it.

I thanked Emma and told her that I could hardly wait.

As the time approached I dressed in my plainest clothes. Black slacks paired with a brown sweater and low shoes. I did not wear makeup nor any jewelry except my wedding ring. It is not that they would be offended if I dressed Englisch, but I have heard of some Amish children being frightened by strange Englisch women if they wear jangly jewelry and heavily applied makeup. I certainly did not want to scare the children.

My grown son, also curious, accompanied me. There were no other cars when we arrived, only one patient pony waiting to take its young owner home once school was over.

The Amish try to build their school houses close enough together that the children can walk to school. The next one over was only about a mile away.

The school was built against a hill. The only entrance appeared to be a door leading into the basement. We looked on either side for a front door but couldn’t find one. I could hear children’s voices singing up above me and I didn’t want to miss a moment of the experience, so, feeling awkward and intrusive, we went in through the basement door.

One of the first things I noticed were a multitude of children’s hats and coats lining the concrete basement wall. There were plain wooden stairs directly in front of us. The stairs were steep, open, and to my surprise, there was no handrail.

Clinging to the side that was against the wall, I made it to the top. Unfortunately, the steps emptied out into the very front of the classroom where there were about fifteen children lined up singing a song I did not recognize.

In spite of the singing, all eyes were upon us as we made our way to the back of the room. I felt like an elephant as I tried to tiptoe across the wooden floor directly in front of children. There were several open seats on the benches in the back of the room. Without realizing there was a girl’s side and a boy’s side until we’d taken our seats, my son and I sat down together on the girls’ side. He was uncomfortable with the situation but decided to stick it out rather than move and disrupt the program any more than we already had.

I knew that men sat on one side and the women on the other during worship services, but this was the first I knew that Amish schools also separated the boys from the girls.

There were approximately forty children in the room. The ones singing stood in front of the room in a sort of V arrangement. The older students were in the back and the younger ones in the front. Other children sat quietly on the benches in front of us. A few older siblings were there like us, observing. We were the only Englisch people in the room.

The benches were the same kind I’ve seen used during Amish worship. They were plain, hard, and backless. I wasn’t particularly concerned about having to sit on wooden benches but I did expect to only be there about half an hour. I was not factoring in the Amish ability to sit still and pay attention for very long periods of time.

The classroom was, indeed, one-room. It was about the size of a medium-sized classroom in our local Englisch school system. Downstairs, as I came through the basement, I had noticed little desks stacked against the walls. These desks had apparently been taken out to make room for the bench seating I later saw upstairs. The desks were just like the single-unit desks I used in school when I was a child. A wooden desktop attached to a seat under which there was an open box-like place to keep books. I’m guessing the desks were public school surplus.

Also in the basement, as we passed though, I had been a little surprised to see a hockey type table game and a ping-pong table. When I asked Leah about it later she explained that these games were for rainy days when the children couldn’t play outside. She said there were also board games and card games set aside for rainy days as well.

The basement stairs that had surprised me because there were no handrails were apparently no challenge to the children who seemed perfectly comfortable racing up and down them between sets in their program. The two teachers also had no problem going up and down the stairs with the children. I guessed both of them to be in their mid-to-late 20s, even though it is not unheard of for Amish schoolteacher to be only a couple years older than her oldest students.

The children at the Christmas program ranged from age six to fourteen. The children standing in front finished the first song and then one little boy about eight years old stood out from the group and welcomed us all with a poem he had memorized.

It was hard to understand everything he said because he was embarrassed and shy and although he had memorized his little poem quite well, he said it so softly it was hard to hear everything he said. There was, however, visible relief on his face when he finished his solo recitation. The moment he had been dreading was over and he had apparently not missed a word.

As the group reabsorbed the little speaker, they began to sing Joy to the World. It took me a moment to recognize what song they were singing. The tune was slightly different, and it was sung at least four times slower than I have ever heard Joy to the World sung. I estimated they were using about a whole second for each word.

I silently counted seconds in my head as they sang.

“Joy” (one Mississippi) “to” (two Mississippi) “the” (three Mississippi) “world” (four Mississippi.)

I think I know why their singing is so slow. Without radio or television to train their ear to faster tunes, the pace they used to sing Joy to the World is almost exactly the pace with which they sing hymns during their worship services. The songs they sing on Sunday mornings are achingly beautiful but take forever to finish. Singing very slowly feels familiar and comfortable to the children and their teachers.

This tradition of slow singing goes back five centuries to when the Anabaptists (literally “one who baptizes again”) were being persecuted because of their decision to baptize only adults (or children they deemed old enough to freely choose to become part of the church.)

Infant baptism had become a firm tradition among the established churches at that time, but the Anabaptists considered infant baptism to be unbiblical, and they wanted none of it. For this the Anabaptists (who later became known as the Mennonites and Amish) were jailed and killed.

Like the early Christians, the Anabaptists often sang hymns as they sat in their cells. The jailers found this humorous. Some of them, to entertain the other jailers, would dance to the hymns. The Amish responded in a typical Amish fashion. They simply began to sing their songs so slow that the jailers could no longer dance to the tune.

The Amish are a people who love to poke fun at themselves. There is a joke among them that a man can come late to services on Sunday morning, take the time to water and feed his horse, come inside and find a seat, all before the first verse of the first song is finished.

That’s the kind of singing I witnessed in the Amish school that day. Sweet, earnest-faced children singing so slowly that a couple of them began to yawn with the effort to stay awake. They stayed in tune, though, and were not shy about singing out.

There was something else interesting in the way the children sang. For each song, a different child was selected to be the Vorsinger. There are no musical instruments used in the Amish worship or in their schools except the human voice. Therefore the Vorsinger helps pitch and start the song. What this sounds like is a certain child will sing the first syllable for each line of every verse. The rest of the singers come in on the second syllable. That one lone voice standing out for a moment before the others join in creates a sort of syncopated rhythm that is quite pleasing to hear. It also helps keep the group on pitch throughout the song.

This, too, I have heard in their worship services. The only difference is that during church, it is always a man who is the Vorsinger. For the Christmas program, some of the little girls got to be Vorsingers as well.

Nearly every child had a poem to say or a part to play. The poems were all about Christmas and Jesus and Mary. Some were quite lengthy and yet it was rare for one of the children to stumble over a word. They might pause for a moment, stare at the wall as they searched their memory and then they would start back up again wherever they had lost their way. There were a lot of words to memorize but each had mastered their piece and recited it well.

One thing that was very noticeable was the lack of applause. I was enjoying the program so much that I almost clapped after the first song but stopped myself just in time. Applause is not part of the Christmas program experience for these children or in any other part of their lives. The Amish try to keep themselves and their children from egotistical behavior. Apparently they believe that applause can foster unwanted pride in a child’s heart.

In addition to the singing and the recitations, the children did some skits. The classroom was divided into two sections with shower curtains strung across the entire room on wires held up in the middle by a hook screwed into the ceiling. The two teachers stood on opposite sides of the room, and when it was time for a skit, they would close the curtain by walking toward each other while pulling the curtain with them. Then they would both disappear and get the children ready.

One of the skits involved a table around which several little girls stood while singing a song about baking a cake for Christmas morning. It was sung to the tune of what sounded like “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians.”

“One little girl breaks the eggs, one little girl breaks the eggs, one little girl, breaks the eggs, all on Christmas morning.”

The verses took the girls through all the steps necessary to bake a cake. They stirred the eggs, added the flour, sugar, milk etc. all in rhythm with the song.

This skit was also accompanied by a great deal of nervous giggling on the part of the girls baking the cake.

In spite of the giggling and embarrassment, each girl did her part using old-fashioned kitchen implements and real ingredients. The eggs were beaten with a hand-cranked beater. The sifter looked like it was about a hundred years old and borrowed from home. Although the girls were young, the thing that struck me was how competent and familiar they all were with the implements. The child who broke the eggs didn’t miss a beat as she broke them neatly into the large mixing bowl. The little girl who smoothed the batter into the cake pan was quite adept with the use of a spatula.

When it was mixed and ready, they carried it over to a pretend oven made out of cardboard, then they sang a verse about waiting for the cake to bake. When that verse was finished, they opened the cardboard door and pulled out an already-baked cake which they then brought over to the table and sang about icing the cake. After that, all the girls marched down to the basement.

Then the audience caught sight of four Amish boys peeking in through the window of the back door. All were wearing sweaters and sock hats and had ruddy cheeks from standing outside in the cold weather. The boys carefully sneaked in while singing their own song. It involved wanting to eat the cake but admonishing one another that it wasn’t allowed. All the boys mimed being SO hungry as they circled the cake and sang about their stomachs growling.

The moment one boy couldn’t take it anymore and was about to dig into the cake, all the little girls tripped back up the steps and caught him at it. The boy tried to hide the cake behind his back but “accidentally” sat on top of it.

The woeful look on his face tickled all the other children so much that they all burst out laughing.

Several who were seated on the benches in front of us turned around to make sure we were enjoying the play as much as they were. Satisfied, once they saw that we were laughing, too, they turned back around to continue to enjoy the program.

This sweet action of glancing around to make sure we were enjoying ourselves was repeated several times. It was an especially Amish thing to do. They are a people who are quick to make sure everyone feels included. Even the children learn early on to make sure everyone in the group is okay.

The following skit involved nothing more than one of the older girls lying on top of a bench while sleeping and snoring. One of the boys came over to her with a newspaper in his hand and asked if he could sit down. She woke up and said, “This is my bench.” But she sat up anyway and scooted over. The boy sat down and proceeded to read his newspaper.

Then another girl came along with her knitting and also asked to sit down. The first girl was obviously not happy with how things were proceeding. So, instead of complaining or arguing, she began to scratch herself. Her face, neck, arms and legs all develop this terrible itch. She scratched away while the two other children become more and more uncomfortable with sitting next to her. They soon packed up their things and wandered off. At that point, the first girl laid back down on the bench with a blissful look on her face and went back to sleep.

The skit was cute and funny, and once again all little heads turned to make sure that we were enjoying it with them. We were very much enjoying it, so they smiled and nodded, yet again satisfied that we were having a good time.

I lost count of the songs that the children sang. At least a dozen, maybe more. Most were recognizable. Silent Night, Joy to the World, Amazing Grace, Dashing through the Snow, Jingle Bells, etc. Two songs were sung in German. I did not recognize the tunes.

The German songs were interesting to me because one of the most remarkable things about the Amish is that they have managed to keep their own language alive and vibrant for so many years while being equally fluent in English. They speak a form of German that most people refer to as Pennsylvania Deutsch. This is the language they use in their homes and to one another when Englisch people aren’t around, and sometimes even then. It is very much their mother tongue.

A friend of mine who was raised Amish left the church as a young man in order to become a professional linguist. He became a Bible translator, mastered many languages and lived in different countries, but when he fell victim to a stroke, the only language in which he could communicate was Pennsylvania Deutsch—the words he had learned in the cradle.

The Amish accomplish this dual language fluency by speaking Pennsylvania Deutsch almost exclusively to their children in their early years. An Amish child might learn a few English words, but the English language is not deliberately taught until a child begins school at the age of six. At that point, they are expected to become fluent in English, which they do. One of my Amish friends told me of an aunt with Down Syndrome who could switch easily between both languages.

During breaks in the program, while the teachers got the children prepared for the next poem or song or skit, I took my time looking around the room. With such plain homes, I did not know if the Amish classrooms would be decorated at all—even for Christmas. I was pleased to see that great care had been taken by the children and teachers to make their school look special for the holiday.

The walls were covered with coloring book-type pictures of bells, doves, and candles that the children had carefully colored. There were glittery stars hanging from the ceilings and red and white streamers also looping down.

Absent were any pictures of Santa. The Amish do not celebrate Santa with their children. There were also no pictures of people, which was no surprise. The more conservative Amish tend to avoid pictures of themselves or others.

In the very front, directly over the green chalkboard, was the basic ABC chart that most of us used years ago during grade school—the one that had upper and lower case in both printed and cursive letters. There was an additional chart almost mirroring it on the other side. This was the German chart of letters. It was quite gothic looking, but plain enough for the children to understand and copy. Even I understood what the letters were because of the thoughtful addition of helpful pictures above each German letter. A for apple. B for ball. C for cat, etc.

At the top of the black board were words admonishing the children “If you do not have time to do it right, you do not have time to do it over.” I have heard from my Amish friends that this saying hangs on the walls of many Amish schools.

There were few to none of the cheerful bright primary colors that Englisch children are usually surrounded by. Instead the walls in this school room were painted dark tan–about the color of coffee with cream. The ceiling was painted exactly the same shade as the walls. At the windows there were darker brown curtains, held back in a swag. The floor, which was made of large sheets of plywood, was painted also—dark brown.

The windows were impressive. They usually are in Amish structures where lack of electricity makes natural light especially important. I counted ten window, which was a lot for such a relatively small room. There was a good reason for this–the need for natural light in a building without electricity. The day was overcast, but with the windows uncovered except for the swag curtains, there was more than enough light for the children to do their lessons. The view from the windows was lovely.

I knew that when the parents came for the evening program the following night, it would be dark outside. At that point, the classroom might be illuminated with kerosene and candles, both staples in most Amish households. There might also be gas lights which they use sometimes at night in their homes. Gas lights hiss, which is annoying, but they do shed enough light to read.

As I said before, the sect of Amish who call themselves the Andy Weavers (after a bishop by that name) are one of the most conservative sects within the Amish religion. This affects their lifestyle in significant ways.

Buttons are not allowed on the dresses of their teenage girls or grown women. It is because buttons could conceivably be considered decorative, and the Amish are dedicated to being a plain people. The two teachers’ clothing, I notice, is pinned together with straight pins in the front. The two teenage girls sitting directly in front of me have straight pins holding their dresses together in the back.

The little girls sitting in front of us do wear buttons, down the back of their dress. I’m assuming the church decided that straight pins might be well enough for adults, but not safe for small children’s clothing. The first time I met Emma, for instance, I thought that she had thrown on a dress she had not yet completed sewing. I have never asked why safety pins are forbidden, but I know that in this sect they are.

The little boys are dressed exactly like their fathers. They wear homemade black pants with homemade suspenders. In this sect, factory-made, stretchy suspenders with metal snaps are not acceptable. Those things would be considered entirely too fancy. Instead, their mothers sew suspenders from the same cloth as their pants, and then sew the suspenders together in the back, creating an X so that the straps won’t fall off their shoulders. Their pants do not have zippers because zippers are not allowed on men or women’s clothing. Instead they wear what I think of as sailor pants—a square flap in front held up by two buttons at the waistline.

The singing group up front included all ages. The older boys in the back. The littlest in the front. They had colored pieces of paper taped to the floor so everyone could find their spot quickly. Their poems on the whole were delivered in a rapid fire way with no inflection. It was obvious their main goal was to get their recitation finished as quickly as possible.

A boy and girl did a question-and-answer comedy routine that was well-written and funny. Yet their rapid-fire delivery was no different than when the other children recited a poem about Jesus in the manger.

Everything went smoothly until one precious little girl walked to the front, smiled, took a deep breath, looked directly at me—and burst into tears. She absolutely could NOT make herself say her piece. The teacher walked to the front, shielded the little girl from our eyes and encouraged her, but the precious child simply could not make herself go on. She was about eight years old, and such a delicate-looking little thing. Her older brother, about fourteen, came to her side and tried to coax her into saying her piece. Neither the teacher nor the brother’s encouragement helped alleviate her fears or shyness. She went back to her place in the group, still weeping.

The little girl standing next to her, one of Emma’s girls, held their shared music folder so the crying child could shield her face from the audience as the Christmas program continued. Eventually the little girl felt safe enough to pull the music folder down and once again reveal her pretty little face.

She wasn’t the only one in the program who felt the need to hide, though. Several of the bigger boys in the back did the same thing throughout most of the program.

I still wonder, and regret, if the presence of two Englisch people—my son and I—were the cause of some of the shyness. I think we probably were. The Amish are a warm and hospitable people once they get to know you, but Englisch people, no matter how well-meaning we are or how much we smile encouragement, can still be frightening to children used only to those who are part of their own isolated community.

Two hours later, after we had been thanked for coming by a child repeating yet another poem in the same sing-song fashion they all had adopted, the program ended by the children all filing out of the room and down into the basement.

We waited for everyone to leave, and then we exited past the teachers and out the back door instead of yet again going through the basement. One of the teachers smiled and nodded to us, but there was no attempt to engage us in conversation.

As we left, I saw an enormous pile of firewood behind the schoolhouse. Fathers had stacked several cords of seasoned firewood close to where the teachers could toss it into the single wood stove that heated the school house. To the side, I saw a child who had apparently waited as long as she could, running to the girl’s side of the outside privy.

With no plumbing, no furnace, no electricity, and only a short list of textbooks and teacher’s manuals–those two patient teachers are managing to educate yet another generation of Amish children.

After we left the Christmas program, we went directly to Emma’s house to thank her for making it possible for us to go.

“So you enjoyed it?” Emma asked.

“Very much.”

“I’m so glad.” She smiled. “Maria and I have something for you.”

It turns out that Emma and her three-year-old daughter had baked dozens of Christmas cookies that morning and decorated them while the older children were at school. She had wrapped several in cellophane and put them on a decorative paper plate all ready to give us when we came by. I knew the cookies had been baked in a wood stove. This takes a lot of skill. I can hardly imagine accomplishing such a task while caring for a toddler and a baby.

In spite of all the work she has to do, and the primitive tools with which she has to do it. In spite of being so thin from hard work and nursing this latest child that I worry about her health, Emma had taken time to make a pretty plate of cookies to take home with me. Little Maria smiled up at me, her little gray dress stained with flour from helping her mother bake, her bonnet slightly askew. There was a smear of green icing on her cheek.

After we left, we once again passed the school house and my son snapped a photo of the building.

The school is set on such a beautiful lot. Large trees are scattered around. A small creek splashes nearby. It is a spot that could fetch a nice price in our area for a building lot. But Leah told me that an Amish man who owned the property donated it. He had never married nor had any children of his own. This was his way of helping the church.

The government does not fund these one-room schoolhouses. Nor do the Amish want them to.

Instead, in addition to paying taxes for our Englisch public schools in the form of property taxes, they pay for their own children’s education out of their own pockets. It is not unusual for an Amish person, like the farmer where Emma’s children live, donate land for a school.

Someone else who might have a lumber mill, or a stand of timber, will donate lumber. Others donate their building skills. Everyone gives what they can. As soon as there are enough children in a community, a school board consisting of three to five Amish fathers will be created. This school board approves all school activities, selects playground equipment, and chooses text books. Then a teacher is hired—a teacher who frequently has no more than a formal eighth grade education.

The program of education used does not change much from year to year. I once asked an Amish father what kind of textbooks his children used. Without hesitation he recited the subject, title, and publisher of about six different books. I was impressed with his knowledge of his child’s education.

In choosing curriculum, only basic subjects are stressed. Reading, writing, spelling, English, arithmetic (the old-fashioned method). Other subjects taught are geography, history, penmanship, health, German, writing/reading, and singing.

Amish parents are very involved in their children’s education. There are a lot of drop-in visits by parents to make certain things are running smoothly. There is a general feeling of ownership among community members. This is their school. They built it, paid for it, provide firewood for it, and will repair the roof when it needs it. If things are not working out with the new school teacher, they will soon know it and something will be done about it.

In the hiring of an Amish teacher, few are thrown into the role without some background or training. For one thing, most will have spent eight years following the exact same curriculum from which they are expected to teach. The board tries to choose someone who is known to have been an excellent student to begin with. Many initially serve as apprentices to older, more experienced teachers. There are also regular regional teacher’s meetings they can attend where they can ask for advice from experienced teachers.

Pathway Publishers, an Old Order Amish publishing company based in Ontario, publishes The Blackboard. This is sent out monthly and is a major source of information and advice for Amish teachers. It has a surprisingly large distribution for a company that allows no use of electricity.

In addition to the regular curriculum, there is an expectation that the Bible will be read aloud each day. Just read aloud. Not taught. The teacher is supposed to not comment on the reading. A fifteen-year-old girl teacher might be able to teach basic arithmetic, but the idea of her teaching Biblical doctrine to the children is not acceptable to the parents. The imparting of faith and discussion of doctrinal issues is reserved for the parents, most of whom take their role seriously.

Another expectation of Amish schools is that there will be no homework. Amish children are often expected to work on the family farm or in the family business before and after school each day. They also help with housework and with younger children. By the time supper is eaten and chores are finished, it is getting dark and that means it is time for bed. The evening hours might be lengthened somewhat by the addition of the gas lights or kerosene lamps, but Amish families generally go to bed very early. That does not leave much time for doing homework except in cases where a child is ill and a sibling or friend will bring schoolwork home so the child can keep up with the rest of the class.

The central location of the school within the Amish settlement is deliberately designed so that the children can walk to school. This also means that they will develop deep ties with the other children of Amish neighbors and relatives as they grow up seeing each other daily. The Amish school system is designed not only to educate, but to keep Amish children within the Amish community.

The program of education used does not change much from year to year.

In recent years the average annual budget for typical Amish school is a little over $22,000. This includes the teacher’s salary. The annual cost per student is about $800. In the more conservative communities the cost is even less because teachers are paid less.

On the other hand, a public school district’s cost varies of course, but an approximate amount would be nearer $10,000 per pupil.

Although the requirements for becoming an Amish teacher can vary greatly because of the differences in Amish settlements, most approach the job by trying to replicate the same school experience that they had. In more liberal settlements new teachers might take correspondence courses and some might even choose to pass the GED High School Equivalency Test.

There are several Amish publishers that provide teaching manuals, textbooks, and workbooks but the largest continues to be the venerable Pathway Publishers. Amish schools often maintain a small reading library but most teachers and pupils in the more progressive Amish groups also use their local public library.

I once asked an Amish school teacher what happened to children who were especially smart and longed to learn more than they could be taught during their eight years of formal education.

“Just because a person is no longer in school does not mean they have to stop learning,” he said. It was an argument I had heard before. “We have the same access to libraries that you do. We can continue to learn for as long as we want,” he said.

Using the libraries to access the internet is not uncommon to the Amish. Sometimes I’ve been surprised to discover some of my Amish friends more technologically savvy than me. When we traded an old log cabin on our property to an Amish man in return for building a barn for us, we were surprised when he said he had sold it for a good price on Ebay.

“Ebay?” I was astonished. “How?”

“We are only forbidden to own computers,” he said. “There are no restrictions about borrowing the use of the ones at the library.”

It is interesting to contrast the schools that the Swartzentruber Amish (the most conservative of all Amish sects) maintain. Their schools have no basements, closets, or indoor plumbing. The outside of the building is usually unpainted wood. The walls and floor inside are painted white and a battleship gray. School directors in these settlements often pay teachers as little as five dollars a day. Parents do not often visit the school or pay much attention to school activities at all. There are no school programs like what my son and I got to experience at the Andy Weaver sect school. Education is not as important in the Swartzentruber life.

They are the ones most likely to use the same textbooks that our great-grandparents might have used. This includes McGuffey Readers, the 1919 Essentials of English Spelling, and the Strayer-Upton Arithmetic Series, which was written in the 1930s. Swartzentruber children do not study history, geography, or health.

Schools from the more progressive groups are very different from the Swartzentrubers. The buildings tend to be larger and more elaborate. Many have indoor plumbing. Some even have a little apartment attached where the teacher can live. The teachers are often allowed to use a battery-powered copy machine and are sometimes paid as much as $50 a day. There are monthly teacher’s meetings and special summer institutes.

In the more progressive settlements the schools become a center for Amish social life. In addition to special programs for the community, parents might drop in bringing hot lunches or special snacks. Teachers sometimes take children on field trips. In addition to English and German and arithmetic, the children study geography, American history, and sometimes art. Some teachers even expose pupils to a variety of cultures outside their church communities.

These more progressive Amish schools can be quite shocking to the more conservative Amish communities. But the one thing they all agree on is that a public high school education would damage and possibly even destroy their way of life.

One would assume that the one-room Amish schoolhouse system would ignore the education of children with special needs, but many progressive Amish settlements try very hard to meet those needs.

Sometimes they will make arrangements for their special needs children to attend special classes in a public school. Mobile therapists who are funded by the local public school system are sometimes brought in. A movement for establishing “special schools” among the Amish emerged in the 1970s and the 80s.

The first Amish “special school” was established in Pennsylvania in 1975. Today many Amish communities have developed schools and educational programs for special needs students. Some of the annual teacher’s meetings devote sessions to the best ways of meeting these children’s needs.

So what are the outcomes of Amish schooling?

In recent years Amish eighth grade students living in Iowa have taken the Iowa tests of basic skills. The tests have revealed that on average, Amish eighth grade students (from the more progressive Amish community schools) scored more than one grade level above the national standard.

One of the reasons for this might be the repetition that Amish students experience as the older students help the younger children. They also experience repetition by simply overhearing the same classes repeated each year. Although Amish students might not learn as broad amount of subjects as Englisch students, the basics tend to be firmly embedded.

Sending a child to an Amish school is not required of Amish parents. Some do send their children to public schools because they feel that the education there is better. They prefer for their children to have more qualified teachers and better facilities. Other Amish parents who have sent their children to public schools admit that they do so only because it is more economical than helping support their private Amish schools. Some parents simply choose to homeschool their children themselves.

I think one of the reasons that an eighth grade education continues to work for the Amish lies in the informal apprenticeship program that they have successfully used for years. Amish youth learn skills from older people that prepare them well for a productive life–and they do have a choice in which skill they want to master.

For instance, if an apprenticeship in a subject that an Amish youth is interested in is not available in the Amish community they will sometimes choose to go to a local technical school. Here they can learn skills that might not already be within their communities. Installing solar panels is just one example of a skill that is on the rise among the Amish.

In our local Amish community, families support themselves with shoe repair, carpentry, basket weaving, tin roofing, bulk food stores, merchandise stores, hand-made furniture, baked goods, and produce stands. Nearly every Amish woman I’ve met has her own small home business in addition to helping with whatever the family business is. Some do things like crocheting baby blankets to sell in a corner of the nearest Amish bulk food store, or baking pies to sell at her husband’s produce stand.

When John and Emma moved to our area in order to be closer to his family, the only thing John had to do to start providing a living for his wife and children was to nail a homemade sign to a stake and pound the sign into the ground out by the main road. The sign said, “Will upholster anything.”

John wasn’t kidding.

Whenever I drive Leah home, I never know what I’m going to find him working on. Houseboats, antique cars, giant RV’s, all await his skill, along with the usual chairs, recliners, and couches. He’s usually covered up with more work than he can handle.

Presently, he’s teaching the craft to his teenage son. In a few years his boy will have the same advantage as his father—a skill he can carry anywhere and immediately begin providing support for himself and his family. In continuing the tradition of ending formal schooling at the age of fourteen, Amish youth gain at least two years for apprenticeship training before they begin regular employment.

The Amish school system is not equipped to produce brain surgeons or rocket scientists, nor are they attempting to do so. What they are equipped to do is produce hard-working reliable individuals with a multitude of practical skills. Amish school teachers, with their eighth grade educations, have managed to provide a solid educational basis for the owners of the over twelve thousand Amish-owned businesses in North America.

I often think about the children I watched in the Christmas program. They sat or stood for nearly two hours. There had been no acting up, no threat of discipline, no rowdiness, very little squirming. With no television or computer games at home, watching one another get through the school Christmas program was high entertainment.

Also, I think the amount of fresh air and outdoor exercise during recess help the children be calmer. With solid breakfasts, and nutritious home-packed meals for lunch, no child was unable to concentrate because of hunger. The Amish people are far from perfect, but they don’t go hungry and they don’t allow their children to go hungry either. If there is one thing most Amish mothers know how to do well, it is how to feed her children well.

Although the school built by this Andy Weaver Amish sect is probably a bit more primitive than some schools built by the more progressive Amish sects, it still gets the job done and the children seem happy and excited to be there. The lack of extras, like electricity, doesn’t seem to get in the way of their learning or happiness.

This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with Leah.

It was an especially cold day, as I drove her home. She mentioned how nice it was inside my warm car. As we talked, she informed me that those within her church are not allowed to have windshields on their buggies.

“Doesn’t it get terribly cold with nothing to stop the wind?” I asked.

“Oh, sure!” she says. “But we know to bundle up good. Me and Mom had such a fun day last week. It was snowing but we took the buggy into town and bought Christmas presents.”

“How long did it take you to get there?” I asked.

“About an hour,” she said.

Driving from Leah’s home to the nearest town in my car takes me about ten minutes—at most.

Just at that moment, I hit a deep pothole with my car. I yelped and apologized for not having avoided it.

Leah got a kick out of my apology.

“That did not feel like such a bad bump to me,” she laughed.

“Your church doesn’t allow rubber tires, do they?” I say, remembering a little of what I’ve learned about the Andy Weaver Amish sect.

“No they don’t,” she says. “Only steel-rimmed wheels are allowed on our buggies.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It is just how things have always been.”

“Doesn’t that make for an awfully hard ride?”

“Of course.” Her voice does not hold even a hint of self-pity. “But we are used to bumps in the road.”

That, to me, sums up the philosophy of most of the Amish that I have personally met. There will be many bumps in the road. Get used to it or drive around it, but don’t feel sorry for yourself because of it.

That is one of the reasons I tend to find the Amish culture endlessly fascinating–the stalwart way in which the Amish deal with life in general, the hardships in particular.

Another reason for my fascination–at least with Amish schools–goes back to stories I heard as a child.

My parents were educated in one of the remaining one-room public schools. That experience gave them a lifetime of good memories.

My mother told of playing with dolls beneath the sheltering limbs of an old oak tree during recess, and of pretending to have a tea party with the other little girls by using acorns and leaves. She described playing baseball, the little ones playing right along with the older students, and how the young teacher always brought her baseball glove and played with them. She also told how, in the wintertime when the river froze over, she and her brother would skate to school.

In her opinion, it was the very best way for children to learn and she grieved the fact that I never got to experience such an education.

My father agreed. He, too, had gotten his education in the one-room school. The school was only a short walk from his house. Because he loved to get up early and enjoyed going to school, he took on the task of arriving before all the other students and getting a good fire started in the pot belly stove. He said the teacher was always so happy not to have to build the fire herself.

Based on my parents solid grasp of mathematics, grammar, spelling, history, and geography and not to mention the reams of poetry that they memorized as children and retained into old age–I think they had a very good point.

Whenever they told me those stories, I couldn’t help but compare it to my own experience which involved a black asphalt playground and riding long distances on a crowded school bus. At the time, it also seemed like most of my teachers were middle-aged and weary of teaching. I certainly couldn’t imagine any of them bringing a baseball glove to school.

For an Amish child, I think it is hard to imagine a teacher who doesn’t.

So, that is how it is usually done among the Amish when it comes to educating their children .

It has not always been this way. Nor did it become this way without a struggle.

Some might assume that Amish one-room schoolhouses are simply yet another old-fashioned custom left over from the 1800’s. Something they never bothered to discard. The reality is that the Amish and some of their Englisch friends fought hard for decades for the right to create these schools.

For many generations, nearly all Amish parents sent their children to small, rural public elementary schools. Their children studied with non-Amish children and were taught by non-Amish teachers. At that time, Amish parents still had a say in what their children were taught. A few public elementary schools even served Amish students almost exclusively. Amish parents served on the local school boards.

As long as the public schools were small, following a traditional curriculum, and under local control, there were no objections from the Amish community.

Then state mandated consolidation happened. The small schools were closed one by one and the children were bussed to a larger district school. From 1918 to 1928 one-room public schools closed at the rate of 4000 per year.

Watching their children being bussed to a school that was far away did not set well with Amish. Nor did losing say about their children’s curriculum. They were not happy they no longer had a voice in the choice of teachers. Strangers had begun to teach their children, and that was unacceptable.

Other troubling changes were being put into place about the same time. There were new standards for teacher education, and new laws increasing the length of the school year which affected the children’s ability to help on the farm. The length of time that a child had to remain in school was raised to age fifteen. Science, technology, and physical education became part of the curriculum.

The Amish were quick to point out that they were not against education. They fully supported the need to learn how to read and write and speak English. They wanted their children to have the mathematical skills to run a business or farm or a household. But they did not want their children to absorb so much book learning that it might lead their children away from the church and away from the ability to do manual work.

With the apprenticeship program that was supervised by parents once a child turned fourteen, advanced formal schooling past the eighth grade was considered unnecessary. They were also afraid that advanced formal schooling could possibly cause a boy or girl to lose their humility.

As the changes continued, the Amish became more determined than ever that the responsibility of teaching and training their children could not be passed off to government agencies. They wanted teachers who were known in the community and who they could trust not to undermine Amish values. They repeatedly protested against what they felt was handing their children over to professional educators. They begged for a continuation of the one-room schools that were within walking distance of their homes.

Underneath the protest lay a great fear. Amish parents and their bishops were already seeing that modern education could undermine the teachings of their church. They knew this could ultimately lead to the loss of their culture. Since the Amish believe in a very literal heaven and hell, losing their church-based culture meant to them that their children could lose their very souls. It was imperative that they regain control of the educational process.

The Amish did not fight these changes all at once in a unified body. Educational laws were state-based and the Amish in each state reacted to the new laws as they were enacted. Some state governments were better at compromise with the Amish belief system than others. Some states were much less sympathetic.

The very first clash happened in 1914 in Geauga County Ohio. Three Amish fathers were fined for not sending their children to ninth grade.

In 1937 there were battles over schools in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas. By the late 60s, major battles ensued in Wisconsin when dozens of Amish parents were jailed. In one Pennsylvania Township one-hundred-and-twenty-five parents were arrested – many of them repeatedly. These conflicts pitted Amish against their non-Amish neighbors. There was much bitterness.

They went to jail without a fight, of course, but they did go to jail. The Amish are strict pacifists but they are far from weak. The blood of martyrs runs through their veins. Going to jail rather than give in to state-mandated laws that they believed would hurt their children was practically embedded in their DNA.

That same year, a group calling themselves the Delegation for Common Sense Schooling presented to their state officials a one-hundred thirty foot scroll with three thousand signatures from both Amish and non-Amish parents. The scroll asked that they be exempt from the new law that mandated a nine-month school calendar and that also raised the age to fifteen before a child could leave school and get a work permit.

This sort of skirmishing went on for another thirty years. Small, local, battles. Then a now-famous photo hit the newswires. It was of Amish children running into a cornfield to avoid being bussed.

Rev. William C. Lindholm, a Lutheran pastor who lived in Michigan, saw the photo and founded the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom. It consisted of a group of scholars, religious leaders, and lawyers who took the Amish cause all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

In 1972, in the landmark case of Wisconsin v. Yoder, the court gave them the right to educate their own children, including the right to terminate their children’s education at the eighth grade. The decision was firmly based on the principle of religious freedom.

Since that ruling, one-room Amish school buildings have happily sprung up wherever Amish settlements exist. There is much joy in the voices of my Amish friends whenever they tell me that yet another Amish school has been built. It is a good sign that their culture is growing and thriving.

There were only four Amish schools established before World War II. Thirteen years after the Supreme Court’s decision of Yoder vs. Wisconsin, the number of Amish schools had grown to nearly six hundred. By 2012 about fifty-five thousand Amish pupils were being taught by three thousand teachers in two thousand private Amish schools in North America.

I received a disturbing e-mail not long ago. It was a long diatribe by a man who wanted to tell me what terrible people the Amish are. He went on and on, spewing his venom. It was interesting to me that he did so solely on the basis of having seen the cover and title of one of my Amish books. He did not bother to read it but wanted to tell me how wrong I was to respect my Amish friends. None of his venom was based on first-person experience, but only hearsay.

I usually respond to readers who take the time to contact me, but I did not answer him. I know that for someone who is that opinionated and prejudiced, it would be a waste of time. Besides, I am already aware of some of the problems that plague the Amish communities. I do not need him to point out their flaws because my Amish friends have already pointed those flaws out to me, themselves. They know themselves and know their community’s weaknesses. They do not try to pretend otherwise. They are far, far from perfect.

But overall, I’m impressed. Most of them never accept any governmental help. They take no social security, no SSI. They pay taxes for our children’s education, but provide their own children’s education directly out of their own pockets. The low divorce rate, low crime rate, and high employment rate is enviable. They are quick to help one another, as well as their non-Amish neighbors, whenever they see a need. I suppose it happens, but have never personally heard of an Amish person being homeless or going hungry.

I can’t help but think that much of what is good and admirable about the Amish communities is established inside of these one-room school houses.