Home Life and Customs (continued)
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The function of the school is to teach the children the three R’s in an environment where they can learn discipline, basic values, and how to get along with others. There is concern that the home, school, and church teach the same things. Most children attend Amish schools. Here the teacher is an Amish person, and emotionally the school belongs to the Amish community. Amish children must learn to understand something of the world in order to reject it selectively. They are expected to master the English language and to learn the skills that will enable them to transact business with outsiders.

During their schools years, Amish children spend most of their non-school time with their families. The family attends church and visits many friends and relatives as a unit. The children spend much time with mixed group when they choose. In addition to their parents, Amish children know many adults who have interest in them and their development. When not in school, girls learn to cook, bake, sew, and make things for their playhouses. The boys help with the farm work, but they also build toys or birdhouses, and they trap fur animals or fish in streams. Boys and girls are rewarded for their work of their hands and for their sense of industry. The child has many role models and informal teachers.

Young People- form Adolescence to Marriage. At the end of the school years, the peer group, rather than the family and the church, becomes the young person’s reference group. The individual chooses his “crowd” or “gang” of friends. If a youth makes friends with outsiders and is governed by an alien peer group, he is likely in danger of leaving the Amish faith. Earlier in life the young person accepted being Amish as part of his identity. He must strive to determine what it means to be Amish. By working at various jobs-for other Amish families or away from the community-both boys and girls gain knowledge of the wider community and the world outside their home. Some adolescent rebellion is to be expected. During working hours the young people are respectful of community standards. During free time with their peers there are may be considered testing of boundaries. But is the young Amish person is physically removed from the community, he or she may become susceptible to alien religious influences.

During this period the young person must come to terms with two great decisions: whether to join the Amish church, and whom to marry. To make these decisions, the individual must establish a certain degree of independence from the family and community. The family relaxes some of its control. The church has no direct control over the young person who has not voluntarily become a member. Sampling the world and testing the boundaries may take the form of owing a radio or camera, attending movies, wearing non-Amish clothes, having a driver’s license or owning an automobile-all more or less in secret. If these deviations are managed discreetly, they may be ignored by the parents and community. The young people are thereby allowed some freedom to taste the outside world that they are expected to reject voluntarily when they become church members. Generally, Amish young people discover continuity between what they were taught as children and what they experience as adolescents.

The practice of limiting formal schooling and of not permitting the young to enter public high schools or colleges limits the amount of exposure to scientific knowledge and reduces knowledge of other life styles. The practice of discipline members who do not abide by this rule. Couple with positive rewards for practical knowledge, are effective means of maintaining the boundaries of the society.

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