Amish Education and Schooling

Karen Johnson-Weiner on Amish Wisdom radio today

I’ll be filling in for Suzanne Woods Fisher on the Amish Wisdom program again today.  Very much looking forward to speaking with my guest, Karen Johnson-Weiner. Karen is professor of anthropology at SUNY-Potsdam, and author of numerous books and publications on the Amish including Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools, and the newly-released New York Amish: Plain Communities in the Empire…

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An interview with “An Amish Paradox” authors Charles Hurst and David McConnell

I recently read a book I’d been looking forward to for a long time.  An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the World’s Largest Amish Community is an in-depth look at the Amish settlement at Holmes County, Ohio, and one of the most interesting books on the Amish I have read. In Ohio last month I had the pleasure of meeting the book’s authors, Charles…

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An Amish America Q-and-A with Professor Karen Johnson-Weiner: Part Three

In the previous two posts, SUNY Potsdam Professor Karen Johnson-Weiner answered questions on the Swartzentruber Amish and Amish settlements in New York state.  Today she shares her knowledge of Old Order schools. Amish America:  Your book Train Up a Child:  Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools examines parochial schooling among these related groups. In a recent interview for NPR you highlight the diversity within Amish…

6 Questions with a Lancaster County Amishman

“It is very definitely a gray area, in fact it is nearly black.” An anonymous Amish friend from Lancaster County has offered candid answers to some questions on Amish life.  In this first of two parts, he comments on topics such as the Amish presence in the media, Amish internet usage, friendships with non-Amish people, and the benefits and challenges of living life as an…

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An Amish school photo dilemma

The Amish-produced periodical Family Life has a feature known as ‘The Problem Corner’.  Readers send in questions for other readers to offer answers on. One problem, sent in by an Amish mother in 1990, goes as follows: “…We send our children to a public school, and I venture to guess 98% of the Amish children that attend there have their yearly picture taken.  We know…

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Reporter duped by ‘ignorant’ Amishman?

Not to hammer the political topic, but a Polish friend just sent a link related to yesterday’s post.  This time a reporter from one of Poland’s largest dailies, traveling through the US hot on the Obama/McCain trail, has dug up an Amishman who apparently had no idea that the elections were going on right now. ‘But I never heard of Obama’ is the name of the article (translated…

Amish the key to election ’08?

Though I can’t say that all the info it contains is factually correct, just read an entertaining article on the potential for Amish voting in the 2008 election from the Daily Beast. Some may recall that George Bush made efforts to attract Amish voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2004.  The writer in this piece is asking if McCain shouldn’t be making the same efforts this…

Amish crack the corpulence code

They only go to school for eight grades. But that seems to make for enough ‘smarts’–or at least enough to outsmart one pesky gene. We used to chalk it up to plain hard work.  But now it seems the Amish have been pulling a fast one all along–on the pesky ‘fat gene’. According to a recent study of Lancaster Amish, moderate physical activity each day…

Why Amish schoolkids are on half-days this week

Today is the first day of school for the Lancaster County Amish kids.  Despite the rise of small-enterprise in the settlement, the Lancaster County Amish are still highly ag-oriented and the school schedule reflects that.  Today commences a week of half-days for all children.  Next week will be full-schedule for everyone except the seventh and eighth graders, who will remain on the half-day schedule til…