ABSTRACT
Popular understanding of Old Order Amish private schools is that they are simple remnants of a pioneer past. In a series of articles for the Lancaster New Era, since reprinted as a booklet entitled Amish One-room Schools: Lessons for the Plain Life, Klimuska (n.d.: 3) wrote, for example, “In Plain schools, the educational clock stopped 50 years ago. It’s as if these schools are outposts, fenced in from the competitive pressures of 20th Century learning, protected from its progress and turmoil”. Yet, there is little about Old Order education that is nineteenth century, for the Old Order are twenty-first century peoples, daily confronting modernity and making choices about its relevance in their lives (cf. Kraybill, 2001). In response to organizational changes in the school systems of the majority culture, the Old Order Amish and their Old Order Mennonite cousins have developed private schools that, while generally meeting the standards imposed by the state, realize the educational goals of the particular church community rather than the goals of the dominant society.
