Commitment to faith and community: the Hutterite education system Essential to the persistence of Hutterite society in relatively unchanged form is of course the socialization system. The relation between sexes, the age hierarchy, economic activity, attitudes to the outside world-all these depend on having members with a particular set of values and skills and certain perceptions of themselves, their society, their environment. The education system is geared up to having precisely such members, yet it is not simply the education system in its own right which achieves this. Like most other aspects of Hutterite society the education system is integral to the wider life of the colony. Put otherwise, we may say that the very fact of living on the colony is in itself an education; the system of child-rearing is one element in the continuity of theory and practice and of specific colony practices. Just as much as education (in the formal sense) props up ‘the system’ so does ‘the system’ prop up education. A child growing up on a colony is meant to learn formally and to experience informally what it is to be a Hutterite. The two are meant to complement and reinforce one another, thus providing a system which is self-perpetuating because it is internally consistent. The aim of child-rearing is to make the child understand, accept and practise that consistency.