Authors: Donald B. Kraybill,Steven M. Nolt,David L. Weaver-Zercher
The Amish Way (15 page)
Significantly, many of the songs that children first learn to sing focus on God’s love and care. Two of the most widely sung are “Gott ist die Liebe” (“God Is Love”) and “Jesus Liebt die Kleine Kinder” (“Jesus Loves the Little Children”). Another favorite in some families is “Ich hab ein Freund” (I have a friend who loves me . . . and that friend is Jesus).
When young children begin school they learn songs that, beyond educating them about God’s love, help train them in the Amish way.
If kind to all your classmates, obedient to the rule,If studious and thoughtful, you’re spelling love at school.
11
When one Amish grandmother was asked, “What are the most important things to teach children?” she answered succinctly: “To work and to obey.”
12
Although these words might show up on a list of child-rearing goals in other North American households, they’d hardly be at the top. In any case, the matter-of-factness with which this grandmother answered the question reveals how highly these traits are valued in Amish life.
12
Although these words might show up on a list of child-rearing goals in other North American households, they’d hardly be at the top. In any case, the matter-of-factness with which this grandmother answered the question reveals how highly these traits are valued in Amish life.
For many Americans, the phrase
obedience training
applies mostly to dogs. In Amish society, it pertains to people, beginning with children. Amish child-rearing literature abounds with references to obedience, not as a control button for authoritarian parents, but because obedience is a core value of their faith. Disobedience is a sin, a signpost on the road to eternal damnation. Jesus obeyed God, and his followers are expected to obey God as well.
obedience training
applies mostly to dogs. In Amish society, it pertains to people, beginning with children. Amish child-rearing literature abounds with references to obedience, not as a control button for authoritarian parents, but because obedience is a core value of their faith. Disobedience is a sin, a signpost on the road to eternal damnation. Jesus obeyed God, and his followers are expected to obey God as well.
Most Christians would agree, and they may even add that children are expected to obey their parents. But Amish understandings of obedience go a big step further: church members are expected to abide by the regulations of the church, thereby guarding their salvation. By teaching their children the habits of obedience, parents place them on the road to heaven and safeguard them from hell.
One spring morning we visited with Hannah, a mother of seven. Having just cleaned up from weeding the garden, she invited us into her living room, where we talked about child rearing. We told her that some of our friends who are dentists, nurses, and doctors say that, compared to many non-Amish children they encounter, Amish offspring are quiet, well mannered, and well behaved. “Why might that be?” we asked. Without hesitation or a trace of humor, Hannah responded, “Oh, it’s the spanking that makes them so nice.”
Hannah explained that, when children are about two years old, their wills need to be broken. If it’s not done at that stage, she said, they will likely become disobedient and rebellious adults. The spanking helps correct them and “make them nice.” Another mother explained that when children are old enough to fold their hands at prayer time, they are also old enough to be reprimanded with light spanks when disobedient.
Amish parents turn to the words of King Solomon to support corporal discipline: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Proverbs 13:24). Looking to the New Testament, they cite the observation in the book of Hebrews that God disciplines Christians the way a father disciplines a son. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, [but] . . . afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).
Parents are quick to say, however, that spanking and other forms of physical discipline must never be done in anger or frustration. “Is there a wrong time to punish a child?” asks one Amish handbook on the Christian life. “Yes, when you are angry, [so] unless it hurts you more than the child, stop at once until you can discipline in a spirit of love.”
13
The child should understand the reason for discipline, too, so that “punishment ends on a happy note, sweet and forgiving,” says Naomi, a mother writing about discipline. Because correction ultimately “leads to happiness . . . [discipline] must be the result of our love for the child’s happiness, both now and in the hereafter.”
14
13
The child should understand the reason for discipline, too, so that “punishment ends on a happy note, sweet and forgiving,” says Naomi, a mother writing about discipline. Because correction ultimately “leads to happiness . . . [discipline] must be the result of our love for the child’s happiness, both now and in the hereafter.”
14
These links—between spanking, happiness, and heaven—provide the framework for Amish child discipline, an approach that nurtures obedience instead of individuality, and conformity instead of creativity. It’s a framework that many Americans find disturbing and perhaps even abusive. Naomi disagrees. In fact, she believes that letting children go without discipline is “the cruelest kind of child abuse.” She poses the question rhetorically: “Now wouldn’t it be abusive above all abuses to withhold from our children the training they need for a life of discipline and self-control, of service to God?”
In an essay titled “Tips on Training a Two-Year-Old,” Lavina, an Amish mother, offers advice on teaching toddlers to work. “If you are packing daddy’s lunch, set your child on the countertop and let her help. . . . Explain that the cookie is for daddy’s snack this afternoon. . . . Two-year-olds can be taught to set the table. . . . Our oldest was able to set ours in the morning before dad came in from chores.”
15
15
Although work nears the top of the Amish child-rearing agenda, its tie to eternal life is more tenuous than that of obedience. Amish people frequently cite an Old Testament verse about working by the sweat of one’s brow to produce food (Genesis 3:19). A prominent proverb, “Idleness is the devil’s workshop,” often enters Amish conversation, and the widely read “Rules of a Godly Life” claims that “idleness is a resting-pillow of the devil and a cause of all sorts of wickedness.” Never let the devil “find you idle,” for he has great power “over the slothful, to plunge them into all kinds of sins, for idleness gives rise to every vice.”
16
16
Amish people believe that work is a spiritual discipline that shields them from sin and vice. Whether their work ethic is a by-product of their rural lifestyle or is grounded in the belief that God holds them accountable for how they use their time, they universally agree that hard work is virtuous and sloth is not. “We mistrust a soft and leisurely life,” write sheep farmers Chris and Rachel Stoll. “We want to keep our children from becoming soft and lazy.”
17
17
Children learn this discipline at an early age. One store owner who grew up on a farm said, “We boys used to think that our dad actually planted some weeds for us to pull, just to keep us out of mischief!” In her article about training two-year-olds, Lavina offers other ways to get young children involved in household tasks: cleaning, dusting, sweeping, and even sewing with a large needle and thread. “Two-year-olds love to help with the dishes! I know this takes a lot of ‘dying to self,’ but then what job doesn’t? . . . It’s surprising how they remember the details at age eight if they are taught properly when they are two.” She also explains how she receives help from a two-year-old to care for a newborn. “Two-year-olds enjoy helping with baby, too. Have them bring a clean diaper, hand you the powder box, and then put the wet diaper into the bucket.”
18
18
Teaching children to work has been, in some ways, an economic necessity in Amish life. Farming is labor-intensive, especially for families who must forgo tractors and automated machinery. Yet even those who work off the farm praise the discipline of hard work. More than a means for earning money and getting things done, work is considered virtue training, bending children’s affections in a godly direction. “It’s too late to teach children to work after they’re through school” is a common adage, and such teaching cannot begin too early. “Children are involved from little on up,” one woodshop owner explained. “From the time they could stand on a five-gallon bucket, they’re up looking and watching what you’re doing.”
19
19
Although children in a few Amish communities attend public schools, the vast majority of them attend Amish schools.These private schools, operated by parents, do not have formal classes on religion, but they promote religious values at many turns: singing a hymn to open each school day, reciting the Lord’s Prayer, teaching obedience and cooperation, and reading stories with flashbacks to Anabaptist history. A handbook for Amish schools explains, “It is our aim to teach religion all day long in our curriculum and on the playground: in arithmetic by accuracy (no cheating), in English by learning to say what we mean, in history by humanity (kindness and mercy), in health by teaching cleanliness and thriftiness, in geography by learning to make an honest living on the soil, in music by singing praises to God, on the school ground by teaching honesty, respect, sincerity, humbleness, and yes, the Golden Rule.”
20
20
Children also learn about the Amish way through songs, poetry, and proverbs, which are all parts of the “hidden curriculum” that passes Amish faith across the generations. One favorite schoolroom verse captures core aspects of Amish spirituality:
I must be a Christian child,
Gentle, patient, meek, and mild,
Must be honest, simple, true.
I must cheerfully obey,
Giving up my will and way. . . .
“Giving up my will and way” are code words for
uffgevva
, and teachers often note that the middle letter in
pride
is
I
. In the classroom and at play, children learn to esteem others above themselves and take in the religious values of their community.
uffgevva
, and teachers often note that the middle letter in
pride
is
I
. In the classroom and at play, children learn to esteem others above themselves and take in the religious values of their community.
Of course, Amish education lacks certain things that many people value: university-trained teachers, an expansive curriculum, computers with high-speed Internet access, and up-to-date science labs. Moreover, in a one-room school with about two dozen children from eight or ten families in the immediate neighborhood, there is little diversity of thought, no ethnic or racial diversity, and no exposure to other faiths. But the Amish prefer it this way. For them, it’s better to have a teacher steeped in Amish values than one trained in the latest educational techniques, and it’s better to instill certain spiritual values in children than let them explore the world and all its options. Not everyone would want their children to be so sheltered, but the Amish find it far superior to the alternative. Amish schools thus complement the efforts of parents to pass along the Amish way.
In an essay titled “Our Plain Folks and Their Spirituality,” published in a monthly magazine for Amish readers, retired farmer and grandfather Sam Stoltzfus explains how children learn the Amish way: “Our spiritual life begins [in] childhood . . . the babies go along to church when they are six weeks old.”
21
21
Sam thinks faith is communicated by actions more than words. “We saw by example how our parents planned their lives and how much time they devoted to helping others. . . . I can well recall mother making a hearty meal for hobos who came to our house. Many times we saw dad rush off to barn raisings or take his team [of horses] to plow for a sick neighbor.” Sam also watched his dad give generously to needy people in the church and prepare alms money for communion. Even the children were expected to give to the church.
Sarah, a generation younger than Sam, underscores the importance of repetition in shaping children’s beliefs and affections. Drawing on her experience of teaching her children to sing, she agrees with Sam that early training can make all the difference. “Repetition of the words, the tunes, the feelings will plant something into our hearts that will remain there for life,” she writes. “What we learned in our tender years will still be there, reminding us of what is right.”
22
22
Sam remembers his deep desire as a nine-year-old to “go in with the boys” as church members entered a house or barn for
Gmay
, rather than walking in with his parents as young children did. “It was a big ritual in our Amish world,” he says, “the first rite of passage from boyhood to being big.” He had already memorized the Lord’s Prayer as a six-year-old, but his mother insisted that he memorize the
Loblied
with its “four verses with seven lines each—over 140 words and all in High German” before he could walk into church with the big boys and sit with them. “Finally,” he recalls, “I could say the whole twenty-eight lines without missing a syllable. Mother smiled and said, ‘Now you may go in with the boys.’ How important I felt walking in with the boys that first time. . . . There we’d sit, me and Manny Beiler, holding the
Ausbund
hymnbook together. Then when the
Loblied
was sung I could read the lines and help sing.”
23
Gmay
, rather than walking in with his parents as young children did. “It was a big ritual in our Amish world,” he says, “the first rite of passage from boyhood to being big.” He had already memorized the Lord’s Prayer as a six-year-old, but his mother insisted that he memorize the
Loblied
with its “four verses with seven lines each—over 140 words and all in High German” before he could walk into church with the big boys and sit with them. “Finally,” he recalls, “I could say the whole twenty-eight lines without missing a syllable. Mother smiled and said, ‘Now you may go in with the boys.’ How important I felt walking in with the boys that first time. . . . There we’d sit, me and Manny Beiler, holding the
Ausbund
hymnbook together. Then when the
Loblied
was sung I could read the lines and help sing.”
23
The habits, practices, and rituals of Amish life shape the spiritual character of children in profound ways. They are not permitted to decide for themselves whether or not to go to church or whether or not to kneel for family prayers. Parents prescribe the Amish way by example and ritual, and children are expected to walk in this way until they come of age in their late teens. They learn the habits of silence and patience at
Gmay
by observing scores of people practice them for three hours every other Sunday.They learn obedience because it is reinforced by teachers, parents, and preachers, who all send the same message: disobedience is sin. All of their friends, associates, and kin follow similar practices and rituals, etching into their minds the beliefs and affections of their spiritual world.
Gmay
by observing scores of people practice them for three hours every other Sunday.They learn obedience because it is reinforced by teachers, parents, and preachers, who all send the same message: disobedience is sin. All of their friends, associates, and kin follow similar practices and rituals, etching into their minds the beliefs and affections of their spiritual world.
Other books
To Claim His Mate by Serena Pettus
The Folded Earth: A Novel by Roy, Anuradha
Where She Belongs (The Forever Collection Book 1) by Dani Wyatt
When Love Is Enough by Laura Landon
Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks by Dane Hartman
HUGE X2 by Stephanie Brother
The Man From Her Past by Anna Adams
Billie Jo by Kimberley Chambers
Operation Soulmate by Diane Hall
Mirabile by Janet Kagan