On 2005-03-31 17:32:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Here's a fact: Even though Amish children get an "opportunity" to go into the real world and see if they want to stay there, it's not a viable option for them. This is because Amish parents are the only group in the country who are not obligated to send their children to school past the eighth grade. The US Supreme Court agreed that a high school education was not important for Amish children, since they will be trained in the ways of Amish culture instead. Of course they work in grocery stores! Their parents are not obligated to provide them with an education that can get them anything better in the real world."
I wouldn't agree with your pessimism about their prospects.
For the boys, have you any idea of the demand out there in agriculture for competent farmhands? It's huge.
Plus, any Amish boy out there would do very well in construction because he probably knows more about carpentry than 99% of high school graduates. Construction easily pays well enough to cover the costs of continuing education. High school really goes at a very slow pace. A motivated college-age young adult can typically get through the equivalent amount of material in a year. I went to a university that was still on the quarter system. We routinely covered as much material in a quarter in college as we covered in a year in high school. Maturity helps. A lot.
Any Amish girl out there can immediately go in and get a job doing clothing alterations or as a cook in a semi-decent restaurant. She may not know how to make their recipes, but she more than has the basic skills from which all good food is made, and she *certainly* has enough education to read and follow the recipes with no trouble. Food service doesn't pay a lot, but skilled cooks certainly get enough to live on and finance continuing education.
There isn't a lot that they teach in the academic courses in high school that you can't learn yourself from a good book on the subject.
The basics of learning how to learn I already more than had by the end of 8th grade. So did almost all my classmates, even the ones on the slow side of average, whether they recognized it or not.
The reason Amish are not compelled to send their children to school past the 8th grade was that in the court cases that decided that they demonstrated to the full satisfaction of the courts that they provided continuing education in their own communities that was different from but equivalent to high school--at least the next two years of it, which is as high as compulsory schooling laws usually go, anyway.
Amish kids get through their 18th year with a solid vocational education that is better than many other children graduate with or drop out with.
Any one of them, male or female, could probably get a job in a stable as a groom. For more than minimum wage because they know what they're doing.
Don't judge their skills worthless in the marketplace just because of our national bias towards college degrees. There's a whole lot of people out there making good livings in the trades without them.
Just as there are a whole lot of kids who attend high school without actually getting educated there---being far more interested in the social and recreational opportunities than the academic ones. :smile: :smile: :smile:
I would suspect having solid skills, many of which are in regular use outside the Amish community, that *don't* exactly match the skills of the rafts of *other* kids coming out of high school every year is more of an advantage to an enterprising Amish lad or lass than a drawback. Supply and demand.
Timoclea
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
--Thomas Brackett Reed
