The girls might get married at 16 or 17 years old. At 18 years old, our children are in college, still doing things that children do. Where the Amish are out in the workforce, contributing to the family budget, the girls are getting married, having children, they're joining the church. They're looked at as adults at 14 when we tend to look at our children as children until they're 22, when they get out of school. An officer goes into the school once a week to talk about the dangers of substance abuse.
Kids write essays about what they've learned at the end of the semester.
While accepted by the Amish community as a preventative measure, adjustment were made to accommodate them. Again Chief Dave Easton of the Middlefield Police Department. Pride is a sin to the Amish, for a person to have too much pride. And of course the D.A.R.E. program builds pride and self esteem. So they had to make some modifications in the program to make it acceptable to the Amish who helped work on the program.