Train up a child
Subtitle: Old Order Amish & Mennonite schools
By: Karen M. Johnson-Weiner.
Series: Young Center books in Anabaptist and Pietist studies
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 289
ISBN-13: 9780801884955
Subjects: Amish children -- Education; Mennonite children -- Education; Amish -- Social life and customs; Old Order Mennonites -- Social life and customs
Description: Overview: Train Up a Child explores how private schools in Old Order Amish communities reflect and perpetuate church-community values and identity. Here, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner asserts that the reinforcement of those values among children is imperative to the survival of these communities in the modern world. Surveying settlements in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, Johnson-Weiner finds that, although Old Order communities have certain similarities in their codes of conduct, there is no standard Old Order school. She examines the choices each community makes - about pedagogy, curriculum, textbooks, even school design - to strengthen religious ideology, preserve the social and linguistic markers of Old Order identity, and protect their own community's beliefs and values from the influence of the dominant society. In the most comprehensive study of Old Order schools to date, Johnson-Weiner provides valuable insight into how variables such as community size and relationship with other Old Order groups affect the role of these schools in maintaining behavioral norms and in shaping the Old Order's response to modernity.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [273]-282) and index.
Table of contents: title: Private schools and old order life; title: Old order schools and old order identities; title: The Swartzentruber schools; title: Small schools in small settlements; title: Mainstream Amish schools; title: Progressive Amish schools; title: Old Order Mennonite schools in Lancaster County; title: Publish or perish; title: What's education for?