TRUMBULL COUNTY Amish schools differ, but basics stay the same

Amish children can also attend area public schools if their parents wish.
By REBECCA SLOAN
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
MESOPOTAMIA -- It's Friday afternoon and school's out for the weekend.
Toting lunch pails and satchels, groups of children scatter gleefully across the green fields of Mesopotamia Township, hurrying home to finish chores before suppertime.
Clad in homemade blue suits, somber black shawls and modest brown dresses, the lively scholars pour from the open door of a simple one-room schoolhouse that sits serenely between two cow pastures.
It is a scene that seems to belong to another era. An era when boys and girls learned the Golden Rule and spoke only when spoken to. When teachers thwacked behinds with hickory sticks, and when reading, writing and arithmetic were the core curriculum.
But although these children look like scholars from 100 years ago, and though they learn their lessons in a one-room schoolhouse, they are not visions tumbling through a time warp.
They are Amish children whose educational experience is strikingly different from anything commonly associated with learning in the technologically advanced 21st century.
What takes place: Betty Weaver, an Amish woman who lives in Mesopotamia and has three school-age children, shared some of the basics about what an Amish school day is like.
& quot;Amish children start school at around age 6, or first grade, and go until they are about 13 or 14. After the eighth grade, an Amish child's school days end, & quot; Weaver said.
Amish children learn basic math, reading, spelling, writing, history, geography and German. German is a second language for the Amish, and though it is taught at school, Weaver said English is the chief language spoken at school.
& quot;English is the language children will need to speak out in the world, so it is important they are comfortable speaking English, & quot; she said.
An Amish school day starts at around 9 a.m. and ends at about 3 p.m. There is typically a 15-minute morning recess, a 30-minute noon recess and a 30-minute lunch. Amish children walk to and from school each day and some walk as far as a mile each way in all types of weather.
The Amish school year starts in August and ends this month, and Amish children attend school about 160 days a year, Weaver said. They do not get a long break at Christmas or Easter like non-Amish children do.
Other details: Weaver said most of the small Amish schools in Mesopotamia -- there are about eight of them -- let out for summer vacation last week.
& quot;This is so the children can help with work that needs to be done on the farm in the springtime, & quot; she said.
If children misbehave, they are disciplined. Sometimes they are kept inside during recess, and if necessary, they are paddled. Children receive rewards like candy or stickers when they do something good.
In Amish schools where classes are particularly large, there may be more than one teacher. Weaver said she knows of one school where there are three teachers with each in charge of a specific group. For example, one teaches grades one through four, another teaches grades five through eight, and another teaches children with special needs.
Single Amish women are often hired as schoolteachers, but men also teach and sometimes married women teach as well. Teachers are paid a salary that comes out of the local Amish church fund, or money contributed by Amish families living in that area. Amish families do not pay to send their children to school.
The Amish community owns the school, and each school has an appointed president and a school board. The board selects Amish teachers, who, like their pupils, attended school only through the eighth grade. There is no specific age requirement for teachers, though most start teaching in their late teens or 20s.
During winter, Amish schools are heated with wood or coal stoves, and teachers usually arrive early to get the fire going before the pupils show up, Weaver said.
During the summer, Amish schools remain vacant. It isn't until late summer when the school year is about to begin that families in the community turn out to cut the grass and clean things up for another school year.
The interior of an Amish school is plain and simple, with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Outhouses serve the purpose when nature calls. Sometimes schools are built with partitions that can be erected when the one large room needs to be divided into two or three smaller rooms.
Used materials: Desks and textbooks often come from public schools discarding these items, though Weaver said she has also heard of some local Amish schools that use textbooks that are written and published by Amish scholars in Holmes County.
& quot;We will get many used items from public schools. It seems like they are throwing things away all the time, & quot; she said.
In Amish schools, each day starts with a prayer.
Although many Amish children in Trumbull County attend one-room schoolhouses, many also attend public schools, a decision Weaver said is entirely up to the parents.
For example, Weaver sends her 13-year-old daughter to a one-room schoolhouse next door to the family's home on Gates Road, but her two small boys, who are in first and third grade, respectively, attend Mesopotamia Elementary School.
Weaver said the rampant violence in public schools across America made her decide to send her junior-high-aged daughter to an Amish school.
& quot;When my daughter was younger, we sent her to a public school, but now that she is older, we want her to go to an Amish school rather that going to the public middle school, & quot; Weaver said. & quot;You hear so much about school shootings, shootings being done in the nicest, quietest places. It scares me. & quot;
Although non-Amish parents might also think that sending their children to a safe, peaceful Amish school sounds like a nice alternative to modern-day educational problems, Weaver said only Amish children are permitted to attend Amish schools.
Donna Gwinn, a secretary at Mesopotamia Elementary School, said about 36 percent of the pupils attending public schools in the Bloomfield-Mesopotamia school district are Amish, and most of these children are younger than junior-high age.
Gwinn said once an Amish pupil is finished with fifth grade in public schools, most Amish parents elect to send their children to an Amish school for reasons similar to Weaver's.