A friend who recently wondered out loud “I wonder what it would be like to go to an Amish School?”
I thought her question was a great one with knowing being the end of the school year and students graduating. And so, the pen in hand and “detective” hat on head, I set out to discover some answers. Of course, the road to discovery led me straight to an Amish teacher’s home, the home of Mahlon Miller, who was happy to supply some answers.
The biggest reason Amish attend their own school as opposed to public schools is to reinforce the deeply held value of community. Mahlon expressed the importance of children learning how to “pull, together, work together and grow more with the fact that people are parts of the whole and not just individuals.”
However, even at Amish school, kids are kids at times ask why they have to learn certain subjects. Mahlon shared the eighth grade boys recently were more interesting in the end of their year “men versus boys” baseball game that memorizing their poems, which sounds pretty normal.
Indiana, Shipshewana, Amish Farm Tour, girl, coralling, driving cows towards barn, milking,
One big difference between Amish school and public school is that Amish finish school after 8th grade. From there, these young people either get a job in a local industry, or they help run the family business or far.
With the end of the school term at hand, Mahlon expressed some sadness at letting go of his eight-graders, as they grew especially close during the school year. In releasing these teens to the world, Mahlon always the model student, and teacher of life, penned this poem to his graduating class:
