Equality or Diversity: The Education of the Amish Child

Abstract

The Amish are a group of Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German origins, close to Mennonite groups. They came to America in the late 17^th century to escape the persecution they suffered as Anabaptists in Europe. In the late 19^th century, tensions rose between traditional and more progressive Amish communities. The latter one gradually became known by the name Amish Mennonite, and eventually united with the Mennonite Church; the former one became known as the Old Order Amish, or just the Amish. Their conservative religious belief forbids the use of any kind of contraceptive devices, and thus it has caused a fast growth of their population. Nowadays there are about 350,000 Amish (Amish Population, 2020), while the number in 1971 was only 50,000 (Wittmer, 1971). The mean Amish family size is 6.8 in 1979 (Ericksen et al., 1979), and the annual growth of population is about 12% per year, calculating from the given statistics. Historically, most of the Amish live in the United States, mainly in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, but some of them have emigrated to Canada or Latin America too, with the aim to avoid the threat of being forcefully assimilated into American mainstream society. In fact, their resistance to the mainstream society surrounding them and simple attempt keep their own lifestyle has caused long-time hostility and harassment.