Amish Education comparison

I have recently done research on technology and it's negative effects on learning for one of my other courses, and decided to look at other cultures in comparison to the US. One such culture that was of interest to me was the Amish due to their relatively primitive lifestyle, absent of most technology. I learned that Amish children on average test higher on standardized testing that their public school counterparts. The reasons for their success are believed to be the following: lack of technological equipment and therefore more of a reliance on human and community cooperation; a focus on community results in the learning of factual knowledge, society values, student interaction, parent involvement, strong student-teacher bond, and strong parent-teacher bond; Amish value of cooperation; students teach eachother, eliminate competition, glorify personal achievement; absence of mockery, shame, and ridicule in the classroom environment among students; partnership between school and parents. I was veruy impressed with their values and the way they teach. I think our culture could really learn from their educational system. From what the Amish practice, I drew some connections/parrallels to some of the schools and principles we have studied, as well as, what I have observed recently in working and observing at ECDC.

I noticed that the Amish use their own children to teach younger kids, help those who are struggling, and to help present and teach the knowledge as an activity. They are very supportive of eachother. In Montessori schools they use a principle by combining multiple ages so that the younger kids can learn from the older kids and the older kids can reinforce what they undertsand by teaching it to the younger kids. I know from my own experience that when you teach something to someone else, you actually learn it better because you have to understand it inside and out, and be able to communicate it in precise detail to another person. Also, the Amish learn from daily life experiences as they do daily chores around the house, on their farms, and as a member of the community. This helps to develope problem solving skills both appliquable to academics and real life experiences. In ECDC, I have watched the kids do many things outside and learn through hands on tasks, problem solving, and experiences that will translate into their daily lives. All kids are expected to feed themselves and clean up at both lunch and snack, pour their own drinks, clean up spills, set up and clean up their things at nap time,  put on their own shoes and clothes, and learn to self regulate in many ways. Sometimes I see scaffolding by the teaching if a student is struggling but kids generally do these things themselves. I have also seen kids trying to help eachother if they are struggling with things such as tying their shoes, or putting together a puzzle.

I also noticed that one way the Amish differ quite a bit from the general American culture is that we are a very competitive culture and tend to put ourselves before others, unfortunately focused a great deal on greed and often when it comes to a person's career and education, the prinicple, "every man for themself". People are driven by competition, as sports are a big part of our culture. People in our culture tend to judge, criticize, and push others down in the attempt to climb to the top. Don't get me wrong, our culture has it's positive aspects and I am not trying to sound pessimistic, but in the sphere of education this tends to be an unfortunate flaw to our value system. Competition to some degree is healthy and a good thing to keep a person motivated and to challenge eachother to do better, but the Amish do things to improve themselves and being the best they can be, rather than focusing on being better than others. I really like the support system they have and think it is very emotionally healthy, building trust, confidence, good values, and happier kids. These are important building blocks for children early on. When I am working at ECDC, I have noticed that already starting in the 3's, kids are very competitve, pushing eachother as they race on the playground, and girls (who are best friends) argueing over about who is going to have a bigger and better birthday party and deciding they won't invite eachother to their's seems ridiculous. However, I know I was at that stage once and did the same thing. I am actually very against the principle of choosing teams in activies like physical education, sports, or classroom activities because it informally ranks kids on popularity or ability, and leaves kids out. Someone always has to be chosen last and is left feeling like they are not as good. I know part of the reason I worked so hard at school and tennis was to compete with my older sister, and I was always trying to out-do my best friend on art projects. In the 5th grade, for example, on my pilgram report, I can remember pulling an all-nighter, so that my illustrations would be better than my friend's, and instead of my motivation being to do my best, it was to do better than someone else. The Amish children also do not have to deal with put downs and mockery at an early age, which makes kids more confident and helps them develope a more positive sense of self. This is very important in education. It effects motivation, confidence skills, which reflect in work, public speaking, attitude in learning, etc. A child who gets made fun of is not going to enjoy learning or school as much. I have seen plenty of kids, both at ECDC and many other places make-fun, name-call, mock, and put down other kids. Part of this is because parents are not spending enough time instilling important values in their children early on. This is a skill kids need to come to pre-school already having started to establish. I think this is prodominately learned through parent's modeling. Many parents may ridicule co-workers, other parents, their friends, etc..

And lastly, the Amish's strong sense and focus of community and community involvement set them apart from the general American culture. Parents are very involved in the schools and it is not considered abnormal for an Amish parent to drop by their child's classroom to see what they are doing on a weekly basis. Parents are involved in the school on a parental and developmental level, serving on boards, and planning comittees. They are much more connected with the teachers (partly because they are viewed as important community members), whereas, in public schools in the US, according to this article, teachers try and keep parents seperate from the school and their educational sphere, so that they can do their job. I think that parents with children in the Charleston area, who are from an upper-middle class society generally work full time high paying jobs, have received good education, and hold high expectations. This is not everyone in this area, but this type of a parent tends to be very busy, over-scheduling themselves and their kids, and therefore cannot be very involved in the schools.


This may seem a little off-fous or random as a comparison to what I have observed but I found this article to be so interesting and a great way to compare our culture with another, in order to determine strengths and weaknesses. It also could serve as a tool for coming up with ideas on how to strengthen certain principles we teach in our schools.