Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The United States Supreme Court’s decision on the case Wisconsin v. Yoder et al. (1972) created a special provision for Amish and conservative Mennonite families by allowing their children to end formal schooling at age fourteen. The assumption was that these Anabaptist families were preparing children adequately to live fully in their communities without a high school education. Since then, most of these children attend small private Amish schools, but some public school districts in the United States, like those at the center of this paper’s study, have successfully attracted a significant number of Amish students to their elementary and middle schools. This paper examines the perspectives of public school educators of Amish children and how they reconcile their aspirations for their students’ freedom, autonomy, and open-futures with the realities of the context, place, space, and religious background from which the students source significant identity. The tension and contradictions that emerge from this work are substantial, as evident in the perspectives shared by these study participants, and in the court case arguments that initiated the provision for this educational exemption for Amish children in Wisconsin v. Yoder et al. (1972).