Opinion of the Amish

[Torie]

My one reservation about the Amish is that they under-educate their children to the point that they really don't have the option of leaving the community. They go to one room school houses, with a young woman (always young women) as the teacher, and at the eight grade, leave to do "work- study," with that being mostly work at the family business or farm, and very little study. When at 17, the kids can experiment living in the outside world, and running around as "normal" teenagers for a year, they find that they just don't fit in at all, given their poor education, insular life, strange accent, etc. So in a way, I find that a form of child abuse, that the state allows to occur.

I learned all of this by taking participating in a tour group in Lancaster County, PA, where we met actual Amish families, and could have a conversation back and forth, with the guide very knowledgeable about Amish life, and rules, and practices.