Train Up a Child

<p><em>Train Up a Child</em> explores how private schools in Old Order Amish communities reflect and perpetuate church-community values and identity. Here Karen M. Johnson-Weiner asserts that the reinforcement of those values among children is imperative to the survival of these communities in the modern world.</p><p>Surveying settlements in Indiana Michigan Ohio Pennsylvania and New York Johnson-Weiner finds that although Old Order communities have certain similarities in their codes of conduct there is no standard Old Order school. She examines the choices each community makes--about pedagogy curriculum textbooks even school design--to strengthen religious ideology preserve the social and linguistic markers of Old Order identity and protect their own community's beliefs and values from the influence of the dominant society.</p><p>In the most comprehensive study of Old Order schools to date Johnson-Weiner provides valuable insight into how variables such as community size and relationship with other Old Order groups affect the role of these schools in maintaining behavioral norms and in shaping the Old Order's response to modernity.</p>