The "Will The Children Win: Part I?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Driving the back roads around Lancaster County, Pennsylvania looking for a few photographs to share with you.  Not uncommon to pass close to 100  one-room school houses after driving for an hour or so, since there are still over 320 one-room school houses remaining in Lancaster County.  

An Amish one-room school house in Lancaster.

These school houses are used to educate Amish children until they are in eighth grade when they finish their mandatory state require- ment for education in Pennsylvania.  It's only been that way since 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to allow the Amish an exemption to the law that they must remain in public education until the age of 16.  That year the Supreme Court decided that sending Amish children to high school would interfere with their ability to practice their religion.  A former Amish girl, who at the age of 15 crawled through a bathroom window of her home during the middle of the night to escape that lifestyle, went to live with an uncle who had also left the Amish church a few years before.  

Another one-room school house. There are over 300
of these schools in Lancaster County.

The reason she did so was to gain an education!  Wasn't an easy decision, but years later she knows she did the right thing.  And now this young girl, who now has earned a philosophy degree at Columbia University and lives in New York City, believes the Supreme Court decision is misguided and should be overturned.  Her name is Torah Bontrager and is the founder and director of The Amish Heritage Foundation which she began in 2018.  Her website says it is time to reclaim "our Amish story."  The organization is going to try and overturn Wisconsin v. Yoder that allows Amish parents to remove their children from school after the eighth grade.  On November 16 the organization will hold a conference in New York titled "Overturning WI v. Yoder: Making Education a Federal Right for All Children."  She hopes to find a plaintiff opposed to the ruling to initiate a court case that would eventually wind up before the Supreme Court and possibly lead to the ruling being overturned.  She is hoping that one person will be an Amish teenager who wants an education, such as she did years ago, but is being denied that education by his or her parents.  So why is she doing this?  

Two Amish men heading to the Supreme Court building in 1972 .

She claims the 1972 ruling does these three things: It violates a child's constitu- tional right to a quality education; It enables child abuse in the name of religious freedom; It fosters gender inequality.  Needless to say, The Amish church opposes her mission.  A church leader claims that about 99% of Amish people want to keep it the way it is now and don't need an education to be successful in life.  Being a doctor, lawyer or that kind of thing isn't part of The Amish tradition he said.  So an eighth grade education is all that is needed.  He also said that you can make the choice to leave the religion in your late teens, before being baptized and made a member of Amish faith.  But, Torah believes not having a high school education severely limits the decisions Amish children can make about their future.  If they decide at the age of 18 not to be a member of The Amish faith, they will find it hard to fiind an alternative route to a higher education.  She also said that the human brain is not fully developed in its decision-making capacity until the age of 26.  So, as a child finishing 8th grade, they are too immature to make that decision.  One woman, Rachel Martin, had a father who left The Amish faith as she had just graduated from eight grade.  He wanted her to go to high school while her mother didn't.  She left with her father and at first had a tough time, but realized later it was the right thing to do.  Why should children have to make such a choice?  If Amish are forced to keep their children in school until the end of high school, will it be a hindrance to their life?  I don't know.  Maybe, since they count on their children to help work the farm.  It's free labor.  One Amish leader said he never heard any child, after graduating from 8th grade, want to continue school.  He said people in the Amish community don't find it necessary to go past the 8th grade.  Torah disagrees and she knows what she is talking about, since she went through it.  And, she's hoping to convince the Supreme Court that all children, no matter what religion they may be, have the right to an education.  I guess we will see if she can overturn the 1972 Supreme Court decision.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.