In Defense Of Old Order Mennonite Education

Mountain View is one of six two-room Old Order 
Mennonite schools in southwestern Rockingham County.

Old Order Mennonites of the horse and buggy variety keep their formal education basic and simple. Since establishing their first grade one through eight school in 1968, they have pretty much kept things that way.

Our conservative-minded Old Orders deserve much credit, among other things, for preserving one of the most picturesque and unspoiled regions of family farms in all of the South. And chief among their contributions to our community are their offspring, honest, hard working, law-abiding citizens who require few government services, take care of their own aging (without relying on social security and Medicare) and provide for their own education.

Some may question whether their schools offer education of equal quality to that of their neighboring public schools. Based on their students’ scores on standardized tests they perform well above average when it comes to the basic three R's, and of course excel when it comes to religious instruction. But is that enough to prepare their young for today's technology-driven world? And are their teachers, with only eight grades of formal education themselves, adequately trained?

These are valid questions, to be sure, but many have at least served as classroom assistants, and some training is also offered each summer by seasoned teachers passing on their wisdom to the newer recruits. They also avail themselves of help provided in teachers' manuals accompanying their textbooks, some of which are produced by Christian Light Publication, a local publishing organization. And while their library offerings are very limited, most Old Order families, while avoiding the use of screen-based media, frequently buy and borrow books and other reading material for members of their households, and many are regular readers of the Daily News-Record, which benefits from its numerous Old Order subscribers. 

One thing is clear, these people don't rely on their schools alone to educate their children. From early childhood their young are trained to produce, preserve and prepare food from their farms, gardens, and green houses. Their daughters learn gardening, how to sew their own clothes, take care of younger siblings and to otherwise manage a household. Their sons learn whatever is necessary for the maintenance and management of their family's extensive dairy, poultry and/or other enterprise. So by the time their non-Mennonite peers are graduating from public high schools most Old Order teens have already learned skills sufficient to be able to take over many of the adult responsibilities of managing their family's farming or other operations.

On a recent visit to the Mountain View School west of Dayton I was again impressed by the dedication of their teachers and assistants and by the diligence of their students, who either walk to school, arrive by bicycle, or are transported by hired drivers. The current teacher of grades 5-8, a young woman in her early 20's, uses her bicycle or a horse and buggy to get to school each day from her home seven miles away.

We can learn from faith communities dedicated to preserving some of the timeless values of past generations. Such adherents of an older order of things, in my mind, represent a kind of monastic way of life they don't expect all of their neighbors to adopt, but which remind us all that not everything that is new is necessarily better, that not all that glitters is gold, and that we should make sure we don't discard ancient wisdom in a pursuit of the latest innovations or inventions. In summary, the Old Order community may accomplish in depth what some see as a lack of breadth. It produces young people well prepared to pass on their faith- and family-focused way of life, but without exposing them to the full array of information and options the rest of the world may offer.

Which is pretty much what they intend.

Some of the upper grade student at recess. (photos by Ruby Schrock)

Postscript: A local Old Order group that no longer requires horse and buggy transportation (Mt. Pleasant and Hinton Mennonite churches) operates the Hickory Hollow School along Limestone Lane, one that now includes some classes for grades 9-12; the Southeastern Conference Mennonites offer grades 1-12 at their Berea Christian School; the Calvary Mennonite churches have classes for grades 1-12 at the former Mt. Clinton Elementary School; and the more progressive Virginia Conference Mennonites offer kindergarten through grade 12 education at Eastern Mennonite School next to the EMU campus.