Abstract
Understanding and designing appropriate educational youth safety programs for the Amish requires an appreciation of their history, their distinctiveness in an American society built on economic, social and cultural change, and how the Amish themselves have changed over the years. The qualitative research study highlighted in this paper sought to determine culturally and age-appropriate curricula useful to community educators interested in youth safety programs for Amish and other conservative Anabaptist groups. Researchers identified rural safety topics of interest to Amish families to include lawn mowers, string trimmers, chemicals, water, livestock, confined spaces, tractors and skid loaders. Parents regularly involved children in daily farm chores, where they made assignments based on the child’s physical development, maturity, interest in the task, and birth-order. Findings suggest opportunities for cooperative extension professionals to develop and engage Amish children in safety education programs.
Highlights
Understanding and designing appropriate educational youth safety programs for the Amish requires an appreciation of their history, their distinctiveness in an American society built on economic, social and cultural change, and how the Amish themselves have changed over the years
Findings from this study can be used to develop such resources, as well as provide extension educators a better understanding of the involvement Amish children have in farm activities, and an opportunity to engage these youth in safety programs
Children play a vital role in the family structure of the Amish and other conservative Anabaptist groups
Summary
Understanding and designing appropriate educational youth safety programs for the Amish requires an appreciation of their history, their distinctiveness in an American society built on economic, social and cultural change, and how the Amish themselves have changed over the years. Culture in the U.S Amish beginnings date back to the earliest years of the Protestant reformation when a group of reformers in the Swiss city of Zurich expressed concern about the link between government and religion, focused on the use of infant baptism as a way to maintain an accounting of the population for military duty among males, and for taxes (Beachy, 2011). They approved of the Protestant Reformation, they did not believe it had gone far enough. Differences could not be resolved, and 1693 is generally accepted as the date for the beginning of the group which we know as the Amish (Hostetler, 1993; Beachy, 2011)
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