The reality that Amish teens are prevented from attending high school has been supported by broader American society for more than fifty years–and is often even romanticized as a cultural norm to celebrate. Yet how is this situation possible at a time when education is so crucial to becoming an employable adult? In this episode, Naomi and Rebecca discuss the internal contradictions and inconsistent logic of Wisconsin vs. Yoder, the 1972 Supreme Court decision that exempted youth in Amish (as well as in Amish Mennonite, Old Order Mennonite, and conservative Mennonite) communities from formal schooling beyond eighth grade.
Link to Show Transcript
Show Notes
Full Transcript of the 1971 Wisconsin v. Yoder Supreme Court Hearing (The Amish Heritage Foundation)
Wisconsin v. Yoder (Audio version of oral testimony)
Full text of William O. Douglas’ dissenting opinion: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wisconsin_v._Yoder/Dissent_Douglas
"Yoder" Revisited: Why the Landmark Amish Schooling Case Could—And Should—Be Overturned (Gage Raley in the Virginia Law Review).
"Framing Affirmative Action" by Kimberlé Crenshaw
Thanks for listening! Connect with us via
Subscribe (for free) to Uncovered: Life Beyond on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts so you'll never miss an episode!
What topics at the intersection of education, high-demand religion, career, parenting, and emotional intelligence are of interest to you? Help us plan future episodes by taking this quick listener survey. We appreciate your input very much!
The reality that Amish teens are prevented from attending high school has been supported by broader American society for more than fifty years–and is often even romanticized as a cultural norm to celebrate. Yet how is this situation possible at a time when education is so crucial to becoming an employable adult? In this episode, Naomi and Rebecca discuss the internal contradictions and inconsistent logic of Wisconsin vs. Yoder, the 1972 Supreme Court decision that exempted youth in Amish (as well as in Amish Mennonite, Old Order Mennonite, and conservative Mennonite) communities from formal schooling beyond eighth grade.
Link to Show Transcript
Show Notes
Full Transcript of the 1971 Wisconsin v. Yoder Supreme Court Hearing (The Amish Heritage Foundation)
Wisconsin v. Yoder (Audio version of oral testimony)
Full text of William O. Douglas’ dissenting opinion: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wisconsin_v._Yoder/Dissent_Douglas
"Yoder" Revisited: Why the Landmark Amish Schooling Case Could—And Should—Be Overturned (Gage Raley in the Virginia Law Review).
"Framing Affirmative Action" by Kimberlé Crenshaw
Thanks for listening! Connect with us via
Subscribe (for free) to Uncovered: Life Beyond on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts so you'll never miss an episode!
What topics at the intersection of education, high-demand religion, career, parenting, and emotional intelligence are of interest to you? Help us plan future episodes by taking this quick listener survey. We appreciate your input very much!
The Contradictions and Consequences of Amish Schooling (Part 1)
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Rebecca
0:08
This is Rebecca.
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Naomi
0:09
And this is Naomi. We're 40-something moms and first cousins who know what it's like to veer off the path assigned to us.
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Rebecca
0:16
We've juggled motherhood, marriage, college and career as we've questioned our faith traditions while exploring new identities and ways of seeing the world
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Naomi
0:25
Without any maps for either of us to follow, we've had to figure things out as we go and appreciate that detours and dead ends are essential to the path.
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Rebecca
0:35
Along the way, we've uncovered a few insights we want to share with fellow travelers. We want to talk about the questions we didn't know who to ask and the options we didn't know we had.
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Naomi
0:45
So whether you're feeling stuck, or already shaking things up, we are here to cheer you on and assure you that the best is yet to come. Welcome to Uncovered: Life Beyond. [instrumental music]
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Naomi
1:04
Hello, everyone! Welcome back to Uncovered: Life Beyond. This is Naomi.
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Rebecca
1:11
And this is Rebecca. So I am so excited about today's episode, we are going to be talking about romanticizing educational neglect, and the internal contradictions of Wisconsin versus Yoder. So I find this so fascinating on so many levels. I remember often wondering how it is that the community I was raised in was so casual about education. And educational neglect in Amish communities tends to have the full support of broader American society, which I figured out eventually. And I found it's often even romanticized, kind of as a cultural norm that in some way, has positive benefits.
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Naomi
2:12
You know, I've observed the same thing. And in my own experience, I remember when my family was going to be homeschooling my younger siblings. This was after I had finished high school, at our church school and by that time, the laws had changed from years before when I was being homeschooled. So by that time, they were requiring that homeschooling parents would have a high school diploma or equivalent. Well, my parents didn't have that. But I was in the home and I had a high school diploma. So we took that down to the school district office. And I remember a remark that one of the administrators made there about it when we showed them my diploma. And then they said, "Yeah, well, the Amish aren't held to the rules anyway."
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Rebecca
3:16
Oh, my God.
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Naomi
3:16
And that line rings in my ears still today. And I think it's so interesting and it really prompts the question about why is educational neglect such a pervasive issue? Like, why is this lack of access to education continuing at a time when education is more important than ever, for someone who wants to be employable, or who's going to need a job? We know the Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin versus Yoder, dating back to 1971, 1972 I think is when the decision came down, gave Amish communities a pass on requiring their children to go to high school. The Amish argument was that compulsory high school education amounted to persecution. And we should maybe expand the term Amish here to refer to plain people, which would not just be people ,uh, communities that would consider themselves to be Amish, but also conservative Mennonites, Conservative Anabaptist. So Anabaptist is this umbrella term, plain Anabaptist is an umbrella term for Amish Mennonites and those who come from those roots.
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Rebecca
4:39
And I do think for both people inside the community and outside of the community, the term Amish can get really confusing. Sometimes it's assumed that it's people that drive horse and buggies but you have Old Order Mennonites who are not Amish but they drive buggies and then you have churches who have split off of the Amish and they now have cars, but they really operate like an Amish community. So I think it's
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Naomi
5:09
Like the Beachy Amish that we grew up as?
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Rebecca
5:12
Yeah. And so I think it's important to use a broad term like that, because it really has a lot of people that are kind of in that mix.
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Naomi
5:25
It is. But it also is going to become important later that we're not just talking about anyone, right? The Court was very clear about it that this doesn't apply to everybody else. This is just for this one sect. So it's a Venn diagram--it's kind of a complicated Venn diagram. But we're using plain people to refer to the Amish and conservative Mennonites who didn't want to send their children to high school, right, who live this distinctive way of life. So any of us who have grown up in this culture are going to be really familiar with this cultural identity of being strangers and pilgrims, right. And it's a reference to Hebrews 11:13, where--the chapter known as what the Hall of Fame, the faith hall of fame, or something like that, right. And there's this sense that this culture is, carries on that identity, that we don't really belong here, our home is heaven. And so we aren't trying to fit in with the cultural, the broader cultural norms. And so, I think it's important to see that this grows out of the origins of the Anabaptist people. And we'll get into that a little bit more a little later on. But there's that sense of being different, and really owning that difference, and making that an important part of their cultural identity.
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Rebecca
7:04
I think of being different, but also the rapture was such a event that everyone was so looking forward to that I think it even like amplified this whole idea of us being strangers and pilgrims, because we're not going to be here for long anyway. So advancing the world in any way, or making it better wasn't necessarily a priority. I mean, I grew up not even believing that it was worth our while to take care of the earth, because we weren't going to be here anyway.
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Naomi
7:36
Right. So there's a real short sighted view in terms of how how long--what the timeframe is, as we look ahead?
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Rebecca
7:46
Yeah, right.
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Naomi
7:47
Oh, except eternity.
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Rebecca
7:50
Well, of course. [chuckle]
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Naomi
7:52
So our thesis today is that when we take a closer look at the oral argument, and the transcript of the oral argument that was presented to the Supreme Court in Wisconsin versus Yoder, we can identify some really interesting contradictions. For one, we can see that it was not a persecution issue, it was actually about limiting the education of Amish youth, to make it harder for them to leave their communities. And the real reason behind it was to intentionally prevent them from learning the skills that would make it easier for them to survive and thrive outside the community. And it also set up Amish youth to fail if someone did leave, right, because if they left, and then encountered the typical, or the expected struggles to survive financially, emotionally, socially, outside of this established social network, then the elders could say, well, those hardships are God's way of breaking them and bringing them home. I mean, that is the logic of excommunication, which does play an important role here in the culture. And so it's really creating the terms of young people's world such that it forces them or nearly forces them into a very particular way of life. And why this matters is that withholding an education, right, or information control is a characteristic of cults. And just because it's romanticized as part of Amish culture doesn't make it acceptable.
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Rebecca
9:34
And I think it's interesting how quickly and easily this does become romanticized and just explained as part of Amish culture, when probably other groups would not be given the same reasoning.
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Naomi
9:50
The same pass?
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Rebecca
9:51
Yeah, yeah, this Yeah, exactly. And I think it's really important here to be really clear about something. We are not demonizing the Amish. This is simply an honest look at the public policies that created this world that we live in, and that we're navigating. And we're looking at decisions that were made decades ago, and the consequences and the personal costs that we today bear. We are interested also in going beyond a focus on the Amish to also ask questions about the role of broader society, including the US government and their systems. And even the way some in the educational systems respond to this. I personally am increasingly frustrated with those outside the culture who like to speak of the existing Amish culture, as if they are experts of some kind. And here's the thing, it's not their job to speak against the Amish culture. But neither do they have any business of telling the fish that literally grew up in these waters, that the pollution they speak of, is somehow a lie, or a type of angst or anger, or trigger. And it's frustrating, because often those of us who finally leave have been told while inside the community, that the things we were seeing wasn't actually happening. And then we finally managed to leave. And then once again, were told by some of those in the outside community, that what we're speaking up against isn't true. And so it's like the cycle of gaslighting continues.
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Naomi
11:45
It's so bewildering to me when I've run into this kind of thing, too, because you would think that someone who positions themself as some kind of expert on the culture would be interested in our lived experience. And yet, we've found that it's often the case they kind of made up their mind, and they have a story that they're here to tell. And whether or not the lived experience within the culture lines up with that is not is not of interest to them.
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Rebecca
12:19
Right. In fact, it kind of messes up their narrative. And sometimes you'll even be met with anger, disbelief, all the things.
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Naomi
12:29
Exactly. So I think understanding this decision, Wisconsin versus Yoder, and this exemption that the Amish have from compulsory education is best understood when we look at who was at the table when this decision was made. And when we look at who was in the courtroom, who was the judge, who was, who are the attorneys, who are the justices, I should say, since we're talking about the Supreme Court, all of the the witnesses, you go down the line, they were all white men. White men from a variety of backgrounds, right, including Amish, conservative, Mennonite, and, of course, conventional, mainstream American culture. But there were no women, there were no children of any gender. And obviously, non white folks, they were not at the table. None of the children who would be directly affected by these decisions were at the table, and no one who had exercised their freewill to leave the Amish community, ,right, because they wanted education or personal autonomy. So someone who actually had the experience of growing up Amish without a high school education, and then trying to make it on their own. None of them were consulted. [instrumental music]
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Naomi
13:54
This is Naomi dropping in from the future to share a quick correction. I found some additional information that it didn't have at the time of this recording. And a few important perspectives that were in the courtroom that we need to acknowledge were, one, William O. Douglas, was one of the justices who did file a partial dissenting opinion, pointing out the problem of assuming the children's interests were the same as the parents. However, he ultimately sided with the rest of the Court to exempt Amish children from the high school requirement. Secondly, Frieda Yoder, a 15 year old girl was one of the three children who was refusing to go to high school, testified in the Wisconsin State Supreme Court that she was not attending high school because of her religious beliefs. And although she didn't testify before the US Supreme Court, a transcript of her very brief testimony in Wisconsin was provided to the court along with other documents related to the case. So in a way her voice was present, even if in a very minor way. Finally, John Hostetler, who is considered the founder of modern Amish studies served as an expert witness for the Amish defendants in this case. He was raised Amish and left the tradition as a young man, and went on to get his PhD in Sociology at Penn State. Now, in the case, he was held up as an example of someone who could leave the Amish tradition and still succeed in the broader world. However, I wasn't able to find specific information about his formal education before college, so it's not known to what degree his education was typical of most Amish children. And we'll be talking more about his role in the case on our next episode, so stay tuned. [instrumental music fade out]
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Naomi
15:51
So why does it matter who was at the table or not? As the saying goes, if you aren't at the table, you're on the menu. Someone once said something to the effect of patriarchy being a conversation between men. And I know there's a really important feminist theorist who said something like this that I'm thinking of, and I have searched and searched for, for for that person, so I can give them credit, and I cannot find it. So if any of my fellow women's studies, folks out there, know who said something like this, I would love it if you'd help me out with identifying the person who wrote this. So patriarchy is a conversation between men. And that's what we see here in in the court proceedings. And rather than talk about the children's interests, there was only talk of the state's interests versus the Amish interests. So the state, and the state's interest had to do with, well, how much crime do the Amish commit because education was seen as a deterrent to crime. And so if they have not had an issue with crime, then presumably the state didn't have any other interests beyond that. And so it was all about the interests of those in power at the level of the state and those in power within the Amish community. There was no discussion about the welfare of the children or the children's interests. And that matters, because what we're gonna see is the children's interests were not considered at the table, and therefore they were on the menu. Their interests were sacrificed.
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Rebecca
17:35
Well, and I find it fascinating. One of the attorneys William Bell,
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Naomi
17:40
I think it was William Ball. He, he defended the Amish.
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Rebecca
17:43
Yes, and he quoted Dr. Littell as an authority in the history of the Amish people, and stated that they have not been known to have committed a felony in 250 years on this soil. And I just sighed when I read that. We know that there have been felonies committed. And we know that abuse happens. But we just ignore so many things, just to keep this narrative going.
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Naomi
18:15
The blanket statement. Yeah.
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Rebecca
18:17
It's disturbing. It's disturbing. And it's dishonest. It's dishonest, right? It's so dishonest. And again, not, not in any way being like, Oh, those Amish are horrible people. But Amish do crimes too. I mean, it's not like somehow they're exempt from getting things wrong. And even just setting the whole precedence that somehow, you know, they're exempt from crime is such a dangerous, dangerous territory to place any group of people in.
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Naomi
18:57
Right. A more factual statement would be they have not been convicted [chuckle] of committing a felony, right, or that's what he really meant.
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Rebecca
19:06
Right. Right. Right. Right.
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Naomi
19:07
Whether they've actually done it or not, is a whole different issue. And I mean, you can't prove that they never have, right, I mean, that's an unprovable. This is just one of the many internal contradictions that we've observed in this court case. And while we are not legal scholars by any stretch, we can read, and we can connect dots. [chuckle] We can look up the facts, and we can compare them with what we know. And so we've identified a list of internal contradictions in these court proceedings that we want to draw attention to because we think that those of us who have been directly affected by this ruling, those of us whose educations have been cut short by this ruling, deserve to understand these rulings that have impacted our lives in very, very real ways.
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Naomi
20:09
So the first one was the claim that we mentioned a minute ago that this requirement to send Amish children to high school just like everyone else amounted to persecution. And we'd just like to point out that being held accountable for denying children human rights is not persecution. Being prevented from stripping away any human rights--beating a child--is not persecution. And if this were just about maintaining that separation from the world as pilgrims and strangers in the world, the Amish could have built their own high schools. But no, they didn't want to do that, either. So this claim about it being persecution really falls apart.
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Rebecca
21:02
So the next internal contradiction was the way the court romanticize the Amish agricultural tradition while at the same time, the US government was still breaking up Native American communities and literally forcing their children and youth to attend Indian boarding schools. The Indian boarding schools ran approximately from 1860s through 1980s, 1990s. And a lot of talk was given about the way the Amish community, quote, "nurtured the land." And they talked about the Amish communities attachment to the land, which truly had some historical truth to it. The Amish community did a lot of their livelihood by farming, and which was good and fair. But at the same time, was there anyone who was more attached to the land than the indigenous people? I think they knew the land better than most Amish farmers ever did. [chuckle] Or just as well as the best Amish farmers ever did.
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Naomi
22:17
To put it mildly.
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Rebecca
22:19
Right, right. And the one line that kind of just troubled me was--this was another quote that the court stated, "Amish beliefs require members of the community to make their living by farming." I mean, look at any Amish Mennonite community that you want, and that fact just does not hold true. But that general idea that the Amish is so attached to the land, that general idea was enforced by the concept that a kid really didn't need more than an eighth grade education, if what he was going to do was work on the farm. And here's another quote. "The court determined that employment of children under parental guidance and on the family farm from age 14 to age 16 is an ancient tradition that lies at the periphery of the objectives of child labor laws. And thus, there was no need to keep the Amish teens in school," and again, this other word that they used, "monopolize their time with education." I find the language that they used even in the 70s was so
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Naomi
23:36
Condescending?
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Rebecca
23:37
Yeah.
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Naomi
23:38
Patronizing?
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Rebecca
23:40
Yes, all of it, all of it. They're sitting here with their degrees, and they have their education, but they're deciding that another child is just fine in life without one.
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Naomi
23:51
They're romanticizing the Amish agricultural tradition, which is very convenient here, while at the same time completely obliterating other communities who were very attached to the land traditionally. Their ancient tradition went way back beyond the Amish tradition.
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Rebecca
24:13
Right.
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Naomi
24:14
And yet, it was politically advantageous to prefer one over the other and one was white, and the other was not. And I think that whenever we see something romanticized, it's really important to take a closer look and see what else is going on. Because usually, it's kind of a smoke and mirrors, a distraction from what's really going on below the surface.
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Rebecca
24:36
I think it's just really offensive. When I first figured this out, I was actually sitting in a classroom, college classroom. And I remember being like, wait, wait, wait, what was that timeframe? Because I had just figured out about Yoder versus Wisconsin. And when I found out it was going on at the same time, there was something that just hit me. And it felt so offensive.
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Naomi
25:02
Yeah.
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Rebecca
25:03
I don't know.
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Naomi
25:04
It's a contradiction.
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Rebecca
25:05
It's a contradiction that quite honestly didn't serve anybody well. It did not serve the parties that were directly affected directly affected by it well. It didn't serve either party well, like serve the powers. It serves those powers, and it served the people in the room and that was it.
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Naomi
25:23
And not only did this decision romanticize Amish agricultural culture, but also the communal culture, right. And in the process, what that romanticizing did was it denied Amish youth autonomy and free choice. There's a quote from oral argument where they said, "Because Amish communities believe that salvation is contingent on a person's decision to live in a separate church community shielded from worldly influences," right, so that this is a core part of the belief. And while that separation from the world, yes, absolutely is part of it, again, that doesn't mean that they couldn't have their own high school still doesn't mean that they couldn't educate their children. And so the court noted that attendance at a traditional public high school would place a serious barrier to the children's integration to the Amish religious community. And so here we have this romanticizing of this communal culture, romanticizing the community connections and bonds, and yet at the same time, the same government is ripping apart other cultures that have much longer and more well established cultures than the Amish did. And so we have this contradiction once again.
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Naomi
26:41
And not only does this contradict the American society's claim to value, free will and free choice, but this kind of information control also contradicts the foundational Anabaptist belief in free will and confession of adult faith. So if we go back in history, to the European Protestant Reformation, where the Anabaptist faith grew out of that all came from individuals who were arguing that it was inappropriate to baptize infants into the church, because infants were incapable of making a conscious decision about their faith identity, and Anabaptists believed that this is a decision that should only be made as an adult. So what church you're a part of, what religious tradition that you identify with, is something that should be made by someone who's fully aware of the implications of their decision, and is making that consciously, right, which an infant can't do.
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Naomi
27:34
And so this was a revolutionary position at the time. And as a result, long story short Anabaptist were imprisoned and murdered by both Catholics and Lutherans throughout Europe. And this is because the political dominance that Catholics and Lutherans had at the time was threatened by these Anabaptists, who are these radicals who wanted to do things on their own terms. And so Anabaptists survived by hiding in remote villages. So there we have that kind of survival through agricultural through an agricultural tradition. And they also fled to other parts of Europe. And then many ultimately emigrated to the US--and all because they believed in respecting the individual's conscience. Like, this is not a peripheral kind of side idea. This is really core to the Anabaptist tradition. And yet, and yet, here's the contradiction. Here we are, we see their descendants, the plain people today, fighting to deny their own children the full freedom to choose their religious identity, to follow their conscience in choosing their religious identity. And I gotta ask, if you have to set up a system to hobble your children's free will, so that they have little choice but to stay in your community as adults, how can you even call yourself Anabaptist?
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Rebecca
28:53
The more I studied the Anabaptist faith, the more I was actually impressed by it. And I kept thinking, Wait, there's a lot here that I can literally sign up for, a lot here that I agree with. And I remember sitting there and wondering, why is it that this isn't taught? Why isn't it something that is believed and practiced?
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Naomi
29:18
Because the Anabaptist tradition we grew up with put a lot more emphasis on things like headcovering and no divorce and driving black cars...
R
Rebecca
29:27
...and, and hobbling your kids' freewill.
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Naomi
29:31
...and hobbling your kids' free will.
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Rebecca
29:33
Because if your kids did not stay in the community, it was pretty damning to the parents. It was not a good look, it was not a look that you would want to--no parent wanted it. And it seems so hypocritical.
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Naomi
29:51
In fact, for me, this is really where I personally lost faith in the culture, when as a young adult, I had questions. It wasn't even about important things to me. It wasn't like some big, deeply meaningful kind of thing. I was just coming across other theological positions. I was just, like, intellectually curious to explore them. And I was discouraged from, from even asking about it. And I was really surprised because that's not who I thought we were. I thought we follow the Bible and so whatever the Bible says, is what we want to do, right? And so I was really surprised when I was discouraged from asking these questions. And then when I asked, "Well, but don't I need to know why I believe what I believe?" The answer I got was that I should believe out of obedience, I should follow the party line out of obedience, not because it makes sense to me.
R
Rebecca: Which was not why they left the Catholic and Lutheran churches. And in all honesty, I find it fascinating that there is this belief that that's going to keep people. That following out of obedience is going to be enough. If you cripple their chances of leaving, but call it obedience. I think there's a lot of justification in there, both for the adult and for the kid. It's a way to make sense of all of it.
N
Naomi: It's a way to deal with the cognitive dissonance of that contradiction, right? That internal contradiction, you know. Wait, we say this on one hand, but then we say this on the other hand. This doesn't make sense. Oh, if we can just say, "Well, I'm going to go with the party line out of obedience, I don't have to pay attention to that contradiction. I can just ignore it. And I can sit there and do what's expected of me." [instrumental music]
R
Rebecca:So Wisconsin versus Yoder specifically targets Amish children to deny them human rights. And I found this part of it absolutely fascinating. So the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (and you'll often hear it referred to as CRC). This is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. It says that, and I quote, children must be allowed to grow, learn, play, develop and flourish with dignity. And it also affirms that I quote, children aren't just objects who belong to their parents and for whom decisions are made, or adults and training. Rather, they are human beings and individuals with their own rights. And the CRC contains 54 articles that go into all kinds of details about the rights that children have. I mean, these rights include the right to quality education, the right to be protected from mental physical sexual abuse, and the right to be protected from forced labor, as well as the right to work in a safe environment and to be paid fairly. And we're going to talk about this whole thing in another episode, but it should be noted that the US is one of the few developed countries who have not signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In fact, 196 Other countries have signed this bill. Not the USA.
N
Naomi: You know, it's interesting that a nation that sees human rights abuses as grounds for invading other countries, bombing other countries, hasn't signed up for this. And also, through this decision is denying Amish children the human rights of education. Although it's interesting--okay, here's a sub-contradiction that the court was really clear that this decision was only relevant to Amish children. They didn't want this to be used in other contexts to get children out of school. However, this has absolutely been used as a precedent for taking children out of public school, in other contexts, ranging from homeschooling to the context of the pandemic. And so that's, it absolutely does set a precedent for educational neglect, even though on its face, it is also unfairly targeting Amish children. So it's contradiction on top of contradiction.
R
Rebecca: It is. And I wonder if those people in the courtroom ever thought about how it would play out long term, if they ever thought about, what's this gonna look like in 50 years, and those in the courtroom making these decisions for children who could never hold them accountable for denying them an education are the same individuals who enjoy all the advantages that come with education from some of the world's most prestigious institutions. And I will probably never totally understand why they are so determined to be gatekeepers, and prevent others from having access to the same educational opportunities they had, the same educational opportunities they probably made sure their children had. We saw the same thing this summer when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action for college admissions, but they never touched the preferential treatment given to legacy admissions.
N
Naomi: So while affirmative action helped make college more accessible for students who didn't have that leg up of legacy admissions, they are now cut out. But those legacy admissions, the ones whose grandparents have donated lots of money, the ones who have had every advantage in life, they continue to get a leg up, and what? Do we give them props for being consistent? For being consistently prejudiced in favor of the most privileged? [chuckle]
R
Rebecca: And here's the thing I think we forget. So let's talk about the curb in the sidewalks that was started in California, for people with wheelchairs, it was given to that minority groups are it was made necessary for the minority group of people who had wheelchairs, but it helps everybody today, the cutout in the curb, that helps everybody. And I think we forget that when we make things harder for a minority group, we're going to make it harder for other people too. It affects everybody. We are closer to being in the minority than we are to being up here with the prestigious colleges and prestigious groups.
N
Naomi: Right, because of our skin color. I think many people in playing communities tend to associate themselves or think they have more in common with the white upper classes. But the reality is, that's only a very superficial connection. The reality is their interests are being thrown under the bus right along with people of color. And I think that is also something that a lot of plain people don't understand how much non traditional students like you and me have benefited from the cultural shifts of affirmative action. In fact, there's lots of evidence that white women have benefited the most from affirmative action. And so those of us who come from non traditional background who don't fit the mold of the conventional college student or the most advantaged privilege college student benefit from affirmative action. And so I think it's important that we recognize that this is not just about people of color, but it affects us too. And that's not, that's not why we should be interested in it. But it's really important to acknowledge that.
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Rebecca: Well, I think it's an important reminder that when we don't fight for the underdog, or for the minority, eventually it's going to affect us as well. And it it's easy just to fight for things that we think matter to us. And it's very selfish. And we forget that there's long term consequences that are involved with that.
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Naomi: Absolutely, yeah, we forget who we actually have common ground with.
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Naomi: Given all these internal contradictions and philosophical inconsistencies that we've been talking about here, I find it really remarkable that this decision has never really been challenged, it's really been accepted by both people within the plain communities and American society beyond it. And while it's fair to say that some make it out of the system with a good education, we know that's not true for everyone. And I think it's important to think about this, especially since this is a very influential decision that has not been questioned. So what are some of the material consequences of this decision? How has that shaped our experience of the world, and the experiences of others who have had similar backgrounds? I think these are really important questions to think about, which is what we're going to do on our next episode.
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Rebecca: And to our listeners, when you think about your education, the whole education process you've experienced, I'm curious how you see it being influenced maybe by this legal decision. It could be directly or even indirectly, and what emotions come up for you, when you think about this? We would love to hear your perspective. And if you're cool with it, we might even share your story. [instrumental music]
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Rebecca: Thank you for spending time with us today. Resources and materials we’ve mentioned are linked in the show notes and on Facebook at Uncovered: Life Beyond.
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Naomi: What are your thoughts about college and recovery from high-demand religion? We know you have your own questions and experiences and we want to talk about the topics that matter to you. Share them with us at UncoveredLifeBeyond@gmail.com.
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Rebecca: If you enjoyed today’s show and found value in it, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app. This helps others find the show. While you’re there, subscribe to our podcast so you never miss an episode.
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Naomi: Until next time, stay brave, stay bold, stay awkward.