Should all children be required to attend public schools, even if the parents have religious objections to what is being taught or schooling in general beyond a certain point? Amish and Mennonite Christians, for example, don’t believe in formal schooling after a certain age — and the Supreme Court ruled that their objections were valid.
Background Information
Three families, members of the Old Order Amish religion and the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church, sued the state of Wisconsin because of a requirement that children be enrolled in school until the age of sixteen. The parents refused to follow the law and removed their children from the public schools after the eighth grade and continued their education at home, emphasizing domestic and farming skills. According to them, any further education in the schools would present their children with too much exposure to the “evil world.”
- Old Order Amish communities today are characterized by a fundamental belief that salvation requires life in a church community separate and apart from the world and worldly influence. This concept of life aloof from the world and its values is central to their faith. A related feature of Old Order Amish communities is their devotion to a life in harmony with nature and the soil, as exemplified by the simple life of the early Christian era that continued in America during much of our early national life.
- Amish beliefs require members of the community to make their living by farming or closely related activities. Broadly speaking, the Old Order Amish religion pervades and determines the entire mode of life of its adherents. ... Amish objection to formal education beyond the eighth grade is firmly grounded in these central religious concepts.
- Formal high school education beyond the eighth grade is contrary to Amish beliefs, not only because it places Amish children in an environment hostile to Amish beliefs with increasing emphasis on competition in class work and sports and with pressure to conform to the styles, manners, and ways of the peer group, but also because it takes them away from their community, physically and emotionally, during the crucial and formative adolescent period of life. During this period, the children must acquire Amish attitudes favoring manual work and self-reliance and the specific skills needed to perform the adult role of an Amish farmer or housewife. They must learn to enjoy physical labor.
- Once a child has learned basic reading, writing, and elementary mathematics, these traits, skills, and attitudes admittedly fall within the category of those best learned through example and "doing" rather than in a classroom. And, at this time in life, the Amish child must also grow in his faith and his relationship to the Amish community if he is to be prepared to accept the heavy obligations imposed by adult baptism. In short, high school attendance with teachers who are not of the Amish faith - and may even be hostile to it - interposes a serious barrier to the integration of the Amish child into the Amish religious community.
The families argued that their religious freedom was being infringed upon, a claim which the Wisconsin Supreme Court accepted when it found in favor of the Amish parents. The state appealed the case to the Supreme Court.
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