by doing, and I would be inclined to say they do a better job than most of the
rest of us judging by the fact the they have little unemployment, delinquency
or divorce."

A law officer (Wilbur E. Deininger) of Monroe, Wisconsin said that even though
the Amish do not go to high school, they were not involved in any crime.
The Welfare Director (Ray F. Kaskey) said that the fact that Amish do not go
to high school does not threaten the tax structure of the county because no
Amish have ever been on welfare or public assistance.

Frieda Yoder, 15 year old Amish girl and old enough to marry in Wisconsin,
took the stand and testified that it was aginast her beliefs to attend high
school, and that she wanted to live the way of her people.

It was brought out at the trial that the arrest against the Amish were lodged
directly upon the loss of $17,000 in state aid to the New Glarus school
district because the Amish opened their own schools after disputes with
authorities over such problems as shorts for gym classes.

Beyond establishing that the Amish were not attending New Glarus High School,
the prosectution presented no other testimony or witnesses.

Upon these facts the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the state had failed its
proofs. "There is not such a compelling state interest in two year high school
compulsory education as will justify the burden it places upon appellant's free
exercise of their religion."

Death Knell for Amish?

William B. Ball, defense lawyer for the Amish, said, "The State makes no bones
about its desire to enter the minds of these young people, expose them to
worldly education, fill up their minds with state packaged learning, alien to
the Amish way, threatening the privacy of their psyche and threatening painful
personality restructuring by pacing them in a high school with stress upon
competition, ambition, consumerism, and speed."

The attorney said in his brief to the U. S. Supreme Court, "The state is
insisting that there cannot be different kinds of education... all education
must be dictated by the state with values derived from technology or related to
consumption and competition and must be imposed upon every child".
"As all three courts in Wisconsin found, " said Ball, "the state is violating
the free exercise of the Amish religion by interfering with the whole fabric of
Amish worship life which permeates the whole of their ceremonial community and
daily farm living, stopping parents from nurturing their children in the Amish
faith, preventing the Amish youth from following their religious faith and farm
vocations, and violating their right of communal association".

Ball said if the U.S. Supreme Court does not stop this invasion by the state "it
will sound the death knell for an old, distinctive and innocent culture."
The Wisconsin attorney general, Robert W. Warren, in his brief to the U. S.
Supreme Court said that the Amish are "neglecting" their children. Moreover, he
asserts, the legislature alone controls educational policy and until that body
changes the low the Amish "should be required to attend a 'more worldly' high
school". (Pennsylvania, Indiana and Kansas have exempted Amish, but Wisconsin's
legislature rejected consideration of the Amish problems.)

The Supreme Court will not have to decide whether the constitutional guarantees
of religious freedom apply to the Amish, or whether they will have to move once
more this time from the United States to find a haven where they can be left
alone. One whole group left Arkansas a few years ago for Central America saying,
"The government is gradually taking away our religious freedom".

Friends of the Court

The National Council of Churches urges the U. S. Supreme Court to affirm the
decision favorable to the Amish and said, "responsible religious groups in this
country have the right to undertake, not just an imitation of conventional
education, but a fundamentally different type of education from the generally
prevailing in a given state -- if necessary to embody and inculcate their
understanding of what the divine will requires". The council further said, the
Amish "were engaged in general education centuries before there was a State of
Wisconsin and are as fully capable of choosing among arguable theories of
pedagogy as are the civil entities which have entered the field of education
more recently. The a have made significant contribution to western civilization
as a whole," stated the NCC, "and the entire Christian movement would be poorer
if the Amish were forced to conform or emigrate".

In addition to the National Council of Churches, other religious groups
supported the Amish.

The brief of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church said, "A child should not, except
for the gravest causes, be forced to make the psychological decision of
disobeying the religious precepts of his parent ... and the denial to a parent
of the right to control the religious upbringing of his child is a denial of the
free exercise of religion."

The Mennonite Central Committee through its attorney Donald Showalter of
Harrisonburg, Virginia said in his friend of the court brief, "The education
given Amish youth adequately prepares them for the future ... then clearly the
legitimate state interest has been satisfied ... enforcement of the law beyond
the rudiments will threaten the "very existence of the Amish religion in
America." "Freedom of religion -- a constitutionally guaranteed right -- must
prevail over the more nebulous and uncertain claim of the State of Wisconsin."

Nathan Lewis of Washington, D.C., counsel for the National Jewish Commission on
Law and Public Affairs, said in his brief amicus curiae, "This case presents a
disturbing illustration of an attempt by the state authorities to compel
nonconformists, whose beliefs and practices are constitutionally protected, to
adhere to norms that are entirely sound and desirable for most inhabitants of
this country, but are offensive and harmful to the affected religious
minority... the Constitution and the tradition of this nation do not permit this
kind of coercion which endangers all religious or ethnic minorities."

Attorney Leo Pfeffer of New York City representing the Synagogue Council of
America and the American Jewish Congress said their organizations have "a strong
interest in religious freedom and a religiously and culturally pluralistic
America... a reversal of the decision of the Supreme Court of the State of
Wisconsin may imperil these precious values". Wisconsin has failed to "establish
a compelling state interest to outweigh the religious freedom, parental liberty,
the rights of mature minors and family privacy," said the Jewish group, and
moreover, "an education which includes eight grades is adequate to insure an
informed citizenry."

Amish are not Ignorant

Some people who are uninformed are under the impression that the Amish are
ignorant and that their children are denied an exposure to a knowledge of the
world and will not be able to make their living. Such is contrary to fact. The
Amish are not against education, but are dissenting form a culture which is
increasingly materialistic and technical. They want an education that makes men
good, compassionate, God-fearing, law-abiding, heaven-preparing, and which will
enable a person to earn an honest living. Since their culture is transmitted in
the oral tradition -- from faith to faith and father to son -- and consists of
on-the-job training not within four walls, it is felt by some to be "no school".
However, Dr. John A. Hostetler of Temple University did a three year study under
the auspices of the U.S. Office of Education and testified as to his finding at
the trial of the Amish fathers. Comparing Amish students with students in
regular schools "the Amish", he said, "test above the norm on the Iowa Test of
Basic Skills and their I.Q. is above the norm." Dr. Donald A. Erickson,
education professor at the University of Chicago, testified at their trial that
the Amish are "educated" by their community. "They do a better job than most of
us judging by the fact that there is no unemployment among them, very little
divorce and very little juvenile delinquency." "They learn by doing", he said,
"which is the best way". They are not an ignorant people, and these facts were
in no way disputed by the State of Wisconsin. No one is contending that Amish
education would fit the needs of all, but it is obviously adequate for them.
Bear in mind that we are talking about only one or two years of required
compulsory schooling which will not go far toward making them become scientists
or engineers, but it does deprive them of a serious amount of liberty.
Chief Justice E. Harold Hallows of the Wisconsin Supreme Court stated in his
eighteen page opinion favoring the Amish: "The Amish claim, with compelling
merit, that their education produces as good a product as tow additional years
of compulsory high school education does." The Court further stated :To force a
worldly education on all Amish children , the majority of whom do not want it or
need it, in order to confer a dubious benefit on the few who might later reject
their religion, is not a compelling interest. Two more years of schooling do not
help the Amish in his environment," the Court said.

Two former Amishmen are members of the National Committee for Amish Religious
Freedom and who now hold doctorates in their fields; They strongly support the
Amish in their struggle for religious freedom. These scholars say that Amish
children are not seriously deprive of leaving the church if the weigh -- some do
-- and those who leave have had not difficulty in finding a place in the larger
society. Employers have been eager to hire the honest, self-reliant Amish
craftsmen, and a number have easily passed college entrance tests. In the
Wisconsin case the Amish young people testified that they did not want to go to
high school, and that they wanted to follow the religion of their parents. These
young people -- physically capable of being parents in their own right -- asked
the court to grant their religious liberty to choose their faith. What many
people do not realize is that they are really punishing the Amish children when
they advocate that they be removed from their community for schooling, because
they are being deprived of relationships which they want in their own community
-- and this causes psychological harm.

Exemption for the Amish

Wisconsin is contending before the United States Supreme Court that the
exemption of the Amish as required bye the WE Supreme Court will cause
educational chaos, and other dangerous groups will rush through the open doors.
Experience contradicts such an assertion. States which have granted the Amish
legislative or administrative exemption report that in fifteen years there have
not been other groups rushing in to seek an exemption. Also the states which do
not required such high school attendance report that their rates of voluntary
high school attendance is not different from Wisconsin's compulsory attendance.
It must be remembered also that the Wisconsin Supreme Court only excused the
readily identifiable Amish church groups until they "pose a threat" to the
state. There is no known similar group which has such unique religious
requirements and constitutional claims.

The Amish still drive horses and buggies, shun modern conveniences such as
electricity and telephone, wear plain clothing and observe the Bible literally,
"Be ye not conformed to this world".

These "Plain People" are descendants of an impressive list of Christian martyrs.
In the sixteenth century theirwomen were buried alive and the men were put in
sackcloths and drowned in rivers because they would not accept infant baptism
and the union of church and state. They were saved from extinction by William
Penn who afforded them freedom in America.

The "crime" of the Amish people today is that they are dissenting from an
education that is increasingly technical, secular and materialistic. The Amish
want an education that makes men good, compassionate, law abiding,
heaven-preparing and able to earn an honest living. They believe that "God has
shown that the world's wisdom is foolishness with God." (I Cor. 1:20).
The larger society socializes young people in a culture that stresses
competitiveness, emphasizing the materialistic, pecuniary, highly technical
pursuits in a teenage atmosphere of fast cars, rock music and Hot Pants. While
the Amish are taught by their elders a different set of attitudes and religious
values -- like slowness of pace, peace, love of hard work, democratic
cooperativeness, and close-to-the-soil living. Sitting at a desk learning
intellectual disciplines blocks Amish religious training and takes them from the
training in the skills and attitudes the special life in the shops and fields
requires.