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Literacy and Cultural Context: A Lesson from the Amish Author(s): Andrea R. Fishman Source: Language Arts, Vol. 64, No. 8, The Social Aspects of Language and Learning (December 1987), pp. 842-854 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41961687 Accessed: 30-08-2018 15:20 UTC

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Literacy and Cultural Context: A Lesson from the Amish

Andrea R. Fishman

One clear, frost-edged January Sunday night, two families gathered for supper and an evening’s entertainment. One family – mine – consisted of a lawyer, a teacher, and their twelve-year-old son; the other family – the Fishers – con- sisted of Eli and Anna, a dairy farmer and his wife, and their five children, rang- ing in age from six to seventeen. After supper in the Fisher’s large farm kitchen, warmed by a woodstove and redolent with the fragrances of chicken corn soup, homemade bread, and freshly baked apples, the table was cleared and an ad- ditional smaller one set up to accommodate games of Scrabble, double Dutch solitaire, and dominoes. As most of us began to play, adults and children ran- domly mixed, Eli Fisher, Sr. settled into his brown leather recliner with the newspaper, while six-year-old Eli Jr. plopped on the corner of the couch nearest his father with a book.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I heard Eli Sr. ask his son, “Where are your new books?” referring to a set of outgrown Walt Disney books we had brought for little Eli and his seven-year-old brother. Eli pointed to a stack of brightly colored volumes on the floor from which his father chose Lambert , the Sheepish Lion. As Eli Jr. climbed onto the arm of the recliner and snuggled against his father, Eli Sr. began reading the book out loud in a voice so commandingly dra- matic that soon everyone was listening to the story instead of playing their sep- arate games. Broadly portraying both the roles of Lambert and his lioness mother and laughing heartily at the antics of the cub who preferred cavorting with the sheep to stalking with the lions, Eli held his enlarged audience throughout the rest of the story.

As most of us returned to our games when he finished reading, Eli asked of anyone and everyone, “Where’s the ‘Dairy’?” Daniel, the Fishers’ teenage son, left his game and walked toward the couch. “It’s in here,” he said, rummaging through the newspapers and magazines stacked in the rack beside the couch un- til he found a thick newsletter called Dairy World , published by the Independent Buyers Association to which Eli belonged.

Eli leafed through the publication, standing and walking over to the wood- stove as he did. Leaning against the stove, he began reading aloud without pref- ace. All conversation stopped as everyone once again attended to Eli’s loudly expressive reading voice. “A farmer was driving his wagon down the road. On the back was a sign which read: ‘Experimental Vehicle. Runs on oats and hay.

842 Language Arts , Volume 64, Number 8, December 1987

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Literacy and Cultural Context : A Lesson from the Amish 843

Do not step in exhaust.'” Everyone laughed, including Eli, who then read the remaining jokes on the humor page to his attentive audience. All our games for- gotten, we shared the best and the worst riddles and jokes we could remember until it was time for bed.

Occasions like this one occur in many homes and have recently attracted the interest of family literacy researchers (Heath 1983; Taylor 1983; Wells 1986). The scene at the Fishers could have been the scene in any home where parents value reading and writing and want their children to value them as well. It would not be surprising if Eli and Anna, like other literacy-oriented parents, read bed- time stories to their children, helped with their homework, and encouraged them to attain high school diplomas, if not college degrees. But Eli and Anna do none of these things: they read no bedtime stories, they are annoyed if their children bring schoolwork home, and they expect their children to go only as far in school as they did themselves, as far as the eighth grade.

So although Eli and Anna appeared on that Sunday night to be ideal proli- teracy parents, they may not be according to commonly described standards, and one significant factor accounts for their variations from the supposed ideal: Eli and Anna are not mainstream Americans but are Old Order Amish, raising their family according to Old Order tradition and belief. The Sunday night gath- ering described here took place by the light of gas lamps in a house without ra- dio, stereo, television, or any other electrical contrivance. Bedtime in that house is more often marked by singing or silence than reading. Schoolwork rarely enters there because household, field, and barn chores matter more. And the Fisher children’s studying is done in a one-room, eight-grade, Old Order school taught by an Old Order woman who attended the same kind of school herself. So while Eli Jr., like his siblings, is learning the necessity and value of literacy, what “literacy” means to him and the ways in which he learns it may differ significantly from what it means and how it’s transmitted to many main- stream individuals, differing in both obvious and subtle ways, just as Eli’s world differs from theirs both obviously and subtly.

Amish Reading

As suggested earlier, Eli Jr. lives in a house replete with print, from the kitchen bulletin board (displaying recently received greeting cards, public sale notices, and sayings copied or clipped from various sources) to the built-in bookcases in the playroom, to the tables and magazine rack in the living room. There are children’s classics, including Black Beauty , Heidi 9 the Hardy Boys and the “Lit- tle House” series, and children’s magazines, including Ranger Rick, Country Kids , and Young Pilot. There are local newspapers, shoppers’ guides, and other adult periodicals, including Farm Journal and Dairy World. And there are books of children’s Bible stories, copies of the King James Version of the bible,

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844 Language Arts

and inspirational volumes like Tortured for Christy Faith Despite the KGB , and In My Father’s House , none of which mark the Fisher’s home as notably differ- ent from many other Christian Americans’.

Yet there are differences, easily overlooked by a casual observer but central to the life of the family and their definition of literacy. One almost invisible dif- ference is the sources of these materials. Eli and Anna attempt to carefully con- trol the reading material that enters their home (often wishing they could control the mail, especially that addressed to Occupant). Anna buys books pri- marily from a local Christian bookstore and from an Amish-operated dry goods store, both of which she trusts not to stock objectionable material. When she sees potentially interesting books in other places – in the drug store, the book- and-card shop, or at a yard sale – she uses the publisher’s name as a guide to acceptable content. Relatives and friends close to the family also supply appro- priate titles both as gifts and recommendations, which Anna trusts and often chooses to follow up.

Another slightly more visible difference comes in the form of other books and periodicals around the house which would not be found in many main- stream, farm, or Christian homes. Along with the local newspaper in the rack alongside the couch are issues of “Die Botschaft “A Weekly Newspaper Serv- ing Old Order Amish Communities Everywhere,” to which both Anna and her father contribute regularly as “scribes” from their individual church districts. On the desk is a copy of The Amish Directory of the Lancaster County Family , extending to Chester ; York, Lebanon , Dauphin , Montour , Lycoming , Clinton , Centre , Franklin , Cumberland , Adams Counties of Pennsylvania and St. Mary’s Coutyf Maryland , which lists all Amish individuals living in those areas alpha- betically by nuclear family groups, giving crucial address and family informa- tion along with maps of the eighty-seven church districts showing both where families live and where schools are located.

On top of the breakfront in the sitting area are copies of song books, all in German: Kinder- Lieder y and Does Neue Kinder- Lieder, both for children, Ges- ang- Buch for young people and adults, and the Ausbund , the hymnal used at church, which is a collection of hymns written by tortured and imprisoned six- teenth-century Anabaptists about their experiences and their faith. Kept with the song books is a German edition of the Bible and a copy of the Martyrs Mirror ‘ an oversize, weighty tome full of graphic descriptions (in English) of the tortured deaths of early Anabaptists illustrated by black-and-white woodcut prints.

Despite what may seem to be the esoteric nature of these texts, none remain in their special places gathering dust, for all are used regularly, each reinforcing in a characteristic way the Amish definition of literacy and each facilitating Eli Jr.’s image of himself as literate. Because singing is central to Amish religious observance and expression, the song books are used frequently by all members of the family. The children began to learn songs as soon as they were able to

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Literacy and Cultural Context : A Lesson from the Amish 845

imitate others’ singing, and in the Fisher family, each child received his or her own copy of the children’s song book as a gift from Anna’s parents. The Amish “young folks” (people between the ages of sixteen and their early twenties), in- cluding the Fisher’s eldest, Sarah, gather biweekly for “singings” of their own, and the adult male leaders of the congregation, including Eli Sr., meet period- ically for “practice singings” at which they rehearse to achieve the vocal unity necessary to lead and support the ritualized singing of their church service.

Because singing requires knowing what is in the text, and Amish singing par- ticularly requires knowing how to interpret the text exactly as everyone else does in terms of pacing, intonation, inflection, and volume to create the unified single voice of the faithful, it represents a kind of reading particularly important to the community, a kind that must be mastered to be considered literate. Yet because singing may mean holding the text and following the words from mem- ory or from others’ rendition, children Eli’s age or younger may participate, ap- pearing and feeling as literate as anyone else.

The German Bible and the Martyrs Mirror , the two other esoteric texts, also function similarly. Though only the older Fishers read that bible, they do so as regularly as they read the English version, so they can “take the two together” for their understanding and share that understanding with their children, who then know what the text says. It is the older Fishers, too, who read the Martyrs Mirror , but it is Eli Sr. who usually reads it aloud during family devotions, so Anna and the children participate similarly in that experience, all as listeners.

While it may seem easier to accept personal variant definitions of reading in shared communal situations, Eli Jr.’s participation was equally welcome and equally effective in individual communal reading, too. When individual oral reading was clearly text-bound, as it is during family devotions, Eli was always helped to participate in ways similar to his brothers’ and sisters’, making him a reader then, too. When all the Fishers took turns reading the Bible aloud, some- one would read a verse slowly, pausing every few words, so Eli Jr. could repeat what was said and thereby take his turn in the rotation. (Eli and Anna insisted that the children read aloud for two reasons: “so we can hear what they’re say- ing” and because “they keep it a lot better than if we read it,” and they saw no reason for little Eli not to practice or not to “keep” what was read.)

When the older children were assigned Bible verses or Ausbund hymn stan- zas to memorize, Eli Jr. was given the same one as Amos, the sibling closest in age, their assignment shorter and containing less complex vocabulary than the one the older children got. Yet Amos and Eli would practice their verse together just as the older children did, and take their turns reciting as the older children did, Eli again able to participate along with everyone else.

Because oral reading as modeled by Eli Sr. is often imitated by others, Eli Jr. has always shared his books by telling what he sees or knows about them. No one ever told him that telling isn’t the same as reading even though they may look alike, so Eli always seemed like a reader to others and felt like a reader

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846 Language Arts

himself. When everyone else sat reading or playing reading-involved games in the living room after supper or on Sunday afternoons, Eli did the same, to no one’s surprise, to everyone’s delight, and with universal, though often tacit, wel- come and approval. When the other children received books as birthday and Christmas presents, Eli received them too. And when he realized at age six that both of his brothers had magazine subscriptions of their own, Eli asked for and got one as well. Eli never saw his own reading as anything other than real; he saw it as neither make-believe nor bogus, and neither did anyone else. So de- spite the fact that before he went to school Eli Jr. could not read according to some definitions, he always could according to his family’s and his own.

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