The Lifestyle of the Amish

Philosophy - Almost all aspects of Amish life is dictated by a list of written or oral rules, which is known as Ordnung, which actually outlines Amish faiths and helps define what it means to be an Amish. The Ordnung may almost dictate all aspects of an Amish life, from dress and hair length to farming techniques. However, the Ordnung varies from community to community. Majority of the Amish do not accept the use of even a light bulb. However, some do travel in cars.

Education - The Amish people believe strongly in education, however, they only provide formal education through the eighth grade (Secondary 2 / 14-year-olds), and in private schools. The Amish build and maintain their own church-funded, one-room schoolhouses. The schools there concentrate on the basic reading, writing, mathematics, geography, English and German. On top of vocational training and socialization in the history of the Amish as well as values. They consider education as a big part of their family life. Farming and home-making skills are considered important in an Amish child's upbringing.

Work - The Amish have and average of seven to eight children per household, and each member of the household plays a part in how the family survives economically. Everyone has a role or part to contribute. On the farm, each person's work and responsibilities affect the farm, directly. The chores in the Amish homes are divided by gender roles. Most of the time, the men work on the farm. Occasionally, the women would help if they are needed. The financial matters of the household are managed by the men, while women do the household chores like cleaning the house, cooking, washing of clothes and so on. The children of Amish families usually stay by their parent of their same gender's side. The boys would stay by the father's side to help out in the farm, while the girls tag along their mother and stay at home to help with the household chores.

Recreation - For the adults, they make quilts and items made of quilts during their free time, and their free time is considered as when they have done all their household chores. They do that for entertainment and the quilts they made can be used as table cloths and decorations. For the children, most of them gather and play baseball after school in their school compound like the school yard.

Advantages of lifestyle - By living the way of simplicity,on the large scale, the Amish would actually help to reduce the rate of global warming as the natural resources that they use would not pollute the environment. On a smaller scale, they not using machinery to harvest crops would lessen the chances of them harming the animals and insects that are living in the crops area, and especially those which help the crops to grow.

Disadvantages of lifestyle - Although there are advantages to the simple lifestyle that the Amish live, there are also disadvantages. The disadvantages of the simple lifestyle would be that the Amish would actually be very hard to live by. Although as mentioned, some communities allow their people to travel in vehicles, they are not allowed to own a vehicle. Their life would be very inconvenient as they have to wait or call for a vehicle to ferry them. Moreover, most people around the world are using technology like computers to communicate. However, without the use of computers in the Amish communities, they would be "separated" from the outside world. Their only way of range communication would be by the telephone.

Thoughts - I would support how the Amish work and live: without technology. Their lifestyle is green and would help to stop global warming(it is quite impossible thought, because its only a minority of people doing so). I think it would be great if we were to experience this kind of lifestyle that the Amish live. It would teach us not to take simple appliances like even the light bulbs for granted. Living a simple lifestyle would be interesting for a few days, but I think that if that experience last for a long time, it would be hard to live life following the simple lifestyle as we are already used to the technology around us. If I was asked about farming, the first thing that comes to my mind would be "technology". However, if I live it the Amish style, it would be manual work, which will typically be hard for us as we are used to the technology around us doing the work for us. On the other hand, there are also disadvantages to the Amish lifestyle. Without technology, they would be separated from the outside world as most of them would not have even a hand phone. And even if they were to have individual hand phones, they would not contact the "outside" world as they shun from them, basically. Without hand phones, the Amish would have a hard time contacting each other if there is quite a distance between the two parties. This would be one of the disadvantages.