The Hawk

Issue date: 1/23/08 Section: Features

The Amish girls of Valley Brook School in Narvon, Pa. watch a baseball game during recess.

Jacob Stoltzfus is in his final year of formal education, and it shows.

His bright eyes and smile exude the confidence of a pupil who has mastered all that his school has to offer him, a young man who is about to put his childhood behind him and start the rest of his life.

Yet Jacob will never watch the Philadelphia Phillies, his favorite baseball team, play a game on TV. There is no TV, or radio, or electricity, in his home. And even though Jacob has boyish good looks that would make many pre-teen girls weak in the knees, he will likely never go on a date to the movies or make-out in the backseat of a car.

Nevertheless, Jacob spits out state capitals faster than anyone in his class at Valley Brook School in Narvon, Pa. He boasts of hunting exploits of his dad and brothers, but only in the mild voice of a boy prohibited from gloating.

In his 8th grade year at his one-room Amish schoolhouse, suspender-clad Jacob sits near the door in the back left corner of his classroom, perhaps symbolizing his impending release into the outside world.

For the Amish, the "outside world" is isolated from a larger society that is obsessed with communication, technology, and self-advancement.

Jacob's "people" are the Amish, a group of Swiss-German Anabaptists who came to the United States in the 18th century to escape religious persecution and settled largely in rural parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The Amish, led by Jakob Ammann, broke away from the Swiss Mennonites in the 16th century over issues related to church discipline.

Today, the second-largest population of Amish people in the country resides in the area of Lancaster, Pa. where Jacob is growing up.

Next year, Jacob will probably attend a trade school and work at his family's country store, Stoltzfus Discount Foods, quietly peddling flour, candies, and Christian-themed children's books. Although most boys his age have eight more years of education (and relative childhood) ahead of them, Jacob will be following a life path that is completely normal for his people, continuing an exploration of his chosen trade, and his faith.

Stoltzfus is one of 27 students at the Valley Brook Old Order Amish School, a place where the core values of his religion are reinforced daily.

Continued...

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