The Lawrence County Schools System does its best to ensure that all of the public schools under its jurisdiction have up-to-date textbooks for our county’s students.
But did you know that more than a dozen private schools in Lawrence County are still using a textbook that was first copyrighted in 1879–completely by choice?
The Amish of Lawrence County do not send their children to public schools. The issue of private education and compulsory attendance in schools is what drove many Old Order Amish settlers from other states to Lawrence County.
Unlike some other states, Tennessee allows Amish communities to set up their own parochial schools. These Amish schools begin for children who are seven years old and never go past the 8th grade; the Amish believe that any education past the 8th grade is superfluous to the agricultural lifestyle they lead.
One of the textbooks used by the Amish schools is McGuffy’s Fourth Eclectic Reader, which was a staple in American elementary schools from the late 19th century through the early 20th century, but which was long ago replaced in public schools by more modern readers and textbooks.
McGuffy’s Reader contains brief excerpts of many poems and short stories chosen for younger children to practice reading. Each selection typically teaches a moral or ethical lesson.
Amish education focuses heavily on the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Amish children do not study history or science, and although they speak a dialect known as Pennyslvania Dutch at home, they are exposed to the English language at an early age in order to communicate with their non-Amish neighbors and for business purposes.
The school in this photograph is the Amish school on South Brace Road in Ethridge.
To see the McGuffy’s Fourth Eclectic Reader, follow this Google Books link:
Lawrence County History Trivia 