Robert Wemreb 
Young Hutterite girls often create a 
secret world confined to a locked 
wooden chest. Here are found bits of 
the temporal world, such as 
cosmetics, cheap perfumes, sheet 
music, jewelry, and suntan lotion. 
not know the difference between right 
and wrong, it is determined for them; 
they are taught “rules,” not “ethics.” 
On his sixth birthday, the kinder- 
garten child is taken by the kinder- 
garten mother and handed over to the 
German-school teacher. Until his fif- 
teenth birthday, the child will be un- 
der the care of this adult, eating all 
meals with the peer group, attending 
German and English school with them, 
and doing colony work assigned by 
the German teacher. The children are 
taught table manners and work roles. 
They learn to read German and to 
write in the Gothic German script. 
They learn to count, to be proficient 
with weights and measures, and they 
memorize innumerable biblical pas- 
sages and hymns, as well as episodes 
from Hutterite history. German school 
is ungraded, and the children sit by 
age and sex. Material must be covered 
in a certain order and learned thor- 
oughly, but children work at their own 
speed. Slow learners are praised as 
frequently as fast learners. Diligence, 
not aptitude, is demanded, and only 
a certain kind of questioning is con- 
sidered acceptable. For instance, six- 
year-old Susanna received three slaps 
on her hand from the German teacher 
when she asked, “Why should I?” It 
would have been all right if she had 
asked “when” she should do a task, 
“how” she should do it, and “if’ she 
should do it, but if told to do some- 
thing, she must be obedient and not 
question why. 
Children are not pushed to grow 
up either intellectually or morally. 
They are not taught self-discipline for 
it is not their prerogative to decide 
what is right; they are to do what 
they are told and those in authority 
will watch over them and punish and 
protect them. Similarly, children are 
not made to feel guilty; it is only nat- 
ural for a child to sin and therefore 
it is not “his fault” that he misbehaves. 
Our school-age daughter angrily com- 
plained how unfair it was for us to 
expect “good” behavior when she was 
out of sight— none of the other chil- 
dren had to behave when they were 
not being watched. 
Punishment by the German teacher 
is administered uniformly and fairly. 
Everyone receives the same punish- 
ment for the same offense. When sev- 
eral of the boys were late to German 
school because they were catching 
polywogs, the consensus was that the 
three straps they received were well 
worth the fun. They had known they 
would be late and what the punish- 
ment would be. The children were not 
lectured about their behavior, which 
Hutterites consider typical for boys, 
who naturally prefer polywogs to 
memorizing. The punishment was pay- 
ment for the misbehavior, wiping the 
slate clean. Everyone knew that when 
the boys were older, they would be 
less interested in polywogs than in 
their colony responsibility. No one mo- 
ralized, no one worried, no one was 
offended. A young child angry about 
being punished may tattle on other 
children, who will then be strapped 
as well, and they in turn may tell 
something on the first child, who will 
receive a second strapping. When the 
children are alone, they will pick on 
the original tattler, however, and so 
by the time the children are seven 
or eight, they rarely tell on one an- 
other. The peer group can punish more 
severely than adults, but it can also 
protect. When the children present a 
united front to authority, they can of- 
ten avoid punishment. 
The sisters in each family have their 
own playhouse and there are ever 
changing cliques determining who can 
play in which house. Social fickleness 
teaches the girls the unpleasantness 
of being excluded. The cliques quickly 
coalesce, however, to present a united 
front before the boys or the adults. 
The children’s play reflects the com- 
munity’s de-emphasis of physical pain 
and complaining. They play games such 
as “whistle when it hurts” and invent 
spontaneous games of physical stress 
and daring. Their play is character- 
istically vigorous and often entails a 
great deal of roughhousing. Boys don’t 
play with girls, except in group situ- 
ations where conflict and competition 
between the sexes is the typical pattern. 
When our house child, Caleb, re- 
turned to the colony as a schoolchild, 
he reported that German school was 
better than English school; the Ger- 
man teacher was kinder and more im- 
partial than the English teacher. Ca- 
leb was more comfortable being 
swatted by the German teacher for 
playing with polywogs than being 
praised by the English teacher for a 
good recitation. He was comfortable 
and happy in the vigorous boys’ 
groups, working hard and playing 
hard, knowing that breaking the rules 
meant punishment, but experiencing 
a kind of pack freedom where undue 
demands are not made on the growing 
child. 
During our first summer in the col- 
ony, our schoolchild, Abigail, quickly 
internalized the rules of dress and con- 
duct and instructed us accordingly. 
She identified closely with her peer 
group and participated fully in Ger- 
man school and Sunday school (except 
that she did not answer questions on 
the sermons), did all the colony work 
expected of children her age, and reg- 
ularly waxed the floors for a woman 
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