There is more which we can learn from the Amish.  

Amish youth are raised in a close and closed culture.  Youth are not pampered;  they mix often with their community;  they are not exposed to consumer-oriented, destructive, dehumanizing popular culture.  Yet, at age eighteen, they are given the opportunity to choose whether to stay with their community or go into the world.  One source says that ninety percent choose to stay with their community.  

There are two lessons here:  

·        having a strong sense of one’s community is useful to youth;

·        permitting those who are dissatisfied to leave enables the Amish to maintain their community.

This is not to say that we would adopt the Amish’s beliefs, although their moderate lifestyle appears to be ever wiser in light of the problems which we have created for ourselves with hyperconsumerism.  However, bucking the system in which the Federal and state governments and, yes, even our vaunted University of California, debilitate our community is in the interest of our community.  (Recall that we have spoken about the usefulness of communities having more autonomy, meaning that we would know what would be better for Montebello than would Sacramento or D.C.)  

While we might hesitate to embrace the idea of a closed community for fear of violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or some other recently discovered inalienable right or irreversible entitlement, we should consider that we already have a closed community, starting at age five and running to about age twenty-three.  That community is our schools and universities, whose contact with the surrounding communities of adults and retirees is minimal.  Why should schools have standards to protect youth, but, at 3 p.m., those standards no longer apply as the youth leave school grounds?  Where is the logic in that?  

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2007 by a local nonprofit organization.

1. Amish youth

(a) live in a close and closed community.

(b) may leave their community at age eighteen.  

2. Obstacles keeping us in Montebello from having a close and closed community include

(a) a fear of violating state and Federal constitutional or statutory law.

(b) the considerable diversity which would make it impossible to create a like-minded community on the same block.