GORTNER -- In a tiny schoolhouse in a Garrett County meadow, the past, present and future converge.

Amish and Mennonite children have attended Swan Meadow, a public elementary and middle school, for more than 100 years. For the first time, the school's graduates are returning to the simple brick building this fall to pursue high school diplomas -- a departure from their traditions.

Every Tuesday evening, 16 students -- age 13 and older -- come to Swan Meadow, in the rolling hills south of Oakland, to study for state General Educational Development (GED) diplomas.

Though secondary education has long been considered unnecessary by New Order Amish dairy farmers, the desire, and need, for schooling beyond eighth grade is beginning to take root. There's even talk in this traditional community of the need to find jobs off the farms and learn about such things as computers.

"I wanted more education," says Karen Peachey, a shy 13-year-old who finished eighth grade in the spring. Karen likes staying home, helping milk her family's 47 cows and taking care of her five younger siblings. But she has come to believe further education "would be useful if you would want to have a job sometime."

The deeply private Amish have had an uneasy relationship with public schooling. The right for them to leave school after eighth grade was hard won. Before a 1972 Supreme Court decision protected that practice, they were often prosecuted for not keeping their children in school until age 16.

The new GED program is not the first thing to set Swan Meadow apart.

"It's not normal, not normal at all, for Amish and conservative Mennonites to go to public school," says Paul Yoder, an alumnus of the school, the father of three Swan Meadow pupils and president of its parent-teacher group.

Amish schools

Most Amish communities around the country establish their own schools with Amish teachers, who teach both religious and secular subjects. But Swan Meadow is a public school, run by Garrett County largely for Amish or Mennonite children.

The Amish in Garrett belong to a relatively liberal sect. They have electricity and telephones, and they farm with tractors. The Mennonites, closely connected to the Amish, tend to be even less restricted in their practices.

"The reason the Amish and Mennonites go here is because of the sensitivity of the [county] Board of Education to culture and community," Yoder said.

Linda Fleming, Swan Meadow's principal for seven years, is not Amish, nor is anyone else on her teaching staff, but they have the blessing of the community.

'Cream of the crop'

"We probably have the cream of the crop in teachers," says Paul Petersheim, a Mennonite farmer, Swan Meadow graduate and parent of five graduates. "We're very happy with the quality of the education."

In contrast to other areas where Amish live, parents here say there never has been much sentiment for an Amish school in Garrett, because they are so pleased with Swan Meadow.

As a public school, Swan Meadow follows the Garrett County curriculum and makes few, if any, concessions academically to its pupils. However, some adaptations have been made.

One is the skirts-only policy for female teachers. "We choose not to wear pants," says Liz Gilbert, one of two full-time teachers. "It's important to them, and it doesn't really matter to us."

Fleming recalls an important early lesson in accommodating Amish families.

A teacher wanted to use educational videos in class, so Fleming assembled a group of parents to review them. They approved some, turned down others as inappropriate and decided to reconsider some.

Sensing unease, Fleming discovered that the content of the videos was not the real concern. "It was the instrument we use to show the videos," she says. "Their consciences could not allow them to approve the TV."

The school didn't use the videos. The parents were pleased and thanked the teachers and the principal with a Christmas dinner.

English fluency

Sometimes, it's the parents who adapt.

For Amish children, English is a second language, taught after the Pennsylvania Dutch and High German used in their church services. Early on, Fleming noticed that some first-graders -- children are home-schooled for kindergarten -- did not speak English well because they had not been introduced to it until age 4.

She asked parents to start teaching English a year earlier. They did, and the first-graders are more fluent.

Amish settlers built the first Swan Meadow School in the 1880s. In the 1950s, using their labor and county funds, the community members built a larger school. During the past two summers, the community and the county teamed up again to replace aging portable classrooms with permanent ones and add a library and computer lab.

Envy of educators

That kind of community participation is typical at the school. With 100 percent of families showing up for parent-teacher conferences and nearly as many for Parent-Teacher Organization meetings, Swan Meadow is the envy of many Maryland educators. Volunteerism is also high, especially among teen-agers who help out regularly in the office and classrooms.

Discipline problems are rare. Fleming says she sees only a few misbehaving children in her office each year.

Swan Meadow's enrollment this year is 61 -- 55 Amish or Mennonite -- divided among eight grades in three classrooms.

Most of the children arrive by school bus. They dress simply, boys sporting suspenders, girls in loose-fitting dresses and ironed white "coverings" over their hair, which is pulled up into buns.

Each morning, the children begin with "opening," a few minutes set aside for nonreligious inspirational reading or reflection. The pupils take part in the opening and a moment of silence before lunch in a basement multipurpose room that serves as cafeteria, gym, music room and woodworking shop.

First and second grades, with a total of 12 pupils, share a classroom. "There are six of us," says second-grader Harmonia Peachey, her red hair peeking out of her prim bonnet, pointing to distinguish her classmates' two tables from those of the first-graders.

More accessible

At Swan Meadow, as elsewhere in the state, the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program drives what and how children learn. Harmonia's teacher, Beth Fousek, was helping her charges "write to inform," one of the goals of state education reforms. First-graders were copying their names and addresses; second-graders were writing the same information from memory.

Working at different levels on the same task or subject is one way Swan Meadow's teachers handle more than one grade at the same time.

Fleming hopes the new GED classes will elicit the high level of community cooperation that has characterized Swan Meadow for decades. She began working to bring the Garrett Community College course to the school after learning several years ago that some of her former pupils were getting high school diplomas through costly correspondence courses.

Ambivalent feelings

Offering the course at the familiar schoolhouse makes it more accessible.

Most members of the Gortner Amish Church travel mainly by tractor and bicycle and remain reluctant even to go to the community college or a high school for GED classes.

"I thought it was a good chance, close to home," says 45-year-old Miriam Schrock, who left Swan Meadow nearly 30 years ago. "I always liked school. I was sorry when it was over, but I wasn't sure that I should come."

Her ambivalence is characteristic of many of the returning students -- female except for three teen-age boys. Some of the younger students said their parents wanted them to be there; others said their families were not enthusiastic about it.

"So far in our culture, we did not need high school," says Yoder. "We're not college professors. We don't need that education to, in turn, educate others."

But with large families and farmland growing more costly, the community envisions a day when its members will go to work outside the enclave -- to jobs that require high school diplomas and computer training.

'I'm relearning things'

For Tena Peachey, the lure was the possibility of becoming her children's teacher. "We're considering maybe home-schooling our children," says the 27-year-old mother of a 3-year-old son and a 3-month-old daughter, who came to class, too.

The young mother has discovered that school is "so much fun. I'm relearning things. I love it."

Tom Glotfelty, who teaches the GED class, finds his new students exciting. "I knew a lot of their parents and grandparents," he says. "I want to challenge these kids -- well, they're not all kids."

During one recent class, Glotfelty in measured tones urged his students to set short-term goals as well as goals for the end of the year.

He encouraged them to study diagnostic tests they had taken and figure out which areas they needed to work on.

"We're almost in the midst of an explosion here," he told the class. "Everyone going in every direction. I see potential. I have visions of what can become here."

At the same time, Glotfelty agonizes over what this course means for his students -- reflecting some of the misgivings about higher education that the Amish have harbored for centuries.

"I have a profound respect for them. I don't want to change them," Glotfelty says. "When you teach people, you change them."

Pub Date: 11/08/98