To Be or Not to Be? The Rumsprina's Ultimate Question

Amish parents toss their children into the raging ocean of the twentieth century with no preparation. They throw their naive kids into the wind, and use their lack of direction and shock to pull them back into their church. The Devil's Playground, the documentary by Lucy Walker about Rumspringa, seemed to me to be the most neutral video that we have watched so far. Walker gave an account of what happens, and did not seem to twist the opinions of the viewer. Of course every documentary has some bias. It is probably not a coincidence that in nearly every interview the amish boys are smoking. There is no interview with a Rumspringa kid that did not go crazy and party. This is probably not a coincidence.

This not not however, what I'm going to be talking about today. I want to discuss the period of the amish life called Rumspringa. I think it is wrong. The amish parents do not give their children a fair chance, they toss their innocent children into an angry, unforgiving world with no preparation. Not only this, but they leave them no where to go. Due to a belief that education leads to pride, parents pull their children out of school after the eighth grade. This leaves them at a dead end nearly everywhere except within the amish community. Technically yes, it is possible to go to college and get a job in the outside world with an education of a fourteen year old. But how likely is that to actually happen? To become something big, to make a difference in this world, to go to a prestigious college and get a high paying job, one usually needs a education past the middle school. Bot only this, but the parents allow their children to go out into the world and do whatever they want. Of course these sixteen year olds who have never watched TV, never dated, and never drank go insane trying to take advantage of everything at once. They throw enormous parties with hundreds of people and get trashed for days. They experiment with terrible drugs. They get themselves into trouble. They get scared. The adults say that they are giving their kids a choice between the amish way of life and the "english" way, but I do not think that they actually are. What these amish kids experience and get scared off by is not the average person's way of life, it is the rush of a bunch of kids who have been caged up there whole lives trying to experience everything they never have. Of course most come running back. They were not prepared. This Rumspringa tradition is simply wrong in the twentieth century. The two ways of life are two different for an unprepared adolescent to cope with. Perhaps it worked back when the cultures were more similar, but today it is simply wrong to throw innocent and unprepared children into a world of drugs, alcohol, and freedom.