Horse and buggy thinking

Horse and buggy thinking

fiction
edward w Pritchard

My wife and I had been married a long time so I was surprised when she confided in me about a problem she was having. In fact she was crying one evening in our kitchen when I came home from work and told me about a patient of hers Sarah Miller who would have to quit school soon after graduating from the eighth grade.

My wife was a psychologist and although I sometimes forgot such things she had been raised as a Mennonite in her youth. That's how my wife came to counsel a young Amish girl named Sarah Miller, who as was customary with the Amish here in Central Ohio where we lived, would stop her formal schooling at age 13 after graduating from the eighth grade. Following graduation from eighth grade the young girl would complete her education at home with her Mother learning to cook, clean, wash clothes, and eventually raise children as a good Amish member of the Community.

Sarah Miller's teacher who was a Mennonite had taken the drastic step of bringing the girl to see my wife because the teacher felt it would be a debasement of human dignity to not further educate Sarah who had an IQ of approximately 175. The girl's parents who were old school Amish had not been consulted about their daughter's teacher taking Sarah to see a psychologist because the teacher knew from working with the Amish that as a rule there were no exceptions in their minds to their policy of not educating students beyond eighth grade if the youth in question was to be a member of the traditional Amish community.

The teacher knew she was probably violating the law by bringing Sarah Miller to see my wife, Dr. Robinson without the parents permission but the teacher felt she must do something drastic to help the girl.

My wife ask me as a lawyer to look into the Ohio case law on not completely or properly educating gifted students, and to advise her on if she should see the young girl for a second time a week from tomorrow at the next scheduled appointment. My wife also confided in me something she had never told me in our twenty years of marriage that she had faced a similar predicament  herself at age 14 and she had been having trouble the last few days in reliving an incident and decision she herself had made as a teenage girl.

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