Amish Culture Paper

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The Amish Culture Throughout my research of different cultures, I felt drawn to the Amish culture. Living in Northern Indiana has afforded me many opportunities to observe and interact with Amish people. I have also found that many Amish have become active in Alcoholics Anonymous. For this reason, I have decided to review the Amish culture and find out more about what it would take to be an effective counselor when faced with an Amish client. The first article I am going to review is “Understanding the Amish in Twentieth-First Century America” from The Mennonite Quarterly Review. This article discusses the Amish from the era to era and how they have changed with the technology evolution. The second article is “A Drug and Alcohol Intervention…show more content…
The ridicules that have long followed the Amish will be one thing, but also the somewhat “false” portrayals will damper the relationship. It will be a task to break the ice and get the Amish client past the belief that he/she is being judged by me. I will have to focus on letting the client know that I am not doing that. Summary of Article #2 The second article “A Drug and Alcohol Intervention with Old Order Amish Youth: Dancing on the Devil’s Playground” by Chris Weber, James A. Cates and Shirley Carey, is of extreme importance to my career choice. The article discusses how important it is to tailor the drug and alcohol education to the Amish specific needs. It gives a model that will create an “interface between Amish and non-Amish culture, respects their spiritual beliefs, and maximizes learning and motivation to change behaviors” (Weber, Cates, & Carey, 2010, p. 97). The first section of the article discusses how the Amish youth have increasingly been involved in the criminal justice system due to drug and/or alcohol use. Because of this, the agencies have had to find a way to best serve this sensitive culture. We are then introduced to a model program that has been provided by the Elkhart-LaGrange settlement of Indiana (Weber, Cates, & Carey, 2010, p.…show more content…
I would have liked to have more information from the Amish perspective than the outside world’s view, but there was significant conclusions drawn from what was available. It seems the program has a good start in the community and will be beneficial for other Amish communities to get started. I was intrigued by the multicultural aspects of the article and where it has went in the media. There has been more information available for the public in regards to the Amish way of life. They have always valued their privacy, which made it interesting to see that they have allowed some of their cultural aspects to be shed to the public. I am not sure how voluntarily that was done, but I am sure that there are a lot of aspects that are missing from the media coverage. The article was not as deep as I wanted it to be in respect to personal accounts. I would have preferred to have more information coming from the Amish perspective in regards to their cultural beliefs and views of treatment. I did benefit from the discussion regarding the development of the program and the important components that were
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