The Amish are well-known and simplistic lifestyle that is often viewed as "quaint" among a world of increasing speed and technological advancement.
Notoriously, the Amish are separate from the world in terms of their ideologies and practices involved in their day-to-day lives.
This goes beyond obvious concepts like education and extends to more complex ideas, including education.
Amish education itself only progresses toward the eighth grade, and the subject matter covers conversational English, arithmetic, and other pragmatic information.
This can make some wonder about the Amish and their knowledge of history, especially distant history.
This is one reason why some people ask: Do the Amish know about dinosaurs?
In this blog post, we'll answer that question and explore the reasons behind it.
Do the Amish Know about Dinosaurs? (Probably Not)
Generally speaking, it's highly unlikely that an Amish person knows about (or believes research concerning) dinosaurs.
Part of this is because an Amish person simply would not know from their childhood education. Another reason is because the Amish are biblical fundamentalists, taking the word of the Bible as literal truth in every aspect.
But how, exactly, do these two reasons prevent the Amish from knowing or believing information about dinosaurs?
We'll answer that question below.
How Amish Education Impacts Their Exposure to Dinosaurs
Amish education is established to ensure that the Amish way of life can continue into the next generation.
This is priority #1 for the Amish educational system, and it stresses this point so much that only Amish community members are allowed to teach Amish children.
As a result, those who teach Amish children have very little education themselves, topping out at the eighth grade level.
However, the "eighth grade level" for the Amish is not up to par with the eighth grade level for non-Amish. Again, this is largely because Amish community members are not trained or licensed teachers.
This means that a perpetual cycle of stagnant or regressing education constantly takes place in Amish schoolhouses.
While this idea may be quaint, it's also exceptionally restrictive in terms of what it offers Amish children intellectually.
They're taught the equivalent of vocational English — and some may even maintain some working knowledge of Pennsylvania Dutch — and practical arithmetic.
This means that history, science, social studies, civics, music, and other common subjects simply do not exist in the Amish curriculum.
This means that they don't have a way to even hear about dinosaurs in an educational setting — much less learn more about them.
Still, this is just scratching the surface of why the Amish don't know about dinosaurs.
There's also a much deeper and problematic reason.
How Biblical Fundamentalism Prohibits Amish from Knowing about Dinosaurs
Beyond the issue of education, it's essential to note that the Amish are biblical fundamentalists.
Much like non-Amish fundamentalists, this means they interpret the Bible literally — meaning they believe that every single word of the Bible happened as it was written in real life.
Naturally, the Bible makes no mention of dinosaurs. As a result, the Amish don't have a basis to believe in or accept their existence.
To non-Amish, this sounds obvious. Of course the Bible doesn't mention dinosaurs — the people who wrote it lacked the scientific understanding and other abilities required to even consider the fact that dinosaurs could exist.
But when you consider the viewpoints of non-Amish creationists, it's easier to see how the lack of dinosaurs in the Bible impacts the Amish understanding of them.
Even today, biblical fundamentalists with full access to educational resources, including history and science, deny or incorrectly skew pragmatic research concerning dinosaurs.
If they can do it, certainly the Amish can do it as well when they don't even have the educational background to be introduced to the concept of dinosaurs in general.
But this leads us to another interesting question.
Let's say an Amish person did hear about dinosaurs. How could that happen?
How Could an Amish Person Hear about Dinosaurs?
The main way that an Amish person could hear about dinosaurs is from a non-Amish associate.
This could be a professional connection, someone who hauls Amish, or a non-Amish person who lives nearby.
However, just hearing about dinosaurs probably isn't enough to help an Amish person understand that they existed or want to know more about them.
The reasons are the same for why the Amish don't hear about dinosaurs in the first place — an exceptionally low standard of childhood education and biblical fundamentalism.
In essence, this means that an Amish person could hear about the existence of dinosaurs. But because they weren't mentioned in school or — more importantly — the Bible, an Amish person doesn't have a reason to believe that they existed.
Beyond that, the labor-intensive occupations of the Amish also mean that thinking about dinosaurs is time wasted. Why would someone working to build a house or plow a field also be wondering about the existence of giant reptiles from millions of years ago?
Would an Amish family allow their children to play with dinosaur toys? Maybe — that could differ on a family-to-family basis.
Regardless, this means that it's extremely unlikely for an Amish person to even hear about dinosaurs in the first place. And if they do, it's even less likely that they'd accept dinosaurs as real.
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