@article{2004, keywords = {Education, Mennonites (Old Order), Schools}, author = {Wendy Crocker}, title = {More than A, B, C: Old Colony Mennonites and the challenges of Ontario Public Education Policy}, abstract = {

The Old Colony Mennonites' history of migration can be traced from their 1874 migration from Russia to Canada, which marked the beginning of their diaspora, followed in 1922 by a second exodus to tracts of land in the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. These colonial journeys have been replaced more recently by the transnational migrations between areas in southwestern Ontario, Canada and Mexico of some Old Colony Mennonite (OCM) families. Since 1950, many OCMs have been working in rural southwestern Ontario as seasonal agricultural laborers in a variety of local crops. However, they are drawn back to family, to property, and to the colonies m Mexico and are adopting a transnational pattern that coincides with the need for harvest labor in southwestern Ontario. In this paper, the theoretical frameworks of kinscripts (Stack/Burton, 1993) and gendered apprenticeship (Rogoff, 2003) are used to outline the need for OCM children to work alongside the adults. However, this cultural expectation can test the boundaries of the educational policies that manage schools in Ontario. I shed light on the ways in which the transnationalism of the Old Colony Mennonites challenges the attendance policy of the local school boards, conflicts with the Ontario Education Act, and contests the validity of the Education Quality Accountability Ontario (EQAO) assessment participation criteria. This narrative inquiry will describe these educational challenges through the stories of school principals who have worked with OCM students and their families, and the recollections of OCM students themselves.

}, year = {2013}, journal = {Transnational social review : a social work journal}, volume = {3}, pages = {193-210, }, month = {2013///}, isbn = {2193-1674}, doi = {10.1080/21931674.2013.10820764}, language = {eng}, }