Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

Graduation Address At The Oak River High School Graduation
Jennifer Kleinsasser, Hutterite colony, Dominion City, Manitoba.
Guten Tag! graduates, teachers, honoured
guests! This marks the first time I have been asked
to speak at a graduation ceremony. It is a privilege,
an honour, and a humbling experience.
During the last 2 years, I have started teaching
on the HBNI IITV system. My students’
grade levels range from grades 7 to 12. I find
it a marvellous experience to be in contact with
Hutterite students from over 20 colonies. Often,
their intelligence and spiritual maturity astound
me, and I recall talking to Anna Maendel from
Fairholme about this.
“What are all these intelligent, gifted young
people going to do with their lives after they graduate?”
I asked Anna, “They can’t all be teachers!
Don’t they need more options? Shouldn’t we (the
older generation) be paving the road for more
options for our graduates?”
Anna’s answer, as usual, was quite short, but
wise. “That is not our job – to pave the way for
them,” she said. “That is the work of the graduates
themselves. They will need to pioneer ways to
use their education in service to their Hutterian
communities.”
Good, that lets me off the hook – it’s not my
job, Claudia, Phoebe, and Joseph, to pave the
way so you can use your education to serve your
community. That’s your job.
After all, the best teachers do not provide
clear-cut answers. Instead, they model asking
difficult questions. And the toughest questions
you’ll ever ask are the questions you ask
yourself.
In considering life after high school, are you
asking, “What can Oak River possibly have to
offer me, me with a high school education and
plenty of raw, natural talent, to boot?” or are you
asking, “What can I do for Oak River? For my
faith community?”
Many “junga Leut” bemoan the lack of
opportunity for our high school graduates, especially
women. Brandon University nursing
and engineering programs for Hutterites are not
yet a reality.
Teachers, both Hutterite and non-Hutterite,
wonder how they can continue to motivate and inspire
their students, with so few options available,
careers such as accounting, medicine, dentistry,
or engineering.
Present options of teacher, teacher’s assistant,
gardener, head cook, Zeich Schneiderin, Essenschule
Ankele, Kleineschule Ankela are too few.
Cooking, sewing, and gardening are fine, but these
days, Dienen (young women) would prefer a few
more options.
“Could we have more options, please?” they
ask, “You know, just for the sake of having more
options?”
What we need to keep in mind, is that for
us Hutterites, our particular community’s needs
come first. Anyone wishing to join our way of life
needs to be very clear on this. For that matter, any
individual born into a Hutterite community who
aspires to seriously and passionately pursue this
way of life needs to be very clear on this also.
When BUHEP (Brandon University Hutterite
Education Program) was formed, it was not
to provide more options for our young people,
but to meet the needs of many communities for
their own Hutterite teachers. I remember our
professors’ amazement when they learned that
we Buhepers had not even chosen the career
of teaching. This lack of choice goes directly
against main-stream society’s individualistic way
of choosing a career.
Perhaps 1/4 of my Buhep group had wanted
all their lives to be teachers, but they certainly
weren’t the majority.
And yet, it worked! Our traditional methods
of using elder consensus, or community consensus,
proved to work as well, if not better, than
main stream society’s individualistic method of
choosing a career.
So the first question for us as Hutterites is
not, “What can colonies offer their high school
graduates in the way of career options?”
Rather, the first question should be, “What
are the needs of my community?”
Do Hutterite colonies really need their own
doctors, dentists, engineers, or accountants? If
the answer is yes, then perhaps some pioneering
work needs to be done.
If the answer is no, not really, but I, personally,
would love to be a doctor, then perhaps I
am still spiritually immature, and I need to learn
more about what being a G’ma schofter, a communitarian,
is all about. Being a Hutterite is about
what the community needs, as determined by the
community.
In our school, we have a full-time non-Hutterite
teaching assistant. Liz Griffin is 60 years
old, with a husband, two grown children, and
grandchildren. I have learned a great deal from
Liz Basel, about the amount of “good works” non-
Hutterian society, or “die Welt”, accomplishes
via volunteering activities. Liz Basel volunteers
for a Ladies Group that’s part of Manitoba
Women’s Institute, which is part of a world-wide
organization.
The group was founded in 1910, and its
mission statement is to work for change and the
betterment of life for women and families in
Manitoba. It is a non-profit organization, with all
monies raised going either to community projects,
or to charities such as Cancer Care Manitoba, the
Heart and Stroke Foundation, the MS Foundation,
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and Farm Safety for
Just Kids.
Members of the Ladies Group also volunteer
to work in old folks’ homes, or personal care
homes. They volunteer to visit shut-ins, people
who need to stay at home because of health issues,
or simply because they’re too old to travel
or drive.
They volunteer to drive older people to appointments,
or to drive the older children of busy
young mothers with small babies to sporting
events. They plant and care for huge, gorgeous
gardens in their town. They knit scarves for
needy people overseas, and blankets for the local
Emergency Ambulance Service.
I asked Liz for an approximate number of
hours she spends volunteering every month. She
stated that she considered her volunteering time to
be low, about 30 hours a month, or about 1 hour
every day. (This was an average: as some months
she does much more than this, other months less.)
Other women in her group volunteered as much
as 2 or 3 times that amount!
Now, what does this have to do with Hutterite
society, with Oak River, or Glenway, or other Hutterite
faith communities? Surely we don’t need
to do all that volunteering, because the culture,
traditions, and rules of Hutterian life take care of
so many things.
Nevertheless, this group of women, ages
40 – 80 plus does all this volunteer work. How
much more could a young Hutterite graduate
contribute?
In many ways, Hutterianism is an extremely
efficient system, an institution. Some people, usually
ex-Hutterites, state this very disparagingly,
as if this were somehow a fatal flaw. In reality, it
is a tremendous strength!
One of the standard questions doctors and
nurses ask a young mother is, “Will you have
help, when you arrive home from the hospital?”
I remember their amazement when I told them
how we Hutterite women are supported when we
come home with a small baby.
All of you know that a Hutterite mother with
a newborn has a close relative or friend in her
home for at least 2 or 3 weeks, to take care of
the house, any older siblings, as well as provide
support. This Obwoterin is automatically exempt
from any community duties in her own colony,
so she can freely devote her time to help care for
the new mother and baby.
And the support for a young Hutterite mother
doesn’t stop there. For 6 whole weeks, she needn’t
prepare a single dinner or supper, and is exempt
from all community work. Another relative on
the colony does the laundry for her. Do you know
how different that is from the life of a typical new,
non-Hutterite mother?
Dos is wos schrecklich’s, de Hutterite system!
Actually, it’s pretty wonderful!
Although we might not need volunteers to
help young mothers with babies, what about other
areas. What about caring for some of the needs
of the elderly or sick?
So, I challenge our graduates to find their own
areas to volunteer their time and energy. Consider
the needs of your particular Hof. I can give you
some suggestions, as well as some examples.
Obviously, I am most familiar with examples
from Fairholme and Glenway. Anna and Dora volunteered
to go for university training to become
teachers. BUHEP is a result of that.
Sandra, while she was still a Diene (young
woman), volunteered to work in the Kleine
Schule, at a time when she was already working
in the school. She was also the main person in
charge of Fairholme’s large U-pick strawberry
Preservings No. 26, 2006 - 89