Matt Rourke, Associated Press A state police helicopter takes off from a field next to the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School, scene of a multiple fatality shooting yesterday morning. Click photo for larger image.

The typical Amish schoolhouse perfectly reflects its community: plain, traditional and unguarded.

Girls and boys, 6 to 14, enter the single-room structure and hang their belongings on two separate sets of hooks. They leave their lunches by the wood stove, sit at old-fashioned desks, and study a traditional curriculum from old primers.

The teacher, usually an unmarried girl about 18 years old with an eighth-grade education, stands at the chalkboard and does the job she will likely give up in a few years when she finds a husband and has children. The children call her by her first name.

There are no security precautions of any kind, said Dr. Richard Ammon, an associate professor emeritus of education at Penn State University and an expert on the old-order Amish, who has visited many Amish-run schools.

In some cases, there might be a single, standard phone line -- perhaps running just outside the schoolhouse -- little protection from the type of violence that played out yesterday morning, when a gunman took Amish schoolchildren hostage in Lancaster County, killing four of them and critically wounding several more.

"Following this incident, it wouldn't surprise me if schoolteachers don't have cell phones in their desks," said Dr. Ammon. "The bishops [of the Amish church] rule on all these matters, but this certainly puts a new twist on it."

There are 224 Amish schools in Pennsylvania, 216 of which are in Lancaster County. They have no teacher or standardized testing requirements. They are ineligible to participate in the federal lunch program and receive no state funding. And they forgo the sort of security measures that have become the unfortunate standard at larger public schools across the country.

"They're not going to the security extremes that non-Amish people have come to expect in North America," said David Weaver-Zercher, associate professor of American religious history at Messiah College in Grantham, Cumberland County.

When he first heard of the shooting, he never considered that the gunman might be a member of the Amish community, an instinct that was later confirmed by law enforcement officials.

The Amish use weapons to hunt. But their distaste for violence and their religious commitment to nonresistance means that they would never use a gun against another human being, said Mr. Weaver-Zercher. That would hold true even if they or their families were threatened.

"The Amish have long been seen as easy marks," he said. "They're not a people that resist violently when threatened."

For him, the incident called to mind news stories from the past year in which defenseless homeless people were targeted and badly beaten on the streets by gangs of young people.

Amish are seen by many outsiders as countercultural and are targeted by bullies for this reason, said Mr. Weaver-Zercher.

Mr. Weaver-Zercher questioned to what degree the Amish will feel comfortable modifying security practices at their schools, whether they will move toward a larger Amish male presence there or accept the presence of armed guards to provide an extra dose of protection.

Amish people do not have phones in their homes, said Mr. Weaver-Zercher. They might share a phone with a neighbor, using phone stations along the road. They often have phones in their businesses and in some schools. The Amish in Lancaster County do use cell phones to some degree, he said. Their appropriateness is currently a topic of discussion in the community.

Yesterday's shootings no doubt will prompt teachers in Amish schools to be wary if they see strangers approaching their classrooms, said Dr. Donald B. Kraybill, a nationally recognized expert on Amish and Anabaptist groups. But he said he does not believe it will cause Amish communities to install or even consider security systems for their schools.

"There isn't any now and I don't think it will change," said Dr. Kraybill, a senior fellow and distinguished professor at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County. "They know this was an aberration.

"Teachers [now] may be more cautious about letting in outsiders. There will be something in the backs of their minds when someone drives up," he said.

"But the teachers know all these kids. The teachers will know who is walking in over the fields."

Amish children are required to attend school only until the eighth grade, as a result of a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Three Amish families in Green County, Wis., challenged that state's compulsory school-attendance law which required them to send their children to public or private school until reaching age 16.

They argued the compulsory attendance law was contrary to the Amish religion and way of life, and violated their rights under the First and 14th amendments. They believed that by sending their children to high school, they would expose themselves to the danger of censure by the church community and endanger their own salvation and that of their children.

The one-room schools are private institutions operated by Amish parents and educate students in grades one through eight, Dr. Kraybill said. There is no kindergarten. Typically, the schools serve between 25 and 30 students, most of whom are siblings from several local families.

The only document required by the state to establish an Amish school is a one-page application verifying the location of the school, the number of grades it will serve and attesting that it will operate for at least 180 days each school year.

The schools generally have one teacher and sometimes a teacher's helper who group the students by grades and teach two grades together. Nearly all teachers and helpers in Amish schools are Amish.

According to Dr. Ammon, first-graders enter school speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, but all instruction is conducted in English. The teachers only speak Pennsylvania Dutch when giving directions to the first-graders, and by Christmas, every student is reading English from their primers.

They learn history, English, basic math and geography, but little or no science. Amish schools don't generally teach much science because the Amish equate science with evolution theory, said Dr. Kraybill.

"They don't really think there is a need for them to learn science to be successful in Amish society," he said. "The focus is on practical skills, to be successful in an Amish business or on a farm."

The schools also do not include instruction in religion, which is viewed as the responsibility of the family, health or sex education, he said. Students use pencils and paper but no computers or electronic calculators. Their classrooms may have a battery-powered clock but no electricity.

Some take standardized achievement tests and generally earn scores that are slightly above average, said Dr. Ammon.

"It's one of the best-kept secrets in education," he said. "They don't learn enough science, but what they do study, they do well."

As soon as Amish schoolchildren turn 14, they come to school only on Fridays, and once they hit their 15th birthday, they leave school for good.

According to Mike Storm, public information officer for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the state has no authority to monitor or regulate what goes on in nonpublic, nonlicensed registered schools such as Amish schools.

The state does, however, offer some services to Amish schools through the intermediate unit in their areas, said Mr. Storm. Those services would include crisis counseling for tragedies such as yesterday's school shootings.

But experts say the Amish community will most likely deal with the trauma of the shootings spiritually, rather than psychologically. Rather than bringing in grief counselors, they will discuss it in church -- themes of evil in the world, the insecurity of life and the ultimate security that can only be found in God.

"They will look on this as the will of God, which is how they look on most things that don't make any sense," said Dr. Ammon. "You go on and you never look back."