Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The purpose of this dissertation is to compare family and educational values and practices of the Hutterite Brethren during the Reformation era with those of the main-stream of German-speaking Protestantism. Family and educational concepts and developments and the progress of elementary-vernacular education within both magisterial Protestantism and evangelical Anabaptism are described and their similarities and differences made clear. The Hutterites, who with the Mennonites constitute the two major groups of evangelical Anabaptism, are given particular attention since only they withdrew from the world to live in closed communistic societies. Within these communities they exhibited certain differences in their pattern of life from that of their contemporaries. [TRUNCATED]