TruthBook Religious News Blog

A new study says they might, but adds that parents and peers have more influence.
Tobin Grant | posted 2/11/2009 11:17AM

Parents deciding between religious and public schooling face many unknowns. One of the most important factors is how the schools might affect the faith of their children. Yet for all the debates over education, we know little about the effectiveness of Christian education on the spiritual lives of students. Students at religious schools are probably more religious than are public-school students. At issue, however, is why they are more religious. Is it just that they come from more religious families, or does the school itself directly affect the religiosity of teens?

A recent study by Jeremy Uecker, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, provides a major step forward in answering this question. Uecker uses the National Survey of Youth and Religion (NSYR) — the best survey to date on adolescent religious life — to compare the religious lives of students in different types of schools: Catholic, Protestant (most of which are evangelical), public, home, and secular private schools. The NSYR includes a wide range of questions on the spiritual lives of over 3,200 adolescents, their parents, and their friends. The information on parents is critical because it allows Uecker to tease out the effect of schools while taking into account the religiosity of the family.

There are two major findings that parents — and prognosticators — should consider when evaluating school options.

1. Protestant schools affect the private religious practices of students, but have no impact on church-related activities.

2. Parents and peers have more shaping influence on the religious lives of teens than do schools.

The good news for parents is that while the choice of schooling is important, the most effective thing they can do to affect the religious life of their children is to take their own spiritual life seriously and to encourage their children to build friendships with peers who are also faithful Christians.

As with any study of this kind, it is important to remember that the differences that Uecker finds are average differences. Some students may become more religious in a secular, public educational system. Parents need to consider the unique characteristics of their children and the educational mission of their local Christian schools. This study should help parents as they make their evaluations. While there are still many questions that need to be studied, this is a long, first step toward understanding how different educational choices may affect the religious lives of adolescents.

Labels: adolescents, Christianity, Jeremy Uecker, National Survey of Youth and Religion, public school, religious education, schools, Tobin Grant

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

And a Child Shall Lead Him

And a Child Shall Lead Him

Published: February 20, 2008

We celebrated the baptism of our fourth on Sunday. He’s the one without the beard in my head shot. As with our other three kids, the ceremony was a family-only matter at the log chapel on Notre Dame’s campus. Being in such familiar surroundings, the baptism gave me the chance to think about my own spiritual state and what an influence my children have had on it over the last eight years—even though I’m the one who is supposed to be influencing them.

I believe that parents are as responsible for their children’s spiritual well-being as they are for their children’s physical, intellectual, and emotional health. Having gone from calling myself an “agnostic” to a “faithless Catholic” and now being in a state of what I’ve dubbed “surrender,” I often wonder how qualified I am to teach my kids about spiritual matters. Even now, I don’t have much of a plan for maintaining my own spiritual health. Gone are the days when I could strike out hiking on a whim with friends, spend the summer reading thought-provoking books, or just take time to reflect on my life. My days are now consumed with the billable hour, dirty diapers, Bionicles, trucks under feet, and third-grade book reports. What little time I can steal for myself is more often spent on movies and sports than anything truly fulfilling.

Despite the busy-ness of my life, I still owe it to my kids to give them some spiritual guidance. They don’t need to share my own beliefs. But without some spiritual foundation, how can I expect them to live fully? So we’ve turned to what we know, what we grew up with. It was a practical compromise—for me especially. We agreed that we would get our kids through their first Communion. It would allow them to participate in the Catholic mass. At the time, the bargain was made in the context of our kids going to mass with their grandparents. But I now wonder if it wasn’t really for our own sakes.

Taking a child that far into religious education requires a big commitment from her parents. My wife and I had to make more of an effort to make it to church. And of course children have questions. I have pondered—and I believe given reasonable answers to—questions such as “Why is church boring?” and the very direct, “Is God real?” I have also had to conform my own behavior to what we are asking our children to do. I now sing in church. Even if I’m just going through the motions, the fact is, I am minding my own spiritual health more diligently than I likely would have without kids.

And the payoff has been surprising. The thankfulness I often feel has a context. The details of it all may be fuzzy, but I understand that I have been given gifts in the form of each of my children. Often the gifts are moments from my children themselves. The peace of lying next to my daughter as we both read books quietly on the couch. The amazement of watching my five-year-old assemble a complex new Lego toy with focus and determination. The mirth of my three-year-old’s singing and dancing. The pure joy of seeing my baby boy smile at me for the first time. Each of these things fills my soul. And every hug, kiss, and unsolicited “I love you” from my kids sustains me.

So, as I dutifully committed to the religious upbringing of my newest child on Sunday, I had to wonder if we don’t have it backwards. Shouldn’t I have been asking this vibrant innocent baby to lead me, if only a part of the way, on my spiritual journey before he strikes out on his own?

Labels: baptism, children, family, parenthood, religious education, spirituality

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

The possibility of God

Religious studies is enjoying a boom. But in a multicultural society, what is it now for?
Victoria Neumark reports
Tuesday July 10, 2007
The Guardian

Niqabs in the classroom, creationism knocking at the door of the science lab, the threat of suicide bombers: big challenges face religious education (RE) in UK classrooms. A critical report by Ofsted last month demanded that RE "contributes strongly to pupils' understanding of the changing role of religion, diversity and community cohesion". It said children should be taught more about religion's role in a modern world under the threat of terrorism - and that they should learn that religion is not always a force for good.

How timely, then, that Oxford University has appointed its first professor of religious education for 27 years. Neither a woolly-jumpered vicar nor a wild-eyed evangelist, Terence Copley is an enthusiast for the very virtues of tolerance and reasoned discussion that Ofsted advocates. "We shouldn't run away from difference in a false and superficial attempt to create multicultural harmony," he says.

Copley has been a Quaker for decades, "though I am very happy to site myself in my family's Methodist tradition". He taught for 15 years in schools in the Midlands and north and ran a world-beating department of religious education at Exeter University from 1997. He believes in God -and in opening minds.

"I've learned a lot from going to other faiths' places of worship. I've not just looked on, but felt the ripples of experience," he says. "That's more challenging; it's real. But as a Christian I can worship with Jews, Muslim, Hindus, Sikhs very happily. At the same time, it's important not to pretend that big differences don't exist." As Ofsted acknowledges, the political and social significance of religion is changing. Is RE's potential to help build a more cohesive society being realised?

Copley is optimistic. The UK's multicultural society is a wonderful resource. He says RE teachers have to get stuck into teaching religion as the ways in which humanity searches for truth. "We've got to teach the possibility of God, and it's up to children to accept or reject it."

Sticking point

Copley says he is unapologetic about "the three-letter word": God. For non-believers - whose children still have to take RE until they are 16 - this is the obvious sticking point. "In all my years of teaching, I always made sure God was in there and talked about. People might find it embarrassing, but it is the key to engagement."

Ofsted criticised the twin aims prescribed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which straitjacket RE in schools: learning about religion and learning from religion. Copley would replace them with "engaging with religion and other life stances". RE lessons could feature science teachers talking about Darwin or the local imam explaining what the experience of Allah means to Muslims. "You should never directly attack or dissolve any child's views in the classroom," he says. Or, as Miriam Rosen, Ofsted's director of education, said: "More needs to be done if the subject is to develop in students a more profound understanding of the significance of religious commitment and diversity and its impact on society."

Copley's recent book, Indoctrination, Education and God: The Struggle for the Mind, looks at how indoctrination, secular or religious, stops education, stops questioning and stops thinking. "RE should introduce children to a big human debate. What children don't like is having answers rammed down their throats."

Young people nowadays are fascinated by religion and moral issues. Ofsted reports RE booming after decades of indifference. Secondary schools hunt RE teachers; primaries are crying out for in-service training. Oxford, boasting the country's largest theology department, has started a new PGCE in RE. Though student interest is at a peak, to some RE remains halfway between a hot potato and a big yawn. Copley is determined to challenge that. "Who wants to have on their tombstone the worthy but dull words: 'He or she was a useful RE teacher'?" he asks. "But we can't treat RE as so potentially divisive that we dare not discuss anything, either." He agrees with Ofsted that RE teacher training is due an intellectual upgrade. Terrorism, creationism, the veil in Islam and global warming should all be grist to the RE classroom mill. "You need a pinboard or whiteboard, with The Good, The Bad and The Dotty items from religion in the news up on it each day."

The practice of palming off RE on the sports teacher who goes to church must end. "In Britain, we tend to see religion as a hobby and God like a fire extinguisher, there for the last resort. But most of the world is not like that. How can we expect people to understand that some will die for religion if we portray it as so bland?"

Climate change

All in all, he says, "I've had a great time". With more than 40 books under his belt, including guides to teaching biblical narrative, biographies of Thomas Arnold of Rugby and Simon Wiesenthal, and a series of mystery quest novels for children, he is now working on Inventing an RE for the 22nd Century. This will focus on the spiritual and social results of climate change.

"We'll need to change, to be more aware of locality, to abandon our feelings of mastery, which are based on living inside 90% of the time and controlling our environment; we need to become more accustomed to living in the weather ... What is our place in the universe as a whole?"

As for contention over the veil, Copley says: "It's clear that within a global religion like Islam, practice varies and culture plays an important part ... The majority of British Muslim women don't find it necessary to cover their face ... This is a debate within Islam as well as the wider UK. RE should note the different Muslim views involved and the legitimate concerns of non-Muslim members of our society. But the central aim in teaching Islam in RE shouldn't get lost in veils. It should be to get children to explore Islam's experience of the centrality of God. British culture does not take God very seriously, but Islam does."

It's all in the great liberal tradition. But still, there is one sticking point. Respecting difference, demanding equality, Copley, along with Ofsted, firmly espouses compulsory RE. "There is no legal, moral, educational right to exclude RE from children's school experience. I'm passionate that RE should not have a withdrawal clause. If it is education not indoctrination, there should be no right of withdrawal. The withdrawal clause should be removed from RE or, logically, extended to embrace all subjects."

Spirit of the times

1944: The Education Act legislates for "religious instruction" (the classroom subject plus school worship). Parents are allowed to withdraw children. An 1870 clause prohibiting denominational teaching except in denominational schools was retained.

1988: Education Reform Act now uses "religious education" to refer to classroom subject only. World religions must be taught. RE required "to take into account that the religious traditions of the UK are in the main Christian". Withdrawal clause retained. RE is outside the national curriculum, with locally determined syllabuses, but must be taught to all children in state schools from entry to 16.

1997: Introduction of short-course GCSE

2004: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority national framework for RE published 2006: QCA publishes schemes of work for ages 5-14.

2005-06: Entries to short-course RE GCSE: 239,000; GCSE: 145,200 (more than music, equal to PE); A-level: 14,900

Labels: children, God, morality, religion, religious education, Terence Copley, Victoria Neumark