When asked about the role of religion in his life, a Latino high school student said that “Sunday school (and) trips with our church groups ... always helped me keep on a straight path.”
A new report from scholars at Harvard and Brigham Young University examines the role of religious faith as a resource to improve learning opportunities for children and youth of all backgrounds.
Limits to educational ‘equalizing’
Nearly two centuries ago, American education reformer Horace Mann said that public schooling in the United States would become “a great equalizer of the conditions of men.” Mann, who served as Massachusetts’ first secretary of education between 1837 and 1848, expanded tax-supported, universal schooling through professionally trained teachers, standardized curricula and state oversight.
Now seen as the architect of the U.S. education system, Mann believed that public schooling, above any other effort, would help children rise above poverty — by developing basic literacy, numeracy and a moral education.
Yet by the turn of the 20th century, only 1 in 3 children of Black and other races were enrolled in school, compared with 4 in 5 white children. Serious efforts to desegregate schools by race did not begin until the mid-1960s.
Reforms, policies and other interventions since then have made limited progress. Large gaps in learning opportunities persist today by student race/ethnicity, which have stagnated for over a generation, and opportunity gaps by gender and family income are widening.
What can help close these gaps, realize Mann’s vision and better serve our rising generation? According to our recent findings, religion is a key resource.
Faith as an educational catalyst
In “Faith in Educational Renewal,” a recent report published by the BYU Wheatley Institute and the Leadership Initiative for Faith and Education (LIFE) at Harvard, we find that the religious faith of students, their families and teachers is an untapped resource that can help to close learning opportunity gaps.
Specifically, we find that:
- Religious participation of students is associated with more academic learning in school, higher levels of formal schooling and more aspirations for higher education.
- These positive effects are explained by the moral values, study skills and social networks that students of all backgrounds can gain from participating in a religious faith.
- Students from working-class families benefit more in school from religious participation than do their high-income peers.
- Strong partnerships between public schools and faith organizations provide services such as tutoring, mentoring and college preparation and can positively impact parental involvement, student reading and socioemotional development.
- Religious teachers often experience feeling “called” to the profession. They draw on their spirituality to manage stress, sustain enthusiasm and make instructional decisions for the benefit of their students.
In short, faith can play a significant role in reaching the goals that we aspire to in public education, for both students and teachers.
Separation of church and state at school?
But what about the separation of church and state reflected in the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Our recommendations below are, as was Mann’s vision itself, strictly nonsectarian.
We do not endorse religious practices or doctrine in public schools, nor do we support using public funds for private religious education. We embrace the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman and its standing legal precedent, which asserts that partnerships between religious organizations and government must:
- Have a secular, civic purpose
- Have a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion
- Not foster “excessive entanglement” between government and religion
Positive steps that can be taken
To that end, there are specific actions that can help young learners and their teachers meet their full potential in public school classrooms. Consider these evidence-based recommendations that could bring positive benefits to more children and youth, regardless of their faith tradition or belief system:
- Establishing regular communication about needs and resources between faith communities and public school systems
- Schools and religious institutions distributing information about existing partnerships between public schools and faith organizations
- Developing deliberate educational programming within churches, Sikh gurdwaras, mosques, spiritual communities, synagogues, temples and other places of worship based on the student learning needs within their communities
- Creating deep and coordinated partnership activities between faith organizations and public schools to understand and meet the learning needs of students
- Providing public school educators with meaningful opportunities to explore how their work and their expressions of religious faith intersect
A growing body of research is demonstrating the critical role that lived religion plays in supporting human flourishing. Success in public education is no different.
More than just a private good
It is easy for most of us to accept the idea that religious faith provides an important private good for those who choose to adhere to a specific faith tradition. But we must also recognize the powerful public good that lived religion and religious institutions can play in society, and specifically, in PK-12 public education.
Religious faith, in other words, is both a private good (for individual students, families and teachers) and a public good (for schools and communities) when it comes to transforming learning opportunities for children and youth of any religious or belief background, and especially for historically underserved children and youth in public schools.
Benjamin Franklin said that “to pour forth benefits for the common good is divine.” James in the New Testament wrote that “pure religion” is to bless and serve the disadvantaged. Dharma from Hinduism teaches that helping others and acting justly is a person’s highest duty. “Tikkun olam” in Hebrew means “repairing the world” and refers to the Jewish teaching to care for those who are poor, improve society and alleviate suffering. And Jesus Christ taught, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Just like the young Latino high school student we referenced above, there are countless numbers of students, regardless of their belief tradition, who can benefit from faith. Religion can help provide the community, human, material and moral resources that these public school students need to succeed today.