Does Education Secularize?

I just came across an interesting study published by a team of University of Texas sociologists called “Losing My Religion: The Social Sources of Religious Decline in Early Adulthood.” One of the questions this study attempted to answer was whether or not post-secondary education was a significant factor that contributes to religious decline in early adulthood. Apparently the link between education (even Christian education) and secularization is pretty much an accepted fact within sociological circles - the basic idea being that as students are introduced to rival religious perspectives and the complexities of knowledge and belief they will gradually turn their backs on the simplistic beliefs with which they were raised.

According to this study, however, there is no direct correlation between level of education and religious decline. In fact it is young adults who have not attended college or university that are most prone to dissociate themselves from their religious upbringing (some 76% of young adults in religious decline had no college education compared with 59% who had a bachelor’s degree). Again, the fact that there is a noticeable decline in religious observance among young adults is not the issue here, rather it is the contributing factors to that decline.

According to this study the vast majority of college students (82%) maintain a fairly static level of religious commitment throughout their college years. The reason given is quite simple: the religious beliefs of most students are simply not touched by their education because they are not put on the table. “Religious faith is rarely seen as something that could either influence or be influenced by the educational process… What is not contested, then, cannot be lost. Faith simply remains in the background of students’ lives as a part of who they are, but not a part they talk about openly with their peers or professors.”

The researchers go on to say that it is the overwhelmingly pragmatic orientation of education (”just tell me what I need to know so I can get a job when I’m done”) that insulates religion from serious threat on many college campuses. Students do not generally go to school to develop something like a meaningful and coherent worldview, they go to acquire skills that will help them get a good job. The researchers point to the fact that in 1960 over 80% of college freshmen listed “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” as an important or essential goal. By 1996 that number had fallen to 42%.

The final reason why education is not the secularizing force that it used to be is because most students are so ignorant of their own religious faith that they do not even recognize when it is being challenged or subverted. In other words, because most students are only minimally aware of the core beliefs of their religion they do not find rival perspectives to be a threat. Religion is not, for the most part, understood as a worldview and because it is not understood this way it is not threatened when rival worldviews are either assumed or proposed.

So the bottom line appears to be that most young adults are 1) Interested in education primarily for the purpose of their future employment options and 2) Minimally aware of any kind of relationship between that education and whatever religious background they have. This seems to be bad news for both education and religion.

In terms of what actually is causing religious decline among young adults this study makes only a few half-hearted attempts at an answer. They have a couple of speculative comments but nothing that seems to satisfactorily explain what is such a broad and apparently common reality. Any guesses?

Via: ThinkChristian