I don’t have any evidence, but ‘faith’ schools reduce teenage pregnancy, says Cristina Odone
Cristina Odone vaguely criticises plans for better more comprehensive sex education (which in fact will better enable young people to make decisions about sex and relationships as they grow up) instead proposing that more “faith” and God in schools would reduce teenage pregnancy. There’s no evidence for this, she says, but in a deductive leap that can only be called ‘imaginative’, Odone argues that that very absence of evidence probably indicates that she’s right… Got that?
Here is a question I would like someone to answer: how many girls in faith schools get pregnant in their teens? The second question I’d like to see answered is why HAS no one examined this question? But I suspect I know the answer: so many local education authorities are suspicious of faith schools (because of their academic excellence, and their relative independence) that they are not eager to find out yet another advantage they offer children and parents.
The first question is a pressing one, especially in light of the latest government demand for sex education: this time, they want to talk about sex to 5 year-olds. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has decided that the importance of respect should be taught in “human relationship” classes. As if “respect” were the Battle of Waterloo, or the periodic table.
Respect is not something to be learned at a blackboard. Respect has to permeate every aspect of every child’s day. In faith schools, it does: school children are taught respect for God, for others, for faith, for their school buildings. The notion that everyone is equally special in God’s eyes is inculcated from prayer to playground.
I’d like to see an explanation of that term. I wonder if it’s the same as “specially equal”.
Alas that ignorance and prejudice seem to correlate with loud insistence. There is a large amount of research to show that societies with strong religious beliefs are dysfunctional on many measures including teenage pregnancy. The prime example is the USA (a simple comment on this was in The Guardian 8/12/09, Su Blackmore). This godly state clearly has problems with the sinful body (obesity, porn, drugs) and also has nearly a quarter of the world’s prison population and contributes nearly half the world’s military expenditure (and more indirectly). The other claims made for benefits of faith in schooling are also false.
I think it is highly likely that levels of teenage pregnancy are lower in faith schools than in other schools but this will be nothing to do with the teaching in the schools. It will be due to the fact that the pupils are selected from nice respectable middle class families in the first place. Children in more deprived areas do not get selected for these schools and of course this what gives people the mistaken impression that faith schools offer a “better” education. Sadly it seems that we are going to be getting more of these devisive institutions rather than fewer though in the forseeable future.
Here’s a link to the article Dr Salter mentions above:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/dec/08/religion-society-gregory-paul
Positive Psychologists such as Martin Seligman and Jonathan Haidt claim that religious people are moderately happier than the non-religious. I find this maddening not least because I can’t currently track down any of the research they base this claim on. Here’s Seligman writing in “Authentic Happiness” (2003)
“Religious Americans are clearly less likely to abuse drugs, commit crimes, divorce, and kill themselves. They are also physically healthier and they live longer. Religious mothers of children with disabilities fight depression better, and religious people are less likely to be thrown by divorce, unemployment, illness and death. Most directly relevant is the fact that survey data consistently show religious people as being somewhat happier and more satisfied with life than nonreligious people.”
Haidt talks about reverse-correlation a lot in “The Happiness Hypothesis” (2005), but fails to question whether it’s just that happy people are less likely to question the religion or beliefs that they are born into.