The Importance Of Religion In Education

The context of this study is to establish the reason for choosing a private (religious-based school) over a public school, considerably the value of education in both of these options. The gap in the research is the lack of research based in South Africa as well as lack of evidence to answer this question. According to a study done by Itulua-Abumere (n.d), religion-based education is teaching through a religious perspective and is considered to be a subject in Great Britain. Religion in education lessens the chances of students involving themselves in activities that can compromise their academics such as alcohol, a question asked by Mark Regnerus (2003) and answered by William H. Jeynes (2007).

In the process of choosing a school for one’s child, religion does play a factor,(Yang, Kayaardi sub-referenced from Sitemaker, n.d). The research also states that students that attended religious-based schools had more moral reasoning as well as had less urge to cheat in a test (Sitemaker, n.d). Students in Catholic schools showed better academic achievement than “inner-city” public schools (Fagan, 2006). Even though Cathy l. Grossman (2011) stated: “the more educational you are, the less likely you will be religious” this statement suggests that education makes students aware of other religions and beliefs due to having a wider variety of friends, however D. Cush (n.d) opposes this statement by stating that religion-based education is said to understand religion and not nurture a student’s faith.

The evidence of bad behaviour in South African schools is said to be the result of not having religion in public schools, but due to our democracy taking Christianity out of public schools, not because of diversity of religions but retaliat...

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... questions based like a questionnaire.

Although private schools in South Africa encourage a student-teacher relationships, students that need structure and rules give excellent results at the end of a school term(Alton, 2013). The comparison between religion-based and public schools can’t be made because the independent schools (religion-based schools) that write IEB exams come to a total of 173 over the entire country (D. Hawker, 2012). This is a very small percentage and the comparison would not be fair, due to the majority of schools being government run. (Hawker, 2012) In this article, the spokesperson of the Independent Schools Association of South Africa, Simon Lee said that religion-based teaching as well as subject choice for students and extra-mural activities is one of the main reasons parents would choose IEB schools over public schools (Hawker, 2012).