Teach Your Children Well

[nbcrusader]

An Inspired Strategy

Here's a crazy idea: After all our ambitious child-rearing with Discovery toys, Suzuki piano lessons, conflict-avoidance classes, 4 a.m. swim practices, SAT prep classes, driver education and summer flights to study folk music in the Republic of Georgia, we might have done as well (and saved a lot of money) by just sending our kids to church, temple or mosque.

Late last year, a commission convened by Dartmouth Medical School, among others, studied years of research on kids, including brain-imaging studies, and concluded that young people who are religious are better off in significant ways than their secular peers. They are less likely than nonbelievers to smoke and drink and more likely to eat well; less likely to commit crimes and more likely to wear seat belts; less likely to be depressed and more likely to be satisfied with their families and school.

"Religion has a unique net effect on adolescents above and beyond factors like race, parental education and family income," says Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist and panel member. Poor children who are religious will do better than poor children who are not religious, he adds -- and in some cases better than nonreligious middle-class children.

 

[BVS]

Interesting...

Are you sure we're just not better off letting the TV raise them?

 

[Angela Harlem]

They are less likely than nonbelievers to smoke and drink and more likely to eat well; less likely to commit crimes and more likely to wear seat belts; less likely to be depressed and more likely to be satisfied with their families and school.

 

[DrTeeth]

I'm very sceptical. what's the mechanism?

 

[babyman]

it depends, to be religious is a thing, to be a christian is the real thing

 

[BVS]

it depends, to be religious is a thing, to be a christian is the real thing

Where I agree that there is a difference, this study didn't claim if it was Christian, Jewish, etc. Also I know a lot of "religious" people that may not be considered good people but they are people who stick to the rules of no drinking, no smoking, do this or do that and you'll go to heaven that may actually prove this study correct. By no means would I label them the "real thing", but they do most of these things listed.

So I don't think with this study it does depend...

 

[Mullen-Girl]

I was taught religion from when I was 5 until I was 18 yrs old. I don't agree cos I drink more, party, smoke occationally and I don't eat well. But that's just me.

 

[nbcrusader]

I'm sure that "teaching religion" is not a guarantee. Also, as has been hinted, there is a difference between teaching a faith and teaching a religion. Some religious practices can be taught in an overbearing and oppressive manner - so much so that it breeds rebellion.