YES! Christians ARE different; but are their schools? Brian Astill University of Adelaide Abstract This report forms part of a larger study of social values in the senior high school milieu. It is proposed to investigate how social values vary according to social position and type of school attended, and the extent to which schooling might influence student value systems. In order to reduce as many extraneous factors as possible, only coeducational schools in the metropolitan area of Adelaide were invited to participate. This paper reports some preliminary findings, that the survey has indicated distinct differences between the value systems of people from active Christian families, and those who profess no faith. The survey also indicates that the type of school attended had not had any great influence on underlying student social values. ===================================================== Preamble There has been much discussion over the years about the rôle of schools in the moral education of children. A recent paper (O'Donnell, 1994) outlining the history of government attitudes to moral education in schools, following the presentation of the Wiltshire report to the Queensland Government, paints a picture of developments in this area, which is relevant to this study. O'Donnell points out that the suggestion that government schools have never engaged in teaching Right and Wrong, because their teachers have never been seen to be equipped to do so, is wrong. "That alleged discovery, it would seem, on the basis of over a century of State-run education in Queensland, is entirely fallacious. ( ... ) ... not only were Queensland schools and teachers making vigorous efforts to inculcate socially-acceptable behaviours .... but they were required by their employer to do so." Similar remarks might be made about all States in Australia. Of course, there have been changes in school structures, funding, and directions over the years. In the area of religious schools, one of the more visible indicators of change is the current lack of priestly garb in Roman Catholic schools, principally caused by a move away from those in teaching Orders towards 'lay' teachers. The question is whether, in the current educational climate, parents are justified in believing that their choice of schooling for their children is likely to influence the social value outcome. There are two views that are commonly advanced. The first of these is that, by virtue of tradition and mission, selective recruiting of teachers, and (in many cases) direct influence in institutional governance by the religious denomination concerned, the school will consistently promulgate religious values, and concomitant social values. Furthermore, the school architecture and furnishings will reinforce those values. This ambience cannot fail to have its effect upon the student. An opposing view is that all teachers are subject to similar education and training, engage in the same profession, receive similar emoluments, are involved in similar tasks, consider similar problems in undertaking those tasks, are operating in similar local and societal environments, and are likely to enjoy similar lifestyles. In summary, teachers are likely to be so similar that the ambience they generate as a group will not vary greatly between one type of school and another, notwithstanding any differences in religious persuasion. So far as architecture is concerned, all buildings are designed first and foremost as suitable for schooling, containing classrooms, assembly halls, gymnasia, playing fields, and so on for this purpose; this similarity is such as to override differences in age and style. On these bases, while a parent might choose a school offering some more desirable facilities or features, they could not expect more from the school than a lack of antagonism, to their spiritual mores. ===================================================== Some theoretical considerations. It is not the purpose of this paper to offer a lengthy peroration on social values; there is ample literature available on this subject. It is pertinent however, to briefly mention the work of three influential researchers. Rokeach was a modern pioneer in the testing for the presence of individual and group social value systems, his early investigations requiring the subject to place 28 values in rank order in two sets which he called terminal (ie outcome) and instrumental (ie method) values. His definition of "values" was widely approved. "To say that a person has a value is to say that he has an enduring prescriptive or proscriptive belief that a specific mode of behaviour or end-state of existence is preferred to an oppositive mode of behaviour or end-state. This belief transcends attitudes towards objects and towards situations; it is a standard that guides and determines action, attitudes towards objects and situations, ideology, presentation of self to others, evaluations, judgements, justifications, comparisons of self with others, and attempts to influence others. Values serve adjustive, ego-defensive, knowledge, and self-actualising functions. Instrumental and terminal values are related yet separately organised into relatively enduring hierarchical organisations along a continuum of importance." Rokeach (1973, p25). Feather is a rather more current researcher in this field, and his earlier work made great use of the Rokeach values test. Although there are other views, our use of the term "social value" is strongly aligned with that of Feather (1975), who sees "... values and value systems in terms of a general theory of abstract structures" built up by the person over time by the processing of information from experience, teaching, observation of others, the effect upon others and the self of various actions, and so on. In his recent work, Feather has been using the Schwartz Values Questionnaire (Schwartz, 1992). Schwartz is investigating commonalities in understanding of social values across cultures, and therefore needed a test which was simpler to administer than Rokeach , which still allowed strength of conviction to be expressed and which could be understood worldwide. To achieve this he expanded the number of values to 56 and asked the respondent to place a figure from -1 (abhor) to 7 (adore) against each value. Based on the foregoing, we can regard "social values" as meaning a person's value structure - their theory of social interaction. From this theory, the person can hypothesise their particular view of how their world should operate, forming thereby attitudes about reality. A person will experiment by behaving in a way consistent with their attitude, and experience the result, which might reinforce or challenge the hypothesised attitude, which in turn might lead to an adjustment of the underlying theory, their social value structure. On this basis it is important to recognise that "social values" research examines the underlying social building blocks and cannot comment with any certainty upon attitudes or behaviours which might derive from them. It is also important to note that in the schema adopted here, many constructs commonly named "values" (such as "religious values" or "moral values") would be described as attitudes - the persons view of how life should be, based on their social values. Furthermore, one must recognise that there are behaviours, particularly externally-imposed imperatives, which are not value-driven in the accepted sense (Hare, 1964, 1977, 1981). A soldier is trained to obey orders blindly and without question. ie the order by-passes the soldier's "civilian" social value system. There are other such values-free imperatives which are far less dramatic, but nonetheless noticeable, such as "accepted" modes of dress, or expressions of speech. While a school can certainly appear to have these "imperatives" effect on a student, this research reports on the effects of school on the basic building blocks of social values structure, it being suggested that if schooling does not affect those, school-based behavioural morés might be likely to be temporary - features discarded as easily as school uniform. ===================================================== Method A number of coeducational schools were chosen to represent the major groupings (Private, Roman Catholic, Government Advantaged and Government Disadvantaged), and located so as to ensure, so far as was possible, a variety of social backgrounds. From these schools, over 1200 students, from year 12 (their final year at High School) completed an internationally recognised Values Questionnaire (Schwartz, 1992), and a socio-demographic survey. Their parents, and teachers at their schools, were also invited to participate. The Values questionnaire asks respondents to rate each of fifty-six values on a scale of -1(abhor) to 7(adore). The questionnaire instructions advise the respondents to see whether there might be one or two values within the list which might be of such overwhelming importance as to rate a '7', to then see if there might be any values so abhorrent that they would rate a '-1', and to place all other values as accurately as possible within the remaining range of '0' to '6'. During processing, any responses which grossly violated this advice (by allocating more than 21 '7's or more than 35 of any other value) were deemed not to have sufficiently understood, for their content to be included. The values examined were placed in the eleven major classifications suggested by Schwartz: Achievement:- personal success, ambition, etc.; Benevolence:- helpfulness, forgiving, etc.; Conformity:- obedience, politeness, etc.; Hedonism:- enjoying life, pleasure, etc.; Power:- social power, wealth, etc.; Security:- social order, national security, etc.; Self Direction:- freedom, independence, etc.; Spirituality:- a spiritual life, devout, etc.; Stimulation:- excitement, daring, etc.; Tradition:- tradition, accepting one's station in life, etc.; Universalism:- unity with nature, social justice, etc.; and an amalgamated score allotted to each group. The socio-demographic survey contained two questions concerning religious belief. Christians were identified by the students giving a positive answer to BOTH "Are you identified with a particular religious organisation, if so, which one?" and "Do most members of your family attend worship at least 12 times yearly?", and by their religion being identifiably Christian. Only those who answered "No" to both questions were identified as non-believers . By this means "other religions" and "inactive Christians" were eliminated from the sample. Results were processed using SPSS for Windows (v6.1) to provide mean, standard deviation, range and median for each value group. The statistical significance of differences between the means was obtained using t-testing technique. Attempts made to investigate any statistical significance in the rank ordering of the value means, yielded a no positive result. It appears that, in effect, one was asking (eg) Spearman's Rank Order Correlation to compare only the two resultant 'group mean' rank orders. Obviously all that can reasonably be gained from such a question is "the lists are/are not different". Multidimensional Scaling was applied to the teacher's results in order to expose any otherwise unnoticed differences. The two-dimensional solutions gave an excellent fit (RSQ > 0.965) for the data; but did not reveal any interesting discrepancies from the simpler examinations. ===================================================== Teachers Social Values The teachers in the participating schools, were separated into those of overtly Christian oriented schools and those of secular (government) schools. The values the two groups revealed were quite similar. Figure 1 COMPARISON OF SOCIAL VALUES OF TEACHERS CHRISTIAN vs NON-CHRISTIAN SCHOOLSSCHOOLS (n=93) (n=146) Rank Mean Rank Mean Value Group Highest Rank1 5.055 1 4.891Benevolence 2 4.614 4 4.609Universalism 3 4.546 2 4.871Self Direction 4 4.475 3 4.673Hedonism 5 4.253 6 4.435Security 6 4.201 5 4.546Achievement 7 3.934 7 4.132Conformity 8 3.412 8 3.591Spirituality 9 3.176 9 3.516Stimulation 10 2.754 10 2.885Tradition Lowest Rank11 2.490 11 2.839Power This can be shown graphically: Figure 2 Although the similarities between the two groups are most striking, there are, of course, some differences between the two sets of values. For example, because "non-Christian" school teachers value the most preferred value 'Benevolence' somewhat less highly, and the least preferred 'Power' more strongly, their pattern is somewhat 'flatter' than the slightly more emphatic ''Christian" school teachers' pattern. However, as can be seen in figure 3, such differences as exist are not of particular statistical significance. ---- TEACHERS ---- Figure 3 PROBABILITY THAT DIFFERENCES IN VARIABLE MEANS DERIVE FROM CHANCE or RANDOM FLUCTUATIONS Value Group Probability, p Achievement0.005 Benevolence0.145 Conformity0.099 Hedonism0.177 Power0.024 Security0.134 Self Direction0.006 Spirituality0.255 Stimulation0.043 Tradition0.396 Universalism0.969 It might be suggested that the 'non-Christian' higher rating of Achievement, and of Self-Direction is of some importance; but overall, it is the similarities which dominate the observed view. Similarly, there is some difference in the rank order of the value group means; but this is unlikely to be important in the absence of other indicators. Application of Multidimensional Scaling to the value group figures, to reveal any greater measure of dissimilarity, emphasised pattern similarities. Of course, there are Christian teachers in government schools, and non-Christian teachers in Christian schools; perhaps these factors are of sufficient magnitude to produce the uniformity we see? Perhaps the value similarities are simply an outcome of the social similarities we described earlier? Whatever the explanations might be, there is little evidence to suggest that there would be marked differences in social ambience deriving from the teachers, between the schools of different types which were examined in this work. ===================================================== Parents Social Values As educators are aware, it is generally accepted that adolescents tend to cling together and are subject to considerable peer group pressure. Only as they become adult, and more sure of their own identity, is a greater level of independent thinking, possible. One would therefore expect that there would be greater differences between Christians and Non-believer parents, than for the student group; on the other hand, pressures exerted by society might be influential on adults needing to gain acceptance as employees and as citizens. The results would seem to reflect both influences. However, the most striking contrast is between the parent results, and those of the teachers (above). Whereas teachers from Christian schools exhibited values not markedly different from those from non-Christian schools, Christian parents values are quite different from those of non-believer parents. Figure 5 COMPARISON OF SOCIAL VALUES ACTIVE CHRISTIAN PARENTS vs NON-BELIEVER PARENTS CHRISTIANS NON-BELIEVERS (n=144) (n=378) MeanRankMeanRank Value group 5.1661 4.8931Benevolence 4.4972 4.8242Self Direction 4.4893 4.6063Universalism 4.4754 4.3277Conformity 4.2655 4.4476Security 4.2256 4.4764Achievement 4.2127 3.3908Spiritual 3.8228 4.4625Hedonism 3.7879 2.98510Tradition 2.88410 3.2099Stimulation 2.12311 2.490 11Power This can be shown graphically: Figure 5 The probabilities of differences being due to random effects is shown in figure 6, below: ---- PARENTS ---- Figure 6 PROBABILITY THAT DIFFERENCES IN VARIABLE MEANS DERIVE FROM CHANCE or RANDOM FLUCTUATIONS Variable Probability, p Achievement0.005 Benevolence0.001 Conformity0.151 Hedonismless than 0.001 Power0.002 Security0.032 Self-Directionless than 0.001 Spiritualless than 0.001 Stimulation0.014 Traditionless than 0.001 Universalism0.189 Comparing this table 6 with the later table 11(for students) it is easy to see that there is a greater level of disagreement between the Christian and Non-believer parents than is the case between Christian and Non-believer students. Between parent groups, only the values of Conformity and Universalism show differences of doubtful significance. Differences in Ranking are also of interest. Figure 7 COMPARISON OF VALUE GROUP RANKINGS FOR CHRISTIAN AND NON-BELIEVER PARENTS CHRISTIAN PARENTS NON-BELIEVER PARENTS Rank Value groupRank Value group 1 Benevolence1 Benevolence 2 Self Direction2 Self Direction 3 Universalism3 Universalism 4 Conformity4 Achievement 5 Security5 Hedonism 6 Achievement6 Security 7 Spiritual7 Conformity 8 Hedonism8 Spiritual 9 Tradition9 Stimulation 10 Stimulation10 Tradition 11Power11Power Given that Australian society is based on the Judaeo-Christian ethic, and capitalist principles, it is not surprising that there is some agreement on the ranking of the virtues of Benevolence and Self-Direction, though there is significant difference between the numerical values allotted by the two groups. Universalism (world peace, equality, social justice, protecting our environment, etc) ranks third on both lists, and is valued similarly by both groups; perhaps this is in part a result of media coverage showing how damaging the lack of these things can be to individual Countries and to our World in general. The value systems tend to depart further at this point. Non-believers place Achievement (success, ambition, influence) and Hedonism next in their ranking of priorities, where the Christians place Conformity (honouring parents and elders, self-discipline, obedience) and Security (family security, social order, belonging). As seen earlier, the difference between the group means of Hedonism is particularly statistically significant. Although the numeric valuing of Conformity is more-or-less similar for both groups, Figure 4 shows that the rankings (4/11 for Christians, 7/11 for Non-believers) are very different. As mentioned earlier, there is no satisfactory way of determining the level of statistical significance of this rank ordering. The rank ordering and statistical differences between these social value groupings might suggest that Christians are much more inclined to conserve their existing society, and are less interested in self-enhancement and personal gratification, than Non-believers. Perhaps surprisingly, the parents of both persuasions offer rankings of Spiritual values which are similar, and indicate only modest importance, as do the students (see below); however, also like the students, Christian parents assigned a significantly higher weighting to matters spiritual. The lower ranking of Spiritual, and the high ranking of Benevolence, in conjunction with the patterns of difference overall, might suggest that modern Christians tend to see their faith more as one of action - being Christ-like, rather than leading to a devout, worshipful, other-worldly spiritual life. ===================================================== Students Social Values As we have seen, the similarities in teachers' value patterns regardless of school religious inclination suggest that it is unlikely that the type of school attended will have any dramatic effect on student value patterns. This was investigated further by comparing known 'Active Christian' students in Christian schools with those in secular schools; this was also be done for the 'Non-Believer' students, and in their case an attempt was made to exaggerate any differences which might be attributable to school influence by not choosing students from a school of indefinite Christian inclination (hence the total sample size for non-believers being less in the table following, than in Figure 9 and subsequent tables, below). Figure 8 SOCIAL VALUES OF CHRISTIAN AND NON-BELIEVER STUDENTS IN DIFFERENT SCHOOLS The similarity of 'Christian - Christian' and 'Christian - Secular' groups is very marked, and the similarities for the 'Non-Believer - Christian' and 'Non-Believer - Secular' groups even more so. About the only point of difference one might comment upon is the slightly higher ratings given by the 'Secular' school students throughout; but any significance would be difficult to allocate. It would certainly appear that the student's value systems are not being especially affected by the type of school they attend. Is there, however, any significant difference in value patterns between Christian and Non-believer students generally? Examination of the total students' responses gave the following results: Figure 9 COMPARISON OF SOCIAL VALUES OF STUDENTS CHRISTIANS NON-BELIEVERS (n=279) (n=756) MeanRank Mean Rank Value Group 5.071 14.830 3Benevolence 4.993 25.279 1Hedonism 4.803 34.910 2Self Direction 4.628 44.655 4Achievement 4.542 54.440 5Universalism 4.267 64.087 8Conformity 4.244 74.416 6Stimulation 4.130 84.201 7Security 3.796 93.17110Spiritual 3.532 103.001 11Tradition 3.037 113.214 9Power The patterns are more easily seen in the following graphical representation: Figure 10 ---- STUDENTS ---- Figure 11 PROBABILITY THAT DIFFERENCES IN VARIABLE MEANS DERIVE FROM CHANCE or RANDOM FLUCTUATIONS Variable Probability, p Achievement0.067 Benevolenceless than 0.001 Conformity0.013 Hedonismless than 0.001 Power0.054 Security0.273 Self-Direction0.076 Spiritualless than 0.001 Stimulation0.052 Traditionless than 0.001 Universalism0.134 Figure 11 shows that the differences between the two groups opinions on Benevolence, Hedonism, Spiritual, and Tradition are particularly significant. Figure 6 shows that Hedonism, Spiritual and Tradition were also significant for Christian parents, who also rated Benevolence higher than non-believer parents (there being only a 0.1% chance that the variation was due to random effects). It is possible, though unproven, that the students' greater agreement on the worth of Self-Direction and Universalism might be due to their being less personally involved in universal societal pressures than people like their parents who have experienced the adult world for a much longer period of time. Figure 11 COMPARISON OF VALUE GROUP RANKINGS OF STUDENTS CHRISTIAN STUDENTS NON-BELIEVER STUDENTS Rank Value GroupRank Value Group 1Benevolence1Hedonism 2Hedonism2Self Direction 3Self Direction3Benevolence 4Achievement4Achievement 5Universalism5Universalism 6Conformity6Stimulation 7Stimulation7Security 8Security8Conformity 9Spiritual9Power 10Tradition10Spiritual 11Power11Tradition Figure 11 shows that while the two groups agree on their 'top three' values, Christian students place Benevolence (helpful, loving, honest, loyal, true friend) first, whereas the non-believers prefer Hedonism (enjoying life, pleasure) and Self-Direction (choosing own goals, independence, freedom) before Benevolence. Although the match is not exact, this does parallel the finding for parents; they gave a significantly higher rating to Benevolence, and significantly lower ratings than their non-believer counterparts for Hedonism and Self-Direction. Similarly, Christian students allot a higher ranking of 6 for Conformity against the non-believers' 8. Although this is a lesser difference than between the parent groups 4 vs 7, the statistical significance of the means is much greater at 1.3% probability of chance vs 15.1% for parents At the bottom end of the rankings Christian students reject Power somewhat more vigourously, and have a higher tolerance for Tradition, than do the non-believers; this is also similar to the relationship between the parent groups. Like their parents, both groups seem to agree that Spiritual values are of lesser importance, though the greater weight given by the Christians is statistically very significant (less than one possibility in one thousand of the difference being accounted-for by chance). Summary The similarities in teacher values, whether they teach in Christian or non-Christian schools, is such as to suggest that, particularly from the perspective of religious influence, there would be little difference between one school and another. This suggestion is supported by the similarities of Christian and non-believer student value systems regardless of type of school attended. The results for parents and students, and particularly the similarities of difference between Christian and non-believer groups, suggest that, for the schools examined, family influences are likely to be of far greater importance in determining a young person's belief system than is their school. Overall, although schools might have some effect on some aspect of students behaviours which are not value driven, this study has found no evidence of them having any effect on the underlying social value structure of the students. These building blocks seem to derive much more from the parents. References Feather NT (1975), "Values and Education in Society", Free Press, NY Hare MR (1964), "The Language of Morals", Clarendon Press, London, 1964 Hare MR (1977), "Freedom and Reason", OUP, Oxford, 1977 Hare MR (1981), "Moral Thinking", Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981 O'Donnell D (1994), "Ethics and Values in Education: can schools teach Right and Wrong", Proceedings of the 1994 AARE Annual Conference, Australian Association of Educational Research, Newcastle NSW. Rokeach M (1973), "The Nature of Human Values", Free Press, NY Schwartz S (1992),"Universals in the structure and content of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries" IN Zenna M(Ed), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol 25, pp 1-65, Orlando FL, Academic Press Schwartz S(1995),"Are there universal aspects in the structure and contents of Human Values", Journal of Social Issues, Vol 50, No 4, pp 19-45 Endnote In his latest publication (May 1995), Schwartz explains that values under the heading of Spiritual do not appear to be universally understood (or experienced?) across cultures. The results obtained from some 93 different countries and distinct cultural groupings have obliged him to abandon this heading in favour of distributing the component values with those with which they are more commonly associated. For example placing 'devout' with Tradition, 'meaning in life' with Universalism and 'a spiritual life' with Benevolence. While it is helpful to be aware of Schwartz findings, it is most unlikely that our sample of final year high school students (and their parents and teachers) all from the one metropolitan area of one city in the one country, Australia, would have particularly diverse understandings of what they understand by Spiritual values. For this reason the classification has been retained in this work. The low ranking (though significantly higher rating) of matters Spiritual by the Christians remains puzzling, and indicates a need for further research.