A recent study suggests that there is one more thing that parents can do to help boost students’ school performance: Go to church.
A student who attends religious services regularly is expected to have a grade point average .144 higher than a student who never does, according to an article published by three professors from the University of Iowa and Notre Dame in the most recent edition of the Sociological Quarterly.
That boost surpasses the advantages found by students whose parents attained high levels of education, the authors said.
“Church attendance in particular lends itself to fostering certain kinds of skill patterns of stick-to-it-iveness and persistence,” said Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers.”
“Kids can say religion is important, but they may not actually go to a service,” Regnerus said. “But when you go twice a week, that costs something — the same sort of costs that build the same sorts of skill sets to do well in school.”
In the Washington area, however, religious leaders worry youth attendance has fallen prey to the myriad activities also associated with well-rounded young people.
“The tough question parents face is do you want to fuss with your child about going to church and Sunday school on Sunday morning, and deal with the reality that if she doesn’t show up for practice Sunday morning she’ll be cut from the team?” said the Rev. Wollom Jensen, pastor at Alexandria’s Messiah Lutheran Church.
Jensen worries there’s an inherent selfishness, however, even in team sports, that make a Sunday morning service more beneficial to students’ ultimate fulfillment.
“Only in the church does one get consistently that it’s better to serve than be served — that it’s not about me, it’s about us,” Jensen said.
Researchers stress the importance of not oversimplifying the findings to conclude that kids dragged to services will automatically excel, said Lisa Pearce, a researcher with the National Study of Youth and Religion.
“But there’s a certain amount of realizing the same families who get themselves together and out the door on Sunday morning are also the ones who get themselves together to do well in school,” Pearce said.
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