[ALBSA-Info] College Students Mix Doubt & Belief

[krenar at juno.com]

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College Students Mix Doubt and Belief in Their Spiritual and Religious
Views, Study Finds
By THOMAS BARTLETT

Most college freshmen believe in God, but fewer than half follow
religious teachings in their daily lives. A majority of first-year
students (69 percent) say their beliefs provide guidance, but many (48
percent)
describe themselves as "doubting," "seeking," or "conflicted."

Those are some of the results of a national study, scheduled for release
today, that is believed to be the first broad, in-depth look at the
religious and spiritual views of college students. The study,
"Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Study of College Students'
Search for Meaning and Purpose," was conducted by the Higher Education
Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. Last
fall
112,232 freshmen were asked how often they attended religious services,
whether they prayed, and if their religious beliefs affected their
actions.

Among the findings was a strong correlation between students' religious
beliefs and their views on hot-button political issues. For instance,
students who considered themselves religious were more likely to oppose
same-sex marriage. Religious students were also less likely to believe
that abortion should be legal.

On other questions, however, there was little difference between
religious and nonreligious students. For instance, a majority of both
groups believed that the federal government should do more to control the
sale
of handguns and that colleges should ban racist and sexist speech on
their
campuses.

The survey also found that while first-year students were not always sure
what they believed, most of them were interested in grappling with big
questions like the meaning of life. What that pattern suggests, according
to Alexander W. Astin, director of the UCLA research center, is that
colleges should be seeking ways to incorporate spiritual and religious
questions into the curriculum -- even if doing so makes some professors
uncomfortable.

"There's an unwritten assumption that we just don't talk about these
issues," said Mr. Astin. "I don't think we're taking advantage of the
opportunity to help students explore those questions with each other and
in their course work."

That is because higher education is "a little more repressed" when the
conversation turns to spiritual matters, according to Claire L. Gaudiani,
a former president of Connecticut College who helped oversee the study.
"For a lot of intellectuals, religion and spirituality are seen as a
danger to intellectual inquiry," said Ms. Gaudiani.

She argued, however, that dealing with questions about meaning and
purpose "doesn't have to mean indoctrination." She compared what she
calls "educating the spirit" to teaching good nutrition or physical
fitness.
"Right now students get the sense that we don't do spirituality," she
said.

'Burning Questions'

If most professors do not "do spirituality," then Mark Wallace is an
exception. The associate professor of religion at Swarthmore College
teaches a first-year seminar called "Religion and the Meaning of Life."
In an interview, he agreed that many professors are reluctant to engage
in what
he calls "meaning teaching" -- which is a shame, he said, because meaning
is exactly what students are looking for. "They hunger and crave that
sort
of conversation in a college environment," Mr. Wallace said.

He also agreed with Ms. Gaudiani that it is possible to deal with
religious questions without promoting a particular ideology. What his
students seem to want is an "open, safe place" for the discussion of
universal issues where they will not be "censored or yelled at or
ignored." As proof, he cited strong interest in his course: He usually
has three times as many
students trying to sign up for the seminar as he can accept.

"They have burning questions about life issues," he said. "And they feel
those kinds of issues get ignored in the classroom."

Not in David K. Glidden's classroom. The professor of philosophy at the
University of California at Riverside teaches "The Care of the Soul," a
course that focuses on how to live a purposeful life. While Mr. Glidden
is not sure that students will complete his class knowing how to care for
their souls, he thinks such courses are a good start and should be a part
of a college's curriculum.

"My sense is that the students I've taught are a lot like what T.S. Eliot
called 'hollow men,'" he said. "They are living in a world, and they
don't know what they're here for -- they don't know how to live their
lives."

And they want to know how to live their lives, said Richard F. Galvin, a
professor of philosophy at Texas Christian University. He is part of a
team-taught, freshman-level course called "The Meaning of Life." The
course has two sections of 50 students, and the seats are always filled.

"I can tell by talking to them in office hours, looking at their faces in
class, and in reading their work that it affects them," Mr. Galvin said.
"They want to talk about these issues. What I like to tell them is that
there is plenty of time to be worried about their careers, but this might
be the last time they get to talk about big questions."

Readings for the course include Plato's dialogues and works by Friedrich
Nietzsche and John Stuart Mill.

Jeffrey Sebo took Mr. Galvin's course when he was a freshman. Now a
senior philosophy major, Mr. Sebo was intrigued by its title and became
fascinated by the discussions -- so much so that he has returned to the
class twice as a teaching assistant. "It was the big questions that got
me hooked,"
he said.

The results of the UCLA study were heartening to Carol Geary Schneider,
president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which
has long advocated a more holistic and less career-centered approach to
higher education.

"Students are more idealistic than we thought," she said. "But what this
data shows us is that we have a long way to go. Students have idealism
that can be tapped, but we're not doing all we can to help them connect
that idealism to important challenges in the world around us."

Figuring out how to do that is not simple, but colleges need to start
trying, according to Mr. Astin. "If you want to take seriously the claims
we make about liberal learning, this is what you have to do," he said.
"There are large numbers of students who are involved in spiritual and
religious issues and who are trying to figure out what life is all about
and what
matters to them. We need to be much more creative in finding ways to
encourage that exploration."

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Copyright © 2005 by The Chronicle of Higher Education