God is not good - at least not for science and maths education‚ research reveals

24 March 2017 - 18:50 By Bruce Gorton
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Maths and science at school.
Maths and science at school.
Image: Thinkstock

New research has revealed that the less religious a country is‚ the better its children do in to maths and science.

According to the study published in the scientific journal Intelligence‚ countries with higher degrees of religiosity also tend to perform worse when it comes to maths and science.

The researchers compared the relation between educational performance scores in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) to how religious they were according to the World Values Survey and the European Social Survey.

The five most irreligious countries out of the 82 surveyed in the research were the Czech Republic‚ Japan‚ Estonia‚ Sweden and Norway. South Africa was 64th. While women reported higher degrees of religiosity than men‚ this did not seem to be a factor in the research.

“This latter finding constrains conclusions about the possible causal pathways between education‚ religiosity‚ and intelligence‚” the researchers said in their study. It appears that the issue may not be the kids’ religion‚ so much as the impact of having more religion in schools.

The time children spend learning religion‚ according to the study‚ is time they’re not spending learning maths and science.

“Given the strong negative link between religiosity and educational performance‚ governments might be able to raise educational standards - and so standards of living - by keeping religion out of schools and out of educational policy making‚” Dr Gijsbert Stoet‚ co-author of the study‚ told the Daily Mail.

- TMG Digital

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