Author: Cuberis

A Conversation on the 2020 Pew Survey of Jewish Americans

Presented by the Stuart and Suzanne Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience at Tulane University

Dr. Ilana Horwitz, Fields-Rayant Chair in Contemporary Jewish Life at Tulane University, will be joined by sociological and education experts Dr. Ari Y. Kelman of Stanford, Dr. Leonard Saxe of Brandeis, and Dr. Becka A. Alper of the Pew Research Center in a discussion of the results of the 2020 survey of Jewish Americans.

In recent years, colleges and universities have seen a rise of campus orthodoxies, which exclude or stigmatize some questions and ideas in favor of others. Jonathan Haidt has written that the proper telos of the university is truth, and that other commitments must be subordinated to the free pursuit of knowledge and the exposure of falsehoods. However, hundreds of accredited colleges and universities have an explicit religious identity, sometimes including a statement of faith.

An assistant professor at Tulane University, Ilana Horwitz, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Horwitz’s new book, God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion’s Surprising Impact on Academic Success.

In this talk, Dr. Horwitz discusses research from her new book, God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion’s Surprising Impact on Academic Success (Oxford University Press, 2022). She explains why intensely religious students tend to overperform in educational attainment and undermatch in college choice, and how the relationship between religion and academic outcomes varies by socioeconomic status.

Our Founding Fathers knew well the importance of religion to education. And, yet today, many have dismissed the utility of faith in the development of character. Here to discuss religion’s surprising impact on academic success is author of “God, Grades, and Graduation” — Ilana Horwitz. For more on Dr. Horwitz, check out her website and her recent op-ed in the New York Times. More importantly, buy her book here.

Why do some American children do better in school than others? Social scientists tend to look to family structure, race, class, and gender in an effort to find factors that correlate to better or worse performance at school. But there are other significant variables that affect the education of America’s children too.

At the BRITE ’22 conference this interdisciplinary Longevity Project panel brought together leaders and innovators from the health care, educational, and financial services sectors to discuss the innovative ideas that will make longer life healthier, more productive, and more financially stable.

On the latest episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Ilana Horwitz, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane, about her new book, God, Grades, and Graduation. Nat and Ilana discuss the impact of religion on student outcomes, why religion helps working class kids get better grades and graduate from college at higher rates, the educational benefits of summer camp, Palo Alto, whether the boys are alright, the academy’s understanding of American religious life, why religion helps boys academically more than it helps girls, education in the Soviet Union, why atheists also do better in school, how religion combats despair in working class America, why religious kids might not learn more even though they get better grades, religious girls and undermatching, the trajectory of evangelical Christianity in America, the importance of social capital, the logic of religious restraint, and why Jewish girls do well academically.

In God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion’s Surprising Impact on Academic Success (Oxford University Press, 2022), Ilana M. Horwitz offers a revealing and at times surprising account of how teenagers’ religious upbringing influences their educational pathways from high school to college. Religious students orient their life around God so deeply that it alters how they see themselves and how they behave, inside and outside of church.

We begin by distinguishing Americans who are simply religious from those who “have an active and reciprocal relationship with God in which they talk to God and God talks back” – a group that Ilana calls ‘abiders’. This group by virtue of wishing to please God and increase their chances of getting to Heaven develop a conscientiousness that improves their academic performance. By both ‘believing and belonging’ they remain closer to their families and church networks which provides them ‘social capital’ that contributes to their sense of well-being. These abider advantages do not apply to those born into professional families as they gain these advantages through other means. It also does not provide an advantage to those born into poor families. We further discuss the phenomena of ‘undermatching’ which is when adolescents choose less selective colleges in service of privileging family over career advancement.