Self-Esteem and Religiosity: Comparison of 13- to 15-Year-Old Students in Catholic and Public Junior High Schools

Abstract

An important goal of schooling is to support students’ personal well-being, including to enhance their self-esteem (Bagley, 1989b; Bagley, Verma, Mallick, & Young, 1979). Self-esteem and self-concept (used as interchangeable con- structs) are linked to scholastic achievement (Byrne, 1990), and, according to Kaplan (1980), inversely to school drop-out, delinquency, premature sexual activity, unwanted pregnancy, and substance abuse. In theory at least, the ethos of Catholic schools (which in many parts of Canada take more than a quarter of all students) should lead to greater integration with supportive social systems (Bryk, Lee, & Holland, 1993; Lesko, 1988). Some North and South American and European studies (Coleman, Hoffer, & Kilgore, 1982; Smith, Weigert, & Thomas, 1979) have shown that students in Catholic schools (or at least those accepting Catholic values, and attending church regularly) have somewhat higher levels of self-esteem than students in public schools; however, factors such as social class, age, and sex have not been entirely controlled for in these studies. In a Belgian study, Brutsaert (1995) points to the interesting finding that girls in Catholic schools, but not boys, have enhanced self-esteem levels. He speculates that the rather structured environment of the Catholic school enhances the self-esteem of girls, but not of boys. Finally, in a national U.S. study of some 30,000 adolescents, Donahue and Benson (1995) found that religiosity had no significant links with self-esteem, despite having significant negative correlations with suicidality, substance abuse, delinquency, and premature sexual involve- ment; thus Kaplan’s earlier finding was not confirmed, although this may be due to the kind of measurements of self-appraisal used.