Published by: Omar Samak (05/2018)

Abdullah Gul University

Religion, Culture and Education

Research Question: How do cross-cultural issues

influence religious belief and education attainment
at universities in term of affecting the critical
thinking?

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Abstract
Dissimilar cross-cultural dimensions between China and the USA reflect differently on each religion in

both countries. These differences reveal the religions effect on critical thinking which indicates the

relation between religion and educational attainment. However, former researches never conclude a

reason for the negative results they found; as they never link cultural dimensions as an effective aspect of

the research; omitting its importance. In this paper, previously collected results of the relationship

between religion, educational attainment, and critical thinking will be stated and the derived reasons will

be discussed as well. This research paper will explore the ways in which the contrasting cultural

dimensions of high power distance, collectivism, indulgence and high hierarchy, influence religious belief

at universities in the USA and China that has a significant effect on educational attainment in terms of

limiting the student’s critical thinking.

Introduction
Religion affects people’s life when accounted as a factor in most aspects. Religion as a topic was

discussed in numerous researches linking it with cultural dimension, educational attainment and critical

thinking each topic individually. The results of both educational attainment and critical thinking are

almost negative in all researches. However, the reason behind these negative relations are never discussed

deeply even while combing all the relative articles.

Alternatively, understanding cultural dimensions effect on religion with some critical thinking leads to the

reason for this relation. This research paper will analyze the contrasting approach of cultural dimensions

of high power distance, collectivism, indulgence and high hierarchy, in influencing the religious belief, at

universities in the USA and China, that has a significant effect on educational attainment in terms of

limiting the student’s critical thinking ability.

In order to argue the thesis of the article, first, the research paper will be discussing and illustrating the

effect of the previously stated cultural dimensions of religion. Secondly, some results and statistics of the

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relationship between religions, educational attainment, and critical thinking ability. Finally, the reason

behind these results will be discussed and analyzed by linking each result to the topics illustrated in the

article; the cross-cultural influences that disadvantage critical thinking. Consequently, the lack of critical

thinking ability negative effect on educational attainment.

Literature Review
The definition of religion leads to other numerous researches figuring out the effect of religion on many

aspects of a person’s life. This review will be focusing on an aspect that was found to have a two-way

effect, from religion and on religion, cultural dimensions. As well as another aspect related to the

previous theme and religion together, which is educational attainment. These two aspects are significantly

affected by religion negatively, especially while discussing education. This negative relation is caused

due to the effect of religion on critical thinking and due to this effect the education. However, these

themes are uncounted into consideration as factors related to each other when researches are conducted.

This literature will be arguing the effect on religion on critical thinking after illustrating the relation of

religions on cultures, as for instance, Tarakeshwar, Stanton and Pargament (2003) consider religion as a

dimension in cultures. Furthermore, the relationship between cultural dimensions and religiosity will be

covered as well. Additionally, the scope will be focusing on the USA as an example of Anglo-Saxon

cluster West, and China as an Eastern example. First, in order to understand the religions effect culturally,

a brief explanation of Hofstede’s and Schwartz’s extended cultural dimensions and its relation to culture

will be analyzed. Secondly, each religion’s effect on culture will be stated separately and how education

is affected by this religion; Catholics and Protestants Christianity in the USA and Taoism and Buddhism

in China, in addition to, Islam and Judaism as secondary religions in both countries.

Although previously, various articles analyzed the same topics of religions and cultural dimensions, these

articles never related culturally affected religions to education. Mukhopadhyay (2009) states that

educational attainment is highly influenced by religions differently. However, this influence affects all

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age categories, at certain ages the effect is accounted to be more considerable, such as university students.

Cooperman, Smith, Pond and Clement (2010) state that university students are the least religious age

category and, as well as, being the critical age for being unaffiliated with religions. According to Lether,

as cited in Mukhopadhyay (2009), the general relation between religiosity and educational attainment is

positive, where religiosity promotes education. However, this hypothesis was illustrated once again but

with a deep research of each religion, the results were contradicting and different from what Lether found

out.

The main aspect is the cultural link to religion. Cultures differ completely from a country to the other. In

this research case, the focus will be on the contrast between the USA and China. Hofstede’s cultural

dimensions are widely discussed after researches are completed on them. Hofstede (2011) states 5 cultural

dimensions: power distance, masculinity versus femininity, individualism versus collectivism, long term

versus short-term orientation and uncertainty avoidance. Later, another dimension was added which is

indulgence versus restraint. Additionally, the extension supported by Schwartz (2004), embeddedness

versus autonomy, hierarchy versus egalitarianism and mastery versus harmony, is also included. In

addition to this, the research accomplished showed that China has an inter-cultural variation between east

coastal cities and other cities.

Critical thinking is the process of analyzing and evaluating an issue. Hergovich and Arendasy (2005)

claim that thinking according to rules of logic and probability, then applying them to real-life situations is

the precise meaning of critical thinking. They add that religions have a negative effect on critical thinking

as well, which indicates the negative relationship between religion and education.

Collectivism, indulgence, power distance and hierarchy scales vary in China and the USA. Enkh-

Amgalan (2016) claims that due to the difference in the religions, Christianity and Buddhism, the two

countries differ in the indulgence dimension. There are articles that relate each religion to cultural

dimensions and other articles linking religion to education but never both relations together in a single

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article. Alternatively, in this report, after reading relative reports, educational attainment, religions in

China and the USA, cultural dimensions, inter-cultural variation in China, Chinese view of learning and

education culturally and critical thinking ability, are all researched and linked together. After this research

stage, after combining all these previous separate aspects, an outline was written to conduct this current

report.

Cohen, Wu and Miller (2016) outline that Protestant Christians are more individualists than those who

practice other religions (Catholic Christians and Jews) in the USA. They add that in China religions tend

to align with collectivism as the general cultural dimensions in China as a collectivist and hierarchal

culture. According to Yang, Zheng and Li (2006), in Chinese collectivist religions, education and learning

are a holistic practice and believed to be one of the construction subjects of the society. Unlike the Anglo-

Saxon individualist cluster which considers education as personal knowledge and personal enhancement.

According to Mukhopadhyay (2009) research, in comparison between religions with the number of years

individuals attend in education, the general trend shows that less religious people have more education

that religious members, except Judaism as an exception in the results. Also, Jews and Hindus score the

highest in the results with 16.1 years of education then no religion continues the list along with Orthodox

Christians with 14.1- 14.2 years. Furthermore, the results continue with Protestants, Muslims and

Buddhists with years varying between 14 and 13, respectively, and lastly with 11.7 for Catholics.

Eriksson and Jahan (2011) argue that in major countries there is an intercultural difference. Specifically,

they claim that in the east coast cities in China the original collectivist culture is turning to be

individualistic. However, contradictory, inland China the traditional Chinese culture is still kept as it is

collectivistic. Furthermore, there are some reasons that led to these intercultural differences, as a complete

section in their report religion and religiosity is illustrated as one the main reasons that introduced these

differences.

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Cohen and Varnum (2016) illustrate that people do not generally care about their belief as much as they

concentrate on one of their religion targets, such as two collectivist religions Catholic Christians and

Muslims. The results showed that in both religions people care about other people more than they do

concentrate on themselves. In addition, they added that depending on how religious is the culture, the

more people care about moral judgment and ethics.

Wursten and Jacobs (2013) discuss Hofstede’s power distance dimension and the effect power distance

causes on education. Moreover, they explain power distance as “is the extent to which less powerful

members of a society accept that power is distributed unequally. In high power-distance cultures,

everybody has his/her rightful place in society.” Furthermore, they claim that in high power distance

cultures education depends on the teacher as it is being teacher-centered education. Students follow the

guidelines given by their teachers and they never initiate any work individually.

Tarakeshwar, Stanton and Pargament (2003) conduct a test to examine high hierarchy effect on religion.

Additionally, they claim that religion is an active factor for the person’s physical and mental health,

which, consequently, indicates the major effect of religion on education. Furthermore, they encounter

some examples that prove that cultures affect religion; as countries of the same religion act differently to

the same incident or event.

Croucher, Zeng, Rahmani, and Sommier (2017) illustrate the transformation of religious beliefs by time

as some cultural dimensions began to grow, for instance, individualism, which led to a decline in the way

people practice religions. Goossaert (2006) analyzes the development of religion in modern China and

how the Chinese culture played a role in this change. Moreover, he states the current recognized system

that China follows concerning religion.

According to the various topics read in articles, the link between religion and cultural dimensions has

been clarified. The main findings found support that depending on the individualism or collectivism of a

religion, the cultural dimensions of the country are following the dominating dimension. Moreover, the

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Protestant Christianity is the individualist main religion in the USA which correctly indicates that the

USA is an individualist country. Similarly, in China, Buddhism is a collectivist religion.

In addition, all religions generally promote physical and mental health. Additionally, low indulgence

cultures are affected by how strict is the religion in rules, which mean that the general trend between

education and religion is positive. However, the results show that religiosity affects educational

attainment negatively within groups but positively within individuals. Except for Judaism, the results

illustrate that religiosity in Judaism positively links with educational attainment for both groups and

individuals. In addition, 5 different tests are examined to find the religion relation with critical thinking,

the results show that religious people have lower critical thinking abilities than unreligious people.

Furthermore, especially traditionally religious people score even lower in the results, proving the direct

relation with cultures.

Findings
After completing the research on each topic, the results were collected and combined with the other

results to form the relation planned to be done. First, Mukhopadhyay (2009) illustrates that religionists of

Catholic Christianity, are accounted to care more about traditions and practices known in the community.

Moreover, as collectivists, they aim group targets and they care more about people rather than focusing

on themselves. However, contradicting to the Lether’s hypothesis of the positive relation, the results of

educational attainment for religious Catholics is negative while comparing it to people with no religion.

Similarly, Islam had related results to Catholic Christianity but with even more negative outcome for

Muslim women.

Secondly, According to Cohen and Varnum (2016), Protestant Christianity, as a religion that follows

individualism, the Protestants are not associated with groups unlike Catholics, they are more concerned

by themselves and success, due to the mastery dimension in their culture. They consider education to be a

personal aspect. Consequently, the results show that individualist cultures overall have a better effect on

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educational attainment. However, when researching the religiousness, people with lower religiosity have

better educational attainment; validating the effect of critical thinking ability.

In addition, Mukhopadhyay (2009) continues that Jewish and Buddhist religionists had a contradicting

gradient than other religions, supporting the results expected, showing a higher educational attainment

with religiosity. Especially, Jews had even a better profile of education than other religions without

counting religiosity of Jews. Unlike, Buddhists that had a similar general number as other religions but

just a positive relation with religiosity. The following table represents the results of Mukhopadhyay

(2009):

In these previous paragraphs, the educational attainment results with different religions were stated,

however, in order to understand these results, another finding of the effect of religions on cultures has to

be illustrated as well. First, Eriksson and Jahan (2011) present that religions in East-Asian countries

adopted the Confucianism philosophy of living which emphasizes the harmony cultural dimension and

the family importance.

First, Wursten and Jacobs (2013) state that China represents a culture of high power distance while the

USA as most Anglo-Saxon countries is low power distance culture. In addition, the effect caused by high

power distance limits the student independence, teachers in these cultures gives complete guidelines for

students without thinking. Additionally, these cultures describe teachers as they are always correct and

students cannot contradict them. Moreover, collectivist cultures also complete the teaching style that high

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power distance cultures follow. Education in collectivist cultures is similarly controlled and managed by

teachers with students reflect the teachers’ command.

Secondly, Enkh-Amgalan (2016) claims that Buddhism is a religion that directly affects cultures to be

less indulgent. The whole East Asian countries that have Buddhism as a religion score low on the

indulgence scale, one of these countries is our case study China. Alternatively, although the indulgence

scale in the USA scores higher than China, the score raises even more inside the USA for Protestants

more than Catholics which also relate to the individualism and collectivism of the religion.

In addition to this, Eriksson and Jahan (2011) add that another issue related to China affecting education

inside the country is that there is an inter-cultural difference between east-coastal cities and other cities. In

these developed eastern cities, they are argued that they became international cities that do not hold the

traditional Chinese culture anymore. Unlike other Chinese cities which still sticks to the original Chinese

culture. These international cities are claimed to be turning individualistic and less hierarchical. This

change supports the previous education attainment claims, as the results show that in these cities

education is more developed and their citizens are more educated.

Furthermore, Yang, Zheng and Li (2006) state that, in Chinese traditional culture, education and learning

are included as a religious act. Some traditions eliminate being uneducated, basically, they refer to

education as a necessity. China has transformed the general traditional definition of religion, which was

Confucianism, to a new religiously freedom belief that accepts all religions, including the traditional

religions as well. This update in the religion status in China, allowed the Chinese people to practice their

belief more freely. Subsequently, the religiosity of people that have certain beliefs increased.

Consequently, the educational attainment also witnessed a development as for individuals due to correctly

practicing what they believe. An additional point of research might be very useful if conducted is about

the religions’ perspective of education in their holy books and furtherly to which extent do people

practice their religions correctly.

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Critical thinking is a factor that directly affects the student’s educational attainment. Students those have

a high critical thinking ability manage to score higher in educational attainment scales. Correspondingly,

religions affect critical thinking negatively according to the tests held by Hergovich and Arendasy

(2005). The results show that people who build their religion from traditional belief even score lower

scores when critical thinking is tested. The following table emphasizes the results of several tests

showing approximately similar results, (Hergovich and Arendasy (2005)):

These results indicate that the relation between critical thinking and religion is not affected by some

factors such as age and gender. Additionally, this supports further evidence that the relationship

between cultures and religions affect the critical thinking as the following section will be discussing.

Discussion
Another secondary aim ofs this study was to concentrate on the university students and they are meant to

be the main audience. As mentioned before, the critical age category of university students tends to be the

most age that encounters being religious unaffiliated, being less religious and required to think critically.

However, after discussing similar topics awareness is raised about the meaning of religions and its

effectiveness in the human’s life; offering a helpful research for this age to make decisions according to

further understanding.

The findings of the research presented in the section above seem to be contradicting and unclear results,

especially those concern the educational attainment. However, the differences in religions and the way

people practice their religions clarifies that these varying results verify reliability. Although Lehrer, as

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cited in Mukhopadhyay (2009), hypothesis favors that religions certainly encourage people to educate, the

results contradict by stating that religiosity leads to a decline in educational attainment.

Unexpectedly, the USA mastery and individualistic culture supported by the Protestant Christianity had a

negative relation with education. Despite the fact that mastery cultures encourage competence and

success values, and the achieve personal and group goal, which means in other words encourages

education, there is a decline of educational attainment for religious Protestants. Furthermore, a current

example of religionists that uniquely contradict the results are Jews. The results might still validate the

finding as the education rate for Jews are the highest among other religions, even people that follow no

religious beliefs, but alone with no other religions supporting it in the list.

Further evidence is shown by Buddhists, Buddhism considers education as a holistic act. However,

religious Buddhist showed a low educational attainment and the rate of education among all Buddhists

was not greater than other religions. In addition, another related event that happened in China was

removing any religious restriction and making a religious freedom belief. The main religion previously

before this action was Buddhism, relatively to the low education level, the new system encourages people

to follow what they believe, which will probably raise the educational status. Furtherly, the inter-cultural

difference in major cities and rest of China shows that citizens adapted to the new system and initially

there is a growth in the education rate currently, with less collectivism and hierarchy dimensions.

The research is not being biased to any religion on other religions. One of the claims as stated previously

is that all religions promote education; as a sort of evidence, Judaism and Buddhism are used to validate

the claim of their positive results on education.

Hofstede, as cited in Enkh-Amgalan (2016), demonstrates that “people with low indulgent scores have the

perception that their actions are restrained by social norms and feel that indulging themselves is

somewhat wrong.” According to this quotation, Hofstede refers to a relation between religion and

indulgence.

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Generally, the results show that the relation between religion and educational attainment is negative. The

reason for such a relation is due to the previous negative relation between religion and critical thinking.

Deeply discussing critical thinking, religions in cultures and cultural dimensions affect the ability to think

critically. Students having lack of independence due to the educational systems of specifically collectivist

and high power distance cultures. These systems result to make the students stop thinking as they tend to

wait for guideline and procedures to follow offered by teachers. Consequently, the ability of critical

thinking demolishes by time. Unlike, the USA as an example, of a country with supports the student

independent thinking, allowing him to make discussions and debates with teachers promoting his ability

to think critically.

In order to furtherly understand the topic issue, after finishing the research, a future research is suggested

about the position of religions from education and how religions encourage education. Additionally,

another research concerning the religion practices followed by each religion has to be conducted to

understand the results of the relation between religion and education.

Conclusion
Religion is related to many cultural dimensions, as a result of this relation, religion affects educational

attainment as most results show negatively. These results are obtained due to the lack of critical thinking

ability caused by religion as the cultural dimensions of religions limits the student’s thinking and make

him dependent on teachers. Consequently, educational attainment reduces with religiosity. Collectivist

religions and high power distance cultures affect the education by making it teacher centered education

with no personal encouragement for students to search and learn individually.

In addition, the most affected category by these relations is university students. During this age, students

are required to think critically and the teaching approach differs from high school. Simply, studying this

age illustrates the effect as some students face real problems to acclimate to his new life. Critical thinking

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ability is already significantly low in high school due to the religions cultural dimensions. However, the

importance of critical thinking is never felt until joining university when the student considerably needs

it.

Previously, I thought that religions will encourage students for succeeding in their education, however,

while studying the link between religion and cultural dimensions and their effect on critical thinking, the

thoughts have changed as the educational attainment decreases due to the logical relation aspects.

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