Moral Values, Religious Convictions and General Tendencies. A Study of the Attitudes of University Students in Poland, Australia and the Philippines

Abstract

The paper presents conclusions from a comparative study of moral values and religious convictions conducted among students of five universities in the Philippines, Poland and Australia. Different cultural, religious and moral values, to which students in each of these academic communities were subjected, were recognized and confirmed. The aim of the paper is to compare the differences in education in students brought up in differently formed cultural traditions, subjected to the trends of universal globalization. The subject of the investigation is mainly the correlation between the response to moral questions and the respondents' religious affiliation.

Data from studies conducted in particular countries showed clearly that the universal secularization tendency penetrate into the life of particular universities in as much as the cultural ethos of the given country allows to. In the case of three questions: `pre-marital sex', `divorce' and `euthanasia' the correlation between the attitudes `believer' of `strong believer' and observing the moral values corresponded to the reverse correlation between defining oneself as `indifferent/non-believer' and not observing traditional values. The effect of the bi-lateral relation in all the universities may be presented on the example of `divorce'. Although `divorce' had the least support for the traditional values of `sex and marriage' among the students of Catholic-orientated universities, there is a striking difference between acceptance of traditional values – amounting to from 42% at CUL to 60% at UA&P – and data on this subject from universities that are under a greater secular influence that amount to 24% for UW and 6% for Adelaide University. Ultimately it was shown that the significance of moral values was the highest for students from the universities in which teaching the Christian religion was perceived as a distinct part of the university's mission. On the other hand rejecting moral values was most distinct in those institutions for which it was profitable not to transmit religious and moral values, but to support the ethos of global secularization and alternative religious systems. The conducted studies did not reveal a collapse of the traditional system of moral values in those institutions that clearly supported and maintained them.