Development of Religious Awareness and Prejudice among Children in India

Abstract

Aboud F.E (1988) stated in her book “Children and Prejudice”, “prejudice develops as awareness of one’s race and ethnicity develops” with this idea, the basic theme of this study was, how do prejudice and religious awareness develop in Indian children and What is the correlation between religious awareness and prejudice? Is it affected by age and schooling? Schooling is likely to affect religious awareness as in mixed school of children, so there is likelihood of more religious awareness and thus less prejudice. On the basis of review of literature researcher assumed that due to religious awareness we perceived similarity and dissimilarity between ingroup and outgroup. Similarity between groups will increase liking for out group so prejudice would be less in when religious awareness is more. Study was done on 4 to 15 years old Hindu and Muslim children who study in mixed and non mixed schools (Religious schools) at Prayagraj. To measure religious awareness (which refers to the knowledge about own group and others group’s religion) pictures were used which were related to religious symbols, religious name, religious dress and religious events of both Hindu and Muslim religions, along with a checklist of positive and negative adjectives as well as semi structured interviews. Data was collected in the form of qualitative data which converted into quantitative data and analyzed by using SPSS, Anova and correlations were computed. Results revealed that Hindu and Muslim children followed the same pattern for religious awareness (correct recognition of pictures) and religious awareness was related to the minority group’s perceptual discriminatory features. Schooling affected the religious awareness such that children from mixed schools were more aware of the out-group’s religion than children from non mixed schools. Prejudice and religious awareness was negatively correlated. The more religious aware children were less prejudiced. And prejudice was found more in 7- 9 yrs group of children in comparison to other age groups and religious awareness increased with age among both group of children.