Effects of Religious Intervention on the Attitude and Behavior toward Love and Forgiveness ─ a Sample of Elementary Students in Northern Taiwan

[[abstract]]Moral Education and Humanism Quality are generally neglected in schooling education in Taiwan; this makes social values distorted and life depreciated. The mission for educators to evoke children’s love instinct and to cultivate their ability of forgiveness cannot be detained. Effective learning is through operation or experience. This study is based on life education curriculum regarding Love and Forgiveness, with the intervention of religion based on Ya-wen Huang’s " SLIM: “The Shared-experience Life education and life skills Instructional Model.”. The effects on students’ affections and performance were studied after their participation in the experiment. The experimental subjects in the study were 244 students of fourth to sixth-grade elementary school in northern Taiwan. A quasi-experimental design was adopted. These 244 students were assigned to experimental group to receive the curriculum of Sharing Experience Life Education hosted by the Museum of World Religions. Besides, other 256 students were in the control group with normal curriculum. Before the experimental curriculum, all students tool a pre-test with the self-assessment questionnaires of Love and Forgiveness. After the experimental curriculum, a post-test was taken. Data collected were analyzed with t-test. The results of inductive analysis of the Qualitative Data were used to exam the effects of their learning. The results were as following. First, before the intervention of the curriculum of Sharing Experience Life Education, there were no significant differences between the experimental group and the control group in the aspects of attitude and behavior toward Love. Second, there were no significant differences in the average score between these two groups in the aspects of attitude and performance toward Forgiveness before the intervention. The curriculum with religion intervention, based on a sample of elementary students in northern Taiwan, improves the attitude and performance toward Love and Forgiveness. The visit of the Museum of World Religious is suggested to teach students love and forgiveness, and to make possible a society with peace and prosperity