Religion is one of the most important things to millions of people worldwide, however, at Marco Island Academy students seem to be split around 50-50 on whether religion is important or not. 

According to a poll sent out to all MIA students detailing what and how they practice religion, the average MIA student believes that religion is around a 6, on a scale of importance from 1-10. However, there is some variation between grades when it comes to the importance of religion. The grade that values religion the most by a large margin are freshmen, who value it at 6.5 out of 10. When looking at the reasons many freshmen are religious, the second most popular answer was that they grew up with it. These two statistics tell us that many freshmen may be following the religion they grew up with, and might have a change of heart later in their high school career to bring the number closer to average.

After freshmen there is a steady decline in the importance of religion until we reach the seniors, who value religion at only a 5.2 out of 10. When looking at why seniors practice religion there are two main answers, the first being “I don’t” and the next being “to spread God’s name”. This shows that while less seniors value religion, those that do may be more invested in it by trying to spread the word of God.

Across all four grades, the most practiced religion at MIA is Christianity. This comes as no surprise as most American people practice christianity. However, the interesting thing that can be found from students practicing religions is that the second answer for all four grades is “none/agnostic”. This shows that at MIA, more students are non religious or agnostic than any secondary religion that can be found at the school. After this, there were many answers that only accumulated one response. So while there are other religions practiced, they are all singular people, at least by grade.

When asked if they regularly practice religion, there is a noticeable curve. The vast majority of freshmen stated that they do practice religion actively. This makes sense as freshmen were recorded to be on average more religious than other grades. Next, the sophomores showed that the majority of people still actively practice, however the margin is much smaller. As we get to juniors we see that an equal amount of people practice and do not, and when we look at seniors we see that the majority of people do not actively practice. This once again shows the decreasing number of people who practice religion as their high school lives continue.

Finally, when people were asked about what ways they practice religion the most common answer for three or four grades was ”all of the above”, which includes prayer, weekly practice, group practice, and religious studies. Interestingly, juniors were found to most commonly only practice by praying, and sophomores tied by praying and doing “all of the above”. This still can show us the decreasing amount of religion as time moves on, but it also shows that the senior class, those who do practice, do so fully and in many different ways.

This poll gives us insight into the types of religion that people practice, and also the patterns that arise as people grow older. My biggest takeaway from this was that as students grow, they will find themselves either steering away from religion or becoming more engrossed in it, and the people that get caught in the middle, will usually find themselves not valuing religion as much as they used to.