The Results of Physical Inaction
[
Testimonies for the Church 3:148-152
(1872).]
With the present plan of education, a door of temptation is opened
to the youth. Although they generally have too many hours of study,
they have many hours without anything to do. These leisure hours are
frequently spent in a reckless manner. The knowledge of bad habits
is communicated from one to another, and vice is greatly increased.
Very many young men who have been religiously instructed at home,
and who go out to the schools comparatively innocent and virtuous,
become corrupt by associating with vicious companions. They lose
self-respect and sacrifice noble principles. Then they are prepared to
pursue the downward path; for they have so abused their consciences
that sin does not appear so exceeding sinful. These evils, which exist
in the schools that are conducted according to the present plan, might
be remedied in a great degree if study and labor could be combined.
The same evils exist in the higher schools, only in a greater degree
for many of the youth have educated themselves in vice, and their
consciences are seared.
Many parents overrate the stability and good qualities of their
children. They do not seem to consider that they will be exposed to
the deceptive influences of vicious youth. Parents have their fears as
they send them some distance away to school, but flatter themselves
that as they have had good examples and religious instruction, they
will be true to principle in their high-school life. Many parents have
but a faint idea to what extent licentiousness exists in these institutions
of learning. In many cases the parents have labored hard and suffered
many privations for the cherished object of having their children obtain
[185]
a finished education. And after all their efforts, many have the bitter
experience of receiving their children from their course of studies with
dissolute habits and ruined constitutions. And frequently they are
disrespectful to their parents, unthankful, and unholy. These abused
parents, who are thus rewarded by ungrateful children, lament that they
197