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Recreation
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on right thinking, and that physical activity is essential to purity of
thought.
Concern About Athletics
The question of suitable recreation is one that teachers often
find perplexing. Gymnastic exercises fill a useful place in many
schools, but without careful supervision they are often carried to
excess. Many youth, by their attempted feats of strength, have done
themselves lifelong injury.
Exercise in a gymnasium, however well conducted, cannot sup-
ply the place of recreation in the open air, and for this our schools
should afford better opportunity. Vigorous exercise the students
must have, yet teachers are troubled as they consider the influence of
athletic sports both on the students’ progress in school and on their
success in afterlife. The games that occupy so much of their time
are diverting the mind from study. They are not helping to prepare
the young for practical, earnest work in life. Their influence does
not tend toward refinement or generosity.
Some of the most popular amusements, such as football and
boxing, have become schools of brutality. They are developing the
same characteristics as did the games of ancient Rome. The love
of domination, the pride in mere brute force, the reckless disregard
of life, are exerting on young people a power to demoralize that is
appalling.
Other athletic games, though not so brutalizing, are scarcely
less objectionable because of the excess to which they are carried.
They stimulate the love of pleasure and excitement, thus fostering a
distaste for useful labor, a disposition to shun practical duties and
responsibilities.
They tend to destroy a relish for life’s sober realities and tranquil
enjoyments. Thus the door is opened to dissipation and lawlessness,
with terrible results.
As ordinarily conducted, parties of pleasure also are a hindrance
to real growth of mind or character. Frivolous associations, habits
of extravagance, of pleasure seeking, and too often of dissipation,
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are formed that shape the whole life for evil. In place of such