Effect of Amusements on Education.
A NEW YORK writer, one of the most reliable of correspondents, states the following facts: "A very choice suburban community within my special observation, is noted for high provisions for public education; for churches strong in pulpit talent, numbers, intelligence, wealth, and liberality; and for many sanitary and material advantages. Yet here, as everywhere, begins to prevail that pet delusion of the age, that gay and spectacular amusements have been too long under the ban of solemn prejudice, and should now be received into full church fellowship. Its sober, Christian parents encourage their children at an early age to join the church—and to attend theaters and dancing parties. I could name gay girls and youths in these churches, whose parents highly congratulate themselves on the success of the combination; so readily do the young people go into the church, when it does not make the slightest difference in their indulgences. "But if church life does not interfere with world life, how is it about the converse? Does the gay life interfere any with the religious life? A letter is not expected to be argumentative, therefore I have not sat down to argue the question, but report facts, as becometh a newsmonger. The principal of the public high school, where the young people of the church, and that age are supposed to be completing their education, or preparing to carry it still higher, has come to the conclusion that, however religion may do, there is no chance for intellect, under the 'liberal' regime. In a cumulative discouragement and desperation, he has issued a circular to parents and local friends of education, warning them, in effect, that they must soon take their final choice between plays and parties on the one hand, and the education of their children, and a proud standard for their high school, on the other. Distinctly he asserts that unless these gayeties can be suppressed in term time at least, their school must rapidly complete the descent it has already commenced from a once honorable position. He finds it impossible to combat the distraction and levity which the daughters of some of the church pillars of the village, some of them church members themselves, are suffered to spread throughout the school. He says that he is notified of every party or theatrical expedition to the city, a week before hand, by the special demoralization of the pupils who are looking forward to it, and that he is kept in mind of it for weeks afterwards by the mental languor and flightiness that follow it. "All this is nothing more than every earnest educator can testify to, who has to struggle with the disadvantages of a great center of civilization."