We are living amidst the perils of the last days. Something decisive must be said to warn our people against the danger of permitting children who need parental care and instruction, to leave their homes to go to places where they will be brought into contact with pleasure-loving, irreligious worldlings. (8T 224.1) MC VC

In many homes the father and mother have allowed the children to rule. Such children are in far greater danger, when brought into contact with influences opposed to godliness, than are those who have learned to obey. Not having received the necessary disciplinary training, they think that they can do as they please. A knowledge of how to obey would have strengthened them to resist temptation, but this knowledge their parents have not given them. When these undisciplined youth enter an immense institution, where there are many influences opposed to spirituality, they are in grave peril, and often their stay in the institution is an injury to themselves and to the institution. (8T 224.2) MC VC

I am instructed to warn parents whose children have not firmness of principle or a clear Christian experience not to send them away from home to distant places, to be absent for many months and perhaps for years, and, it may be, to have sown in their minds the seeds of unbelief and infidelity. It is safer, and far better, to send such youth to the schools and sanitariums nearest their homes. Let the youth who are forming character be kept away from places where they would have to mingle with a great company of unbelievers, and where the forces of the enemy are strongly entrenched. (8T 224.3) MC VC