Hillary Clinton's book of a few years ago, "It Takes a Village," and some recent events prompt me to suggest that Senator Clinton is at least right about what is happening to our society.

While I have not read the book, I have come to believe that the title's premise is becoming more true everyday.

Daniel Moynihan's "War on Poverty" 1965 report suggested that families, in this case minorities, were becoming more fragmented, and the results of this were a major factor in the increase in poverty in America.

Much of what he predicted in the early 60's has come to pass. It is no longer just a single minority problem.

In the late 1970's I worked in a prestigious boarding school on the West Coast.

I had presumed, prior to going there, that this would be an assembly of faculty and students who were highly focused on attaining academic achievement.

I was in for a very serious letdown!

Most of these kids were there because the parents didn't have the time to care for them, and had the financial means to "hire out" child upbringing.

Unfortunately the dorm masters didn't have an inclination to take on this responsibility, so there were some pretty atrocious situations in the school during the time I was there. After "lights out" things really got going as the kids no longer had any supervision.

In the last 40 years we have seen on the front pages of our newspapers and the TV news a myriad of examples of teenagers making inappropriate decisions that one would have thought parents would have vetoed without a second thought.

If only parents were even aware of the actions of their children.

This past month Gloucester, MA's high school made headlines with the unusual incidence of pregnancies among its freshmen and sophomore girls.

For those of you who may not know much about Gloucester, there is an important detail. The school is approximately 95 percent white.

If, unfortunately, this had been a school of high minority population this wouldn't have been a newsworthy issue.

In this case there were approximately 20 minority girls in the freshman and sophomore classes.

There were 18 pregnancies in this age group!

Clearly this wasn't a "minority problem."

These girls decided that an early pregnancy was their best option for a future! Where were the parents and educators?

What could be the problem? If you couple Mark Bauerlein's book, "The Dumbest Generation's" contentions with Senator Clinton's title I think we can see a major factor.

Kids today have two basic sources of information for making decisions:

1. What they learn from each other through conversations by text messaging, e-mails, MySpace, instant messaging, and other forms of electronic communication.

This is pretty much a closed cycle of "personal relationship" conversations which doesn't include any significant amount of what is usually considered "traditional knowledge."

2. Their other major source of information is the prime time media that they watch.

Most of this portrays something less than the reality of adult life, and usually ends up with a survivable situation in spite of some very dubious choices and behaviors. New frontiers of behavior are explored here frequently, and the consequences portrayed are often not very significant.

What's missing here? Adults!

Many parents have abandoned what used to be considered their responsibilities to set the limits on behavior, as they have tried to be "friends" to their children.

Some parents have even gone further and simply "dropped out" of any efforts to regulate their children.

Examples of this abound. Drinking parties in homes is a clear example.

Where might be the last bastion of bringing up the next generation?

One might think that it would be schools, wouldn't you?

This is the one "community" that most, if not all, of these children have in common. It may be the only community left that some of our most at risk kids know.

Sadly this community. schools, has all too often adopted the "mores" of the larger community, and then becomes a seed bed for events such as we have seen in Gloucester.

What if schools were to enforce the laws of the State and Nation?

What if they adopted the Guiliani approach which says that you enforce the "small stuff" in the hopes that this will avoid the need to even see the more major crimes?

What if school were just plain "unpleasant" for those who choose to make bad decisions? There could be before school detention, Saturday detention, and any other measures that seriously intrude into the habits of those who make poor decisions and could introduce the term "consequence" in to a live that seems to have been "consequence free."

What if some of these situations would interfere with the lifestyles of their parents?

Would this bring on some complaints from some who "aren't part of the village," but are sending children to school? You bet it would!

Would this bring some pressure upon those who were making choices that were not in the best interest of the community or themselves? I think so.

Would our community, and our children profit from this? I believe it would.

What would it take? It would take a school board that could stand the heat, and employees that were employed to carry out the directives of a determined school board. This may be a very tall order but it may be the last opportunity we have to bring more children up to be responsible adults.

It's only our tax dollars and perhaps our destiny!

Charlie Hoff is a former member of the Boarwd of Education for Federal Way Public Schools. His weekly column will appear in upcoming issues of the Federal Way News and online at www.federalwaynews.net.