June 9, 2001

Somewhere I read the African proverb: IT TAKES A WHOLE VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD. The title of Senator Hillary Clinton’s book, "It Takes a Whole Village," comes from this proverb.

Is this proverb true? If it is, what does it mean? I have tried, unsuccessfully, to get in touch with my friend, Dr. Rene Bokembia from the Congo to talk with him about the meaning of the proverb. I don't think the proverb is intending to absolve parents from all responsibility of child rearing. "Whole village" includes the family of the child also. The proverb does, however, intend to place a spotlight on community involvement in bringing children through adolescence and into adulthood.

There is evidence that parents of today have turned their child raising responsibility over to others in the community - school teachers, law enforcement personnel, child care institutions, etc. The evidence of which I speak is the lack of parental involvement in the education of their children. It is almost impossible to get the majority of our parents to come to parent conferences with their child's teacher and our District Attorney told me that when adolescents are sentenced to a term in jail, they are usually not accompanied by either parent or family member. No village is going to be successful in "raising its children" when there is no involvement by the homes from which the children come.

Adult people of good will must band together in the village. A trust level must be achieved. Parents, teachers, and law enforcement personnel must work together - they must trust each other. Tribal authorities must be trustworthy and they must be trusted in "raising our children." Suspicion and distrust are killing us in our village today.

In the award-winning documentary Marshall Texas, Marshall Texas, Bill Moyers tells what it was like growing up in Marshall back in the late forties. On one occasion, he was on his way home from school and a basketball he was bouncing got away from him and broke a light in front of a store. The merchant came out and called him by name: "Billy Don, your daddy is going to have to make that good. You go home and tell him to come to see me." He and his father made good the breakage. Bill Moyers knew that he had to tell the truth because his father would have believed the merchant if Bill had told something other than the truth.

That is the way our villages raised their kids in another day. We best be getting back to the old ways - working together and trusting each other.

In our villages of today we are doing a good job of finger pointing and blaming, but evidence continues to come in that we are not doing a good job of "raising our children." Maybe we need to spread the blame around and focus on our collective job of raising our children.