In 1699, John Locke, whose ideas about civil government influenced generations of thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson, departed from his usual province to proffer some advice about raising children. The book was called Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and in it he said, essentially, that children were miscreants looking for an opening. Locke held that the young should "go without their longings, even from their very cradles." Imagine what he would say about MTV. From John Locke to Benjamin Spock, "experts" on child rearing have dispensed their wisdom for hundreds of years, and yet most parents are still trying to get it right. There have been schools of thought on virtually every aspect of parenting: discipline, moral development, socialization, Little League. What to do, what not to do and why. And still parents wonder: How am I doing? Being a parent today has moved way beyond the simple decisions about what little Johnny gets and what he doesn't. Today it means deciding whether to move or stay put, remarry or stay single, take a new job or turn it down. The stakes have never been higher. We went looking for a few Colby people to find out how their children are doing and why they have made the decisions they've made. What we learned was that their families are a diverse lot, dealing with everyday dilemmas that Ozzie and Harriett never dreamed of. But despite the differences in composition, in circumstances or in parental philosophies, every family we talked to had this in common: the kids come first.