The problem of the single-and-pregnant teacher also has been tackled in a fictional treatment with the 1989 TV movie "Cast the First Stone." The movie's plot thickens the stew when a do-gooder teacher picks up a hitchhiker, who later rapes her at knifepoint and impregnates her. School officials assume "moral turpitude" and fire her.

The teacher, a victim who is also unaccountably stupid (when the hitchhiker fails to get another ride after she lets him out - in the rain just beyond her motel room - she invites him in), fights back and wins. Moral of the story: Judge not lest you be judged. Before I plod on, please forgive this brief interruption for a public service announcement on behalf of all teachers, especially women: Do no pick up hitchhikers. Do not let them in your motel room.

In other observations, we note that if unwed maternity is going to be a criterion for teachers, we're going to have to start hiring more men. At last count, one-third of all children in this country are born to unwed mothers. In the African-American community, the number is almost 70 percent. If we were to discriminate on the basis of unwed pregnancy, we might just have a teacher shortage.

The larger moral issue, meanwhile, isn't that yet another young lady didn't get the marry-first memo, but that the culture-at-large has decided fathers aren't necessary. When we celebrate single motherhood, as we have since Murphy Brown made out-of-wedlock birth a glam option for busy women, we can hardly pucker in disapproval when the next generation doesn't know any better.

Look around at cultural signposts, from television to movies to magazines, and you see a consistent message that men are nonessential to woman's higher reproductive prerogative. I wouldn't worry so much that children might infer a premarital sexual liaison between teacher and boyfriend. Far more offensive and morally dangerous is the cultural patricide taking place in America today. "Killing dad" may not be a crime, but it is surely a sin.