The plight of Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old boy rescued in the Florida Straits after his mother drowned while trying to escape Castro's Cuba, presents a moral dilemma. Will Elian be returned to his father in Cuba as Fidel Castro demands, or is it in the boy's best interest that he remain with relatives in Miami?

At the end of the 20th Century children no longer are considered property. An American court will decide where Elian is to live after a full hearing. It would seem essential that the father and other relatives with whom the boy would live in Cuba and the boy's U.S. relatives attend the proceedings.

The facts must be weighed thoroughly.

If it is true that the father should have the right, or freedom, to decide what is best for his child, how is that accomplished by returning Elian to a society where parents have no rights?

The court must consider:

Cuban parents have little say in the education of their children from kindergarten, where one popular nursery rhyme is Seremos como el Che (We shall be like Che), to first grade where children learn to read by reciting ``F as in Fidel,'' ``R as in Raul,'' ``G as in guerrillero.''

Cuban children are channeled into the Communist Pioneers, an organization more akin to Hitler's Youth than the Boy Scouts.

Children are told that God does not exist, that those who disagree with the government are ``traitors'' and that they should report their parents to police if they are ``counterrevolutionaries.''

Cuban school children must repeat the pledge: ``Comandante, we are at your orders: ready for whatever, whenever and wherever.''

Cuban teenagers (with the exception of the children of high government officials who go to special schools) must attend ``schools in the countryside.'' Pope John Paul II criticized that. The students are hundreds of miles away from home and don't see their families for months at a time. They are without adequate adult supervision and work half a day in the fields. The schools are infamous for high rates of venereal disease and abortion.

Cuba is a society in which children no longer are eligible for a daily milk ration when they turn 7; a society that expects teens to join the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution or the Rapid Deployment Brigades, which beat up dissidents and ransack their homes; a society where many go to prison for reading prohibited books.

It is also a society in which university students are expected to vote ``unanimously'' to expel other students, even best friends, who are accused of engaging in ``enemy propaganda'' (such as distributing copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights); in which people have to pretend to support the regime just to survive.

Perhaps those were some of the reasons -- not simply the attraction of a consumer society -- that prompted Elian's mother to risk her life for the future of her son. Hers was a fateful journey that required eluding Castro's border patrols and the U.S. Coast Guard so Elian would not have to choose between being lying or facing repression or prison for telling the truth.

It is ironic, but Elian's father could have a lot more to say about the future of his son if Elian is not returned to Cuba. If he were to stay, Elian could travel to Cuba to visit relatives, as thousands of Cuban Americans do every year. If he is returned, one hates to think about in a few years when he is older and desperate, Elian may again be clinging to an inner tube in the ocean hoping to reach freedom a second time.