DEAR ABBY: The letter you printed from "Patience, Consistency and Praise in Minneapolis" brought tears to my eyes. As a schoolteacher who has given up on more than a handful of teaching assignments because he couldn't be mean to kids, I pray that every school administrator, policy maker and teacher read that column.
Children are only the innocent mirror of the environment they grow up in; if they come to school with a mean, jaded attitude it's because they learned it from all the adults in their lives. They get enough strict meanness at home without getting it at school, too.
I wish I could find a school anywhere where disciplining children with love is the order of the day. If I could, I'd be packing in a moment to teach there. If every school were to implement a love-based discipline policy, not only would test scores rise, but also eventually we would see a decline in drug abuse, delinquency, drop-outs, crime and unemployment in society. -- R.L.K., SILVER LAKE, CALIF.
DEAR R.L.K.: I have always maintained that if children are raised with love, they will respond to others with love.