It’s a tragedy that scholars don’t study Singapore more to understand what it did right. When my dad was born in what was then Pakistan, Singapore (then part of Malaysia) was a poor country. Today it’s rich but the subcontinent is still poor. The best thing all these so-called “humanitarians” could do to improve the human condition would be to study Singapore to understand how that model can be translated to all the poor countries in Asia and Africa.
Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
381–390 of 713 posts
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#382I see at least 2 issues with the physical punishment: - it will only make the bullies taking their revenge on vulnerable ones with even more cruelty. And they will plan it carefully to be hard/impossible to prove. It will lead to the escalation, not to the resolution - the power will be abused, it's inevitable. I would be so scared to be in a class where "teacher" has the power to harm me physically! (to clarify: I a…
[flagged]
> A light slap in the face can be very beneficial for snapping hysterical children out of tantrums
Even “light” physical punishment is not proven beneficial. The research generally does not find a safe beneficial threshold where hitting becomes good if mild enough; it finds that physical punishment may suppress behavior briefly but is associated with worse outcomes over time. “Light” changes the severity, not the evidence.
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think we all shouldnt be too quick to assume that the problem starts with the person doing the bullying I don't think anyone is making that assumption, but being ok with corporal punishment likely comes down to three things: 1. We should care more about victims of violence than perpetrators, and all measures should be taken to protect victims and prevent victimization, even if it hurts perpetrators. Meaningful co…
How about when the perpetrators are also victims? If child A is bullying child B because they themselves are suffering abuse at home (as is often the case), don't both kids deserve help and support? Just beating up child A is no more productive a solution than throwing people in jail.
At the point a parent is beating up their own kid I wonder what options are available. If they're removed from the family then placing them in foster care almost always leads to worse outcomes than leaving them with the abusive family. The state doesn't know how to raise children.
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Well, one of my formative memories while being a child at school contributes to it, I was once saying some mean thing to another child because of other kids, that child slapped my face back quite good, I don't remember what I was saying, just that it was mean and that the slap made me question "why was I being mean for no reason?", an epiphany which helped me greatly. On the other side of things, I do remember having…
That slap was not official punishment. You were interacting with a peer. It's different from what's being discussed here.
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#385The best way to handle a bully is to fight them tooth and nail even if you're going to get beaten up or you get suspended from school. If you keep fighting them the bullying will stop, and you will also gain some self-esteem.
[deleted]
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#386It doesn't matter which rules and policies you have in place, if teachers are afraid of some parents, or simply tired of some, they will neglect or look away from your child being abused.
Which is a direct result of parents influence on the schools.
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#387The only effective punishment/threat that I saw work on my bullies at school was the threat to remove one of them from the football team and prevent him from playing for the school. He turned it around and was ok after that. It was highly effective because it was a bigger punishment than those used for not doing your homework, and because it was highly relevant to him specifically. It worked because we had 16 student…
Some of the generic policies can be very strange, too. I once got detention for getting punched in the arm. I was much taller than any of the school bullies, so they mostly didn't start anything with me. But every now and then, they would try. The punch barely hurt and I didn't really care, but another student saw it and reported it. The staff knew what happened, understood that I was the only one that got hit, and t…
I had a similar issue. A teacher found me with a smaller boy (poor kid had some genuine emotional issues, in retrospect was probably being abused outside of school) who was nevertheless doing his best to rip my ears off. The fact that I had my hands on his wrists was seen as reason to split the resulting punishment between both of us.
These days I pin a lot of this kind of thing down to the psychology of teachers, which seems to skew hard towards an unmet desire for respect/authority coupled with a relatively dull intellect. Most just aren't equipped to take charge of children.
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#388It’s a tragedy that scholars don’t study Singapore more to understand what it did right. When my dad was born in what was then Pakistan, Singapore (then part of Malaysia) was a poor country. Today it’s rich but the subcontinent is still poor. The best thing all these so-called “humanitarians” could do to improve the human condition would be to study Singapore to understand how that model can be translated to all the…
I agree. I worked in Singapore for a short while and I was so very impressed by the people and the government.
Singapore is a great place. It is breathtaking to see a government govern in the interests of its people. I live in the USA and we have two institutions, the democratic party and the republican party, that do little except cater to special interests.
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#389I didn’t expect to open the comments and find people who were pro beating children on Hacker News. I find this abuse horrific and you should speak to a therapist if you think this is okay. Absolutely barbaric behavior.
Locking people in a room also isn't pleasant, yet we allow it, because we think it has a deterring effect. Hitting people with sticks or tear gas, forcing there limbs together with steel also isn't very nice. Neither is forcing people in a plane and sending them off into dangerous environments just because they happen to be born there.
sometimes not just unpleasant. i was locked in a storage closet hundreds of times as punishment while growing up and it caused irreparable damage to my psyche
i heard punishments where the parent stays at the timeout and are present but firm are better than abandoning them an hour at a time to cook or work out, sometimes your life is just tragic I'll say
Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it may be effective for boys but not girls. Men have to deal with some form of violence in their lives, or at least the threat of it. Most male encounters has an undercurrent of violence. Offend another male and you might get assaulted. So when you expose men to violence it's a matter of the world. Like Tyson said, social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched i…
The mental gymnastics at play here are astounding. Why would women acclimate to it and see it as the norm while men don't? If anything, exposing men to violence will also make them more violent in their future relationships.
What mental gymnastics? Women that are abused often marry an abuser because it's just the way things are in relationships.
For boys, fighting or threat of violence is just a fact of life. They are taught at a young age not to use that violence against someone that's not roughly physically matched, which includes women. That's why we tell boys never hit girls.
Why do you pretend you don't understand?