Live data from Hacker News

Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

theguardian.com

471–480 of 713 posts

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#471
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any way Well of course not, because schools don't have the support they need to help those students in turn. >>goes to work at macdonalds I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school? >>and comes b…

> You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education? I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn. > most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them. That's up to the parent to decide: leave them at home, convince them to find a job…

Show me a single law that was not given by a politician? I don't think there are any. Aside from maybe F = MA or Pie are squared LOL.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#472

The comments here are fascinating. A generation of men who've never been in a physical confrontation in their lives are absolutely certain that physical consequences don't work. How would you know? A boy who bullies needs to learn that the world hits back. You can teach that with a cane at 13 or let him find out at 25 when he mouths off to the wrong person. One of these comes with a controlled environment and a schoo…

A pencil makes one hell of an improvised weapon.

"I once saw him kill 3 men in a bar.. with a pencil. With a fuckin' pencil."

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#473
post #468
post #78

I 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…

> I would be so scared to be in a class where "teacher" has the power to harm me physically! How is this different from being in city where "police officer" has the power to shot you?

We're not required to be in a cop's room for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

We ARE required to be in an authoritarian's room for 8 hour a day, 5 days a week for 12 years.

A whole lot more would be arrested, assaulted, and executed if we were in cops' sight like this.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#474

I've never understood the illiberal desire to treat boys and girls so differently. I'm glad I live in a country where sexism is illegal at a fundamental level -- this kind of law would be quickly struck down.

> I've never understood the illiberal desire to treat boys and girls so differently. I'm glad I live in a country where sexism is illegal at a fundamental level -- this kind of law would be quickly struck down. Which country would that be? Unless you are from a select few Norther European countries your military enlistment/draft laws are likely quite sexist.

I've always found that quite interesting. I agree women should have equal rights and never be discriminated against, but when push comes to shove I imagine men would be the ones called up to fight in wars for most countries around the world.

Should we call up women and put them in equal roles? I don't even know how you'd solve this so keen to hear any suggeations/thoughts

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two problems: 1) school education is mandatory until 16-18 in most countries, so what do you do with them once they get expelled. They have to be in education somewhere - so do you just put them in one school for all the expelled students, which is just constantly on fire? You made the problem much worse for yourself(as in - the state). 2) " there’s no benefit to keeping them in school and massive consequences for th…

Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institutions. To be clear, abuse in these programs should be prevented as much as feasible, and there should be an opportunity for any kid who demonstrates redemption to get back in school. It’s a bad solution, but I don’t know any which is better. Keeping them in society is worse for innocent people (and doesn’t seem to usually benefit them e…

> Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in > mental institutions.

That was how NAZI-Germany and USSR (communist) governments 'solved' their problems.

In the USA, we had this president named Ronald Reagan who solved the mental institution problem: he closed all the mental institutions and expelled the patients so the patients live on the streets. That's really gave us a new influx of homeless people on a national scale, and it hasn't improved.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#476
post #417
post #78

I 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…

Singapore has 30% or more families using corporal punishment, according to this https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10311744/

And when it is permissible to say that a society is trash? Cause 30% who think beating children is OK, is frankly abhorrent.

And yeah, Singapore society as a whole is pure trash. When you have monikers like, "Disneyland with the death penalty", you know it's a real authoritarian shithole.

https://thediplomat.com/2026/05/is-singapores-legal-system-b...

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#477
post #78

I 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]

Where the proof that caning people for mistakes creates in the the desire for vengeance where they will hit their children.

Naughty children won't work, or do vocational training. Have you worked with children?

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#478

People wonder why the state of the world is the way it is. Traumatized child expresses themselves the only way they know how? Let's beat them, surely this is the solution not creating a safe environment. The cycle continues.

I'm not saying beating children is good but.. if you think the 'state of the world' is bad, well, most countries have massively reduced how much beating children get over the last 40 years or so.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So other kids should just be their victims? How is that better? We should do whatever we can to help kids with problems, but that doesn't include victimising people. Remove the bullies and deal with them elsewhere.

>>Remove the bullies and deal with them elsewhere Everyone agrees on this, no one agrees on what "elsewhere" should be. Like I said in my post - do you just send them to one special school for unruly children, which is just basically on fire all the time? Or prison? Or like other commenters have said - just send them to work programs, let them work at mcdonalds, or send them to a mental institution? Like, we're not t…

Yes, that is a hard problem that society in general doesn't like dealing with, but the solution doesn't involve letting kids be abused. That's the point I'm making. Don't let kids get abused. I honestly didn't think that was very controversial.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#480

The 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…

> The problem is that most schools don't do that, would likely argue they don't have time to do that

Or actively don't want to do that. There have been cases in Ohio where football players have done things that should have them suspended or expelled (or more) and the school has literally gone on record that "we didn't remove him from the team as that would be unfair to the other players on his team, who are having a great season".

Post reply on HN