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Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

theguardian.com

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

#501

Post by giraffe_lady »

rayiner wrote: post #484
giraffe_lady wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret is maintaining a permanently impoverished underclass without labor rights or a path to citizenship! Much to learn here, indeed.

Cheap foreign labor flocks to Singapore because it's much richer than the countries around it. But that's not how it got rich in the first place. Singapore had a restrictive policy on foreign workers until the 1980s. But by that point its GDP per capita was already almost as high as the UK's: https://emergenteconomics.com/2012/03/12/718/ And insofar as Singapore has such a policy now, the rest of the world should tak…

> Creating wealth from poverty within a few generations is miraculous, and the system that achieved that should be emulated.

I'll convey your admiration to my local sinaloa confederate.

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

#502

Post by PythagoRascal »

maxloh wrote: post #421
quiet35 wrote: 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…

Those are valid arguments. I believe a better approach might be installing surveillance cameras in classrooms and hallways, then expelling bullies once their actions are confirmed by footage. Perhaps we could establish "special schools for confirmed bullies," where students who show improvement could eventually be "promoted" back to mainstream schools. Only then can we truly protect innocent victims.

I think they call those prisons. /s

But seriously, I don't know how much I'd trust society to care / keep funding such schools, or people working there to that with enough empathy and motivation for too long.

The sentiment that (even low-level) criminals in prison are trash, that deserves the worst instead of rehabilitation, is I feel too wide-spread for me to think it would be different.

But yeah, I might be too cynical here.

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

#503

Post by naasking »

vidarh wrote: post #500
naasking wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Bullies are generally not very intelligent. Deterrents absolutely do work if applied consistently. A society that applies corporal punishment at multiple levels, as Singapore does, strongly ingrains the ide…

Teaching someone that using violence and abuse as ways to exercise power is not a lesson I want people to learn.

Good thing that's not the lesson then. Of course if you see any use of physical correction as violence and abuse, then you're just assuming the conclusion.

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

#504

Post by naasking »

PythagoRascal wrote: post #497
naasking wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is a curious argument that, in order to show that stronger people should not hurt weaker people, you think it's okay for stronger people to hurt weaker people Not curious at all. Ingrains the lesson that, should you feel inclined to abuse your strength, there is always someone stronger. That's a clear lesson that even works on psychopaths who otherwise feel no remorse and cannot be influenced by other means.

Conversely, it also ingrains the lesson that it is ok to abuse anyone weaker than you A) if you know you can get away with it (because someone stronger is not always around/aware/inclined to intervene), or B) because that is just normal / the way the world is.

I don't see how that follows. In an environment in which physical correction has no reason, and is doled out unfairly (as with alcoholic parents), then sure, someone would ingrain the idea that the world is callous and unfair and they should get theirs at the expense of others if they can. If they instead only experience physical correction due to specific reasons that are deemed far outside the bounds of acceptable (such as inflicting violence on others), that's a whole different lesson.

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

#505

Post by naasking »

cortesoft wrote: post #483
naasking wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Bullies are generally not very intelligent. Deterrents absolutely do work if applied consistently. A society that applies corporal punishment at multiple levels, as Singapore does, strongly ingrains the ide…

> because there's always someone with a bigger stick. This is certainly not true. Someone has the biggest stick, and if they abuse that power, it can be horrible.

Nobody has the biggest stick forever, and time is implicitly included in the adage "someone always has a bigger stick".

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

#506

Post by mrguyorama »

VimEscapeArtist wrote: post #462

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…

Most bullies already know the world hits back, that's why they are acting out

Beating a child who acts out because they get abuse from other people in their life is a reliable way to not at all improve things and merely reinforce their broken worldviews.

If getting the shit beaten out of you by authorities was a reliable way to raise people, my parent's generation would have had zero crime and zero bullying, and the local "White trash" trailer parks would be pinnacles of human behavior.

You know that's not how it works out, right?

Being hit works on people who would respond to nonviolent punishment.

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

#507

Post by rpdillon »

sholladay wrote: post #324
danpalmer wrote: post #129

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…

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…

Ten minutes ago my son came home from school and told me there was a fight and that the kid who started it has no punishment but the kid who finished it got a weeklong suspension.

I have no clue how they come up with this stuff.

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

#508

Post by rayiner »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #501
rayiner wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap foreign labor flocks to Singapore because it's much richer than the countries around it. But that's not how it got rich in the first place. Singapore had a restrictive policy on foreign workers until the 1980s. But by that point its GDP per capita was already almost as high as the UK's: https://emergenteconomics.com/2012/03/12/718/ And insofar as Singapore has such a policy now, the rest of the world should tak…

> Creating wealth from poverty within a few generations is miraculous, and the system that achieved that should be emulated. I'll convey your admiration to my local sinaloa confederate.

If the Sinaloa could turn an impoverished asian country into Singapore, I’d like to hire them and help overthrow the government so they can get to work. If you’re in such a country, everything is secondary to economic growth. GDP per capita growth translates directly into saving the lives of children.

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

#509

Post by vidarh »

naasking wrote: post #503
vidarh wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching someone that using violence and abuse as ways to exercise power is not a lesson I want people to learn.

Good thing that's not the lesson then. Of course if you see any use of physical correction as violence and abuse, then you're just assuming the conclusion.

I see any use of violence as violence, yes, and find it abhorrent to see people justifying violence against children. I'm happy I grew up in a civilised country where it was and is a criminal offense

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

#510

Post by mantas »

graemep wrote: post #494
mantas wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There're always exceptions. But so far what I see it's 100-to-1 if not worse. And I'm not at all surprised that women ain't exactly keen of lugging around heavy weights. Especially due to damage it can do to women-specific health. Or reduced abilities abilities after childbirth for many women. Of course nowadays many women don't care about their reproductive health nor give births, so maybe we don't need societal nor…

I somewhat agree with you, but I think there is an underlying cause. We are generally not accepting of individual differences, needs, and commitments outside work. We have improved in some ways (e.g. with regard to making adjustments for disability) but there is a long way go. > Besides giving them much more lax during that period in life. But on the other hand, if they get same pay, it's quite natural that their col…

I think individual specialty and massive group specialty is somewhat different.

For individual specialty (be it skills/abilities or lack of them), people can choose career or life paths accordingly. E.g. I’ve met a dead/mute constructions dude. He specialized in line of work where he works solo. If I accidentally wasn’t home while he was here, I wouldn’t have ever noticed.

On the other hand when you have massive groups with some specialty that match similar pattern… Over time it becomes a „norm“. It's not like some people decided what gender norms we should have a millennia ago and rolled with. It was rather a society trying to accommodate some groups of people with some skills and abilities and gender norms becoming a thing were a side effect.

As for more lax working conditions all round, it would be nice. But I’m not sure how modern economy would handle that in a fair way. And once you start institutionalizing more lax conditions for certain groups… I want to see that shitshow.

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