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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

#591

Post by vidarh »

postalrat wrote: post #585
vidarh wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you consider putting someone in jail as violence. It's not much different than kidnapping and that's usually considered violence. How about a time-out for a child?

> Do you consider putting someone in jail as violence.

Yes, I do. It should also be a last resort to mitigate worse consequences to society, and is severely over-used for many things where it has no proven benefit.

> How about a time-out for a child?

It can be cruel if over-used, but it is not the same as physically hurting a child.

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

#592

Post by baobabKoodaa »

dash2 wrote: post #570
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things can be good/bad in and of themself, rather than just a means to an end. I would argue that "violence against children" is bad in and of itself, and outlawing it is good in and of itself. If you want to argue that you see violence against children as a useful means to an end, why stop there? Let's also put the children to work. The children yearn for the mine.

Right, but if you smack your child on the wrist, is it violence? You can't really answer these things by throwing definitions around. (Imprisoning children is wrong, I'm sure we can agree. So, if you ground your child, is that imprisonment?)

I don't really get what point you're trying to make, but I'll answer your questions:

1. Yes, smacking your child on any part of their body, including the wrist, is violence. You're trying to make some kind of "a lot of violence might be wrong but just a little bit of violence can be useful" point? I don't get it.

2. No, I don't agree that "imprisoning children is wrong". Sometimes children commit horrible crimes, like murder, and they need to be imprisoned. If you want to say that grounding your child is also a form of imprisonment, it feels like a stretch, but sure, we can call that imprisonment too. I don't get what the point is, though.

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

#593

Post by [deleted] »

postalrat wrote: post #585
vidarh wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you consider putting someone in jail as violence. It's not much different than kidnapping and that's usually considered violence. How about a time-out for a child?

[deleted]

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

#595

Post by cultofmetatron »

techblueberry wrote: post #571
cultofmetatron wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one of the many reasons america is so screwed up right now is because of our insistence on ignoring the very obvious statistically significant dimorphism between genders. that doesn't' mean trans people and nonbinary dont' exist. We need to make accommodations for them where appropriate. However, it doesn't do any one any favors trying to homogenize how we teach kids. you inevitably help one at the expense of the oth…

> one of the many reasons America is so screwed up right now Interesting, which metrics are a result of ignoring the very obvious statistically significant dimorphism between genders, and not say political corruption, or corporate consolidation? Which statistical significant dimorphism causes this “screw up”?

well I could start with feminist marginalization of male role models from early education. The school to university pipeline is highly weighted in favor of giving women success. If we recognized that boys and girls are different, we could continue pushing women to success without pathologising male traits by giving each what they need to succeed. instead we have a one size all box that helps one at the expense of the other.

The fact that teenager boys can't tell that Andrew Tate is a characture of failed masculinity or that looksmaxxing is straight up idiotic is a pretty glaring example of that.

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

#596

Post by Der_Einzige »

gramie wrote: post #107
lava_pidgeon wrote: post #43

Btw, besides using violence on school children is barbaric this action is also sexism. Young boys generally suffer more from violence. Now the teacher can add it. Besides, why is the teacher right? They make mistakes , they can be racist etc. Just stupd

When I was a volunteer in Africa, my school's English teacher was furious because none of the students in his class had done the homework. His solution: to bring them into the staff room one by one, have them hold their hands in a "chef's kiss", fingertips pointing up. He then whacked their fingertips ten times with a short wooden rod (laughing as he delivered the final blow, "and one for Caesar!). These were tough,…

Behavior like this is why I unironically have lost the mythos of "teachers are good for society" as default thinking. I get why Mao/Pol Pot/Communists through history lined them up against walls.

Most, even in America, are little tyrants who has entirely far too much power to pick and choose the winners and losers of society. A single bad teacher acts like a whole bucket of crabs pulling down on soon-to-be-succesful youth.

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

#597

Post by dash2 »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #592
dash2 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but if you smack your child on the wrist, is it violence? You can't really answer these things by throwing definitions around. (Imprisoning children is wrong, I'm sure we can agree. So, if you ground your child, is that imprisonment?)

I don't really get what point you're trying to make, but I'll answer your questions: 1. Yes, smacking your child on any part of their body, including the wrist, is violence. You're trying to make some kind of "a lot of violence might be wrong but just a little bit of violence can be useful" point? I don't get it. 2. No, I don't agree that "imprisoning children is wrong". Sometimes children commit horrible crimes, lik…

If you define absolutely anything as violence in that way, you’re completely within your rights to do that, but then you can’t claim it’s intuitively obvious that we should never use violence against children. Instead you will need actual evidence, which leads us back to where we started - the evidence base is weak.

Or you can say what I think many people throughout history would have seen as common sense (rightly or wrongly): violence against children is wrong, but spanking them doesn’t count as “violence”.

My imprisonment analogy was meant to point out that it is not valid to take a common intuition that X is wrong, apply a very extended concept of X (even if you think that the extended concept is the only coherent one), and then expect the intuition to still command universal agreement.

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

#598

Post by kstrauser »

bdangubic wrote: post #559
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…

the best way to deal with a bully is to punch her/his lights out. the schools should have a martial arts / mma trainer on staff. whover gets bullied has to take classes with martial arts / mma fighter until they can hit the bully hard enough for her/him to eat through a straw for a month. this is the way.

This worked for us. A little thug was bullying my kid until I taught my kid how to land a punch to the mouth. That was a one-shot solution to that problem.

Obviously that isn’t a universal solution. It’s worth evaluating the option, though.

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

#599

Post by threethirtytwo »

nephihaha wrote: post #431
threethirtytwo wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is not true. Expulsion works in many cases. The idea of getting expelled prevents a lot of problems. A lot of people avoid doing things that will get them expelled but this of course doesn't apply to everyone including the person in your example. It's similar to how prison is a deterrent to crime. But it doesn't change the fact that there are people who still do crimes and get into prison.

Many unruly pupils have trouble at home, impoverished backgrounds, dyslexia, autism, social anxiety and a host of other things. Expelling them solves none of these things. They may be bullies themselves because of an ongoing toxic culture in the school. That can include the teachers in some cases, who are some of the worst bullies in there. I had one who persecuted me for a speech impediment and humiliated me in fron…

>It's similar to how prison is a deterrent to crime. But it doesn't change the fact that there are people who still do crimes and get into prison.

None of what you said contradicts the above.

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

#600

Post by anarticle »

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…

I had something similar to this happen to me, where some kid was causing trouble during nap time in kindergarten.

I was an obsessively good kid, my parents took me everywhere with them and treated me like a peer, within reason. I was well behaved for my age. At the end of the day in kindergarten class, if you didn't cause problems, you received a stamp on your hand. The stamp was everything. A brand that I had ACCOMPLISHED that day.

Nap time was a post lunch, thirty minute time when we turned the lights out and laid down. Some kid near to me was making faces and making weird noises behind the teacher's back during nap time. Of course, he's five, maybe six, so this is not going undetected by our teacher. She storms over and asks "who is making all this noise?". I, being a total narc at 5 simply point. Assuming of course, this means I will receive a daily stamp, maybe even more, for my quick and wonderful detective work.

Then the unthinkable happens. His name goes on the board. MY name goes on the board. A wave of confusion sweeps over me. This is a massive blow to my tiny ego, only bad kids get their name on the board, surely there is a mistake!

It's nap time. I cannot make any noise, else I will risk A CHECKMARK NEXT TO MY NAME, which will only escalate the punishment in 198x to TIME OUT. Bad kids are always in time out. I am NOT a bad kid.

I am crushed. My small brain cannot process the enormity of what has happened. My name is on the board. I am smart enough to know what's not coming.

2pm comes, we're sitting on the square rug, and we're all putting our hands on our heads to receive our daily benediction: the stamp. I desperately keep my hand on my head, hoping I might trick our assistant teacher into giving me what I know is very far away.

She passes right by. I look left and right and realize, there is no mistake.

I held immediately held back a flood of tears, feeling deep failure. I stood up, and slowly gathered my things. I slogged my way to the bus and remember staring out the window thinking, what if the same thing happens tomorrow? I will never receive another stamp under this system, how could they do this to me?! The stamp continued the next day, but a different mark was made.

I had a short villain era after this, realizing a true injustice of the world: no matter how good you are sometimes things will not go your way.

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