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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

#631

Post by abc123abc123 »

sebastiennight wrote: post #511
abc123abc123 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> A light slap in the face can be very beneficial for snapping hysterical children out of tantrums. This is proven! Can you share any reference or scientific study affirming this? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. > hysterical children out of tantrums In my humble experience, children throwing tantrums are likely experiencing overstimulation or emotional overwhelm, and fixing the causes could eliminat…

Reference: Craske, M. G., et al. (2009). Anxiety disorders. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 5, 18033.

Covers mechanisms of panic and how sudden cognitive or sensory interventions can interrupt ruminative or panic loops.

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

#632

Post by keernan »

I read the article as defining bullying as kids posing physical threats to others. Yet, the memory that immediately jumps into my mind is of a boy who always wore a jacket and a hat with ear muffs inside school who would hold his books to his chest as he ran to/from classes in between periods.

Kids would always laugh at him and block his path or trip him or knock his books out of his hands. My sense is that this was widespread behavior, not limited to a small group.

I also seem to recall a group of kids who were picked on all eating at the same table during lunch and always being subjected to taunting and being picked on verbally or having their books knocked off the table, etc.

Sadly, I do not recall ever seeing anyone stand up for him or help him pick up his books. The memory makes me feel horribly ashamed because I have no recollection of ever helping.

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

#634

Post by likeclockwork »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #343
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…

> Applying violence to kids is not the way to make them stop applying violence to others. When I was young me and two of my brothers were one-day really misbehaving. My grand-father, who had been capture on the first day of WWII (well on the first day Germany invaded Belgium) and spent 5 years in a PoW prisoner camp in Germany, wasn't a little wuss. He spanked our three arses so bad I remember it to this day. It was…

Okay, so you're a chump with a slave mentality who can be broken by a spanking but you think other men are weak. Got it.

All these corporal punishment societies and families have the people they don't talk about who were hardened or driven insane by beatings.

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

#635

Post by verteu »

dash2 wrote: post #157

This seems a good place to point out that the evidence for the harmful effects of corporal punishment is very low quality: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/the-academic-literature-on-sma...

No, it's about as "controversial" as claiming lead exposure is bad for children's brains.

Do we have RCTs for that? Or might we reasonably shape our priors from the hundreds of studies using a dozen different causal methodologies, which all find the same result?

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

#636

Post by hackable_sand »

zarzavat wrote: post #142
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…

Bullies certainly can be intelligent. Intelligence and sadism are orthogonal traits. The only thing that unites bullies is the willingness to inflict misery on others. A bully could be a simple thug who uses violence because they have nothing else going for them, or a popular kid at the top of their class who manipulates others for their own amusement.

A bully is not necessarily a sadist

And neither a sadist or a bully are necessarily bad people.

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

#637

Post by bdangubic »

hackable_sand wrote: post #636
zarzavat wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullies certainly can be intelligent. Intelligence and sadism are orthogonal traits. The only thing that unites bullies is the willingness to inflict misery on others. A bully could be a simple thug who uses violence because they have nothing else going for them, or a popular kid at the top of their class who manipulates others for their own amusement.

A bully is not necessarily a sadist And neither a sadist or a bully are necessarily bad people.

yes they are, bullies some of the worst of humanity

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

#638

Post by doright »

danparsonson wrote: post #544
doright wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then surely the focus should be on solving that problem? Just clamping down on the proximate cause doesn't really help - as others have pointed out, it seems likely to incite revenge attacks rather than stopping the bullying.

That's the thing, it's unclear if it's a problem that can be solved. It has to do with fundamental benefits of staying with biological family, and avoiding the extremely negative consequences of lack of attachment.

https://nccpr.org/the-evidence-is-in-foster-care-vs-keeping-...

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

#640

Post by dash2 »

verteu wrote: post #635
dash2 wrote: post #157

This seems a good place to point out that the evidence for the harmful effects of corporal punishment is very low quality: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/the-academic-literature-on-sma...

No, it's about as "controversial" as claiming lead exposure is bad for children's brains. Do we have RCTs for that? Or might we reasonably shape our priors from the hundreds of studies using a dozen different causal methodologies, which all find the same result?

The evidence for lead exposure harming children's brains is extremely solid, I believe. The evidence for spanking is not in the same league. It is not just about a lack of RCTs.
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