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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

#641

Post by dash2 »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #602
dash2 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If you define absolutely anything as violence I didn't define "absolutely anything" as violence. I didn't even reach for some contested definition of the word. Just the normal everyday definition that is broadly accepted in western society today. > 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 do…

I am not trying to play word games. Your argument is "smacking is violence against children, by the common sense definition; violence against children is inherently bad" - also, I think, by common sense. My point is that when people say "smacking is violence" by common sense, they don't necessarily think that it is the kind of violence that is inherently bad; and when they think "violence against children is inherently bad", they are not necessarily thinking of smacking.

But maybe you're right. We both agree that killing children, or kicking them in the head, is inherently bad. You also think smacking children is inherently bad. What makes you believe so?

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

#642

Post by alsetmusic »

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…

That's exactly the kind of situation that made hateful as a teen. I'm so glad to be free of that now. Therapy works (over the long term, not a quick fix).

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

#644

Post by selcuka »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #442
modo_mario wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of only 3 times where i or someone else confronted a bully and made it stop. In 2 of those cases the bully was stronger but such stuff can always carry risks that the bully might not like or scenarios they can't take. In the first the bully eventually got hit with a school desk (they were fairly light but hard) pretty bad by the victim that finally crashed out and the bully actually looked like a wimperin…

How about the amount of times when the bully didn't stop? That's the useful metric here. When there was resistance, how effective was it? Judging from your description you didn't lay out any examples of where fighting back failed.

To be fair they said "I can think of only 3 times [...] and made it stop", implying that there were comparatively more cases where it didn't stop.

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

#645

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

Aerroon wrote: post #619
lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Unless you are from a select few Norther European Even if you were, conscript training is not equally distributed: 24% of conscripts in 2023 were women in Sweden, 32% in 2024 in Norway. Maybe one day it will get there but it's been a decade and has not got there yet.

> Even if you were, conscript training is not equally distributed: 24% of conscripts in 2023 were women in Sweden, 32% in 2024 in Norway.

I know but OP was talking about laws specifically, not their application.

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

#646

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

qweiopqweiop wrote: post #474
lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> 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

Why the hypothetical? In Israel, for example, women often serve in equal roles during wars, although neither at the same rate as men, nor are laws there completely gender-neutral. I would imagine in Northern European countries with actual gender-neutral military regulations they will be called up similarly to men.

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

#647

Post by naasking »

danparsonson wrote: post #543
naasking wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If child A is bullying child B because they themselves are suffering abuse at home Experiencing hardship doesn't excuse violence against others, just like it wouldn't excuse breaking the law. You can say "here is the punishment for your bad behaviour, now let's ALSO have child services remove you from that environment AND have the justice system punish your parents' bad behaviour". Everybody has their job and if th…

> Experiencing hardship doesn't excuse violence against others I totally agree, but I don't agree that forgoing violence as a punishment is the same as excusing the bad behaviour. The best outcome for everyone is surely rehabilitation, no? There are other punishment options if you still insist on inflicting some hardship. > Over 60% of violent crime is committed by under 5% of the population. Don't underestimate the…

> I don't agree that forgoing violence as a punishment is the same as excusing the bad behaviour. The best outcome for everyone is surely rehabilitation, no?

The dirty secret is that we have absolutely no idea how to rehabilitate anyone. Even our best therapies for people who desperately want to change their behaviour are only 40% effective at only slightly modifying behaviour, and most violent criminals unfortunately have no such desire.

This is partly psychology's fault for doing such poor science for decades (35% replication rate!), but partly also the false premise that there are no innate biological factors at play.

> That neatly avoids the question of why they reoffend, which is precisely my point. If prison is effective as a deterrent then why do they keep coming back?

This is already known but ignored in "polite" society: poor impulse control. Most repeat offenders only stop offending once they age out of impulsive behaviour, not because they had some kind of revelation or personal growth; stories like this conflate correlation and causation.

Age is the best behaviour modifier we know, because hormonal profiles change, which ends up changing strength and frequency of the impulses we have to overcome. Imprisoning repeat violent offenders until they age out of it poor impulse control is totally a policy that should be on the table.

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

#648

Post by Aerroon »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #645
Aerroon wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you are from a select few Norther European Even if you were, conscript training is not equally distributed: 24% of conscripts in 2023 were women in Sweden, 32% in 2024 in Norway. Maybe one day it will get there but it's been a decade and has not got there yet.

> Even if you were, conscript training is not equally distributed: 24% of conscripts in 2023 were women in Sweden, 32% in 2024 in Norway. I know but OP was talking about laws specifically, not their application.

I don't think you can divorce the laws from their application in cases like this. This isn't some nebulous situation where if you squint right it's equal.

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

#649

Post by gambiting »

chr1 wrote: post #625
gambiting wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the parents are supposed to make choices for them Parents don't have any choice in this either. A child under 18 should be in full time education - there is nothing to choose, maybe except for the school they can be in. >>20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe. I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds.

> Parents don't have any choice in this either. That's a very fucked up thing to say, governments or random strangers from internet do not have a right to decide how parent raises his child. Do you even have a child? > I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds It was just my own experience, if you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds…

>>Do you even have a child

I do. And like I said, you as a parent have a choice about the kind of school you send your child into. You don't have a choice whether they are in education or not.

>>And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?

When you were at school were there many adult students in your classes?

>>you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.

Yes, 100 years ago in the early days of the soviet union the classes were offered to everyone to increase literacy rates. I can assure you that throughout the rest of history of the soviet union you didn't have adults attending primary/secondary school, gymnasiums or other types of schools for children. Soviet union had schools for adults from very early on.

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

#650

Post by gambiting »

dotancohen wrote: post #623
gambiting wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> School is a privilege for smart children to study, not a prison for those who do not want to learn. It's actually neither of those things, because we discovered hundreds of years ago that having an educated population is good for everyone. No, it's not a prison, but it's not a privilege either - you have to be in school until certain age. Work is not substitute for education.

Have an educated population does not mean that every last uncivilized brat needs to participate. Especially if he is distracting other people from acquiring an education.

...how do you think we got to the literacy rates we have now?

And schools have been able to deal with "brats" for over a century without kicking them out of school.

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