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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

#671

Post by scotty79 »

doubled112 wrote: post #331
sholladay wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 “zero tolerance” hard at work. Wouldn't want a kid who is being bullied to think about retaliating. Also, because the bully can time the bullying, the initial event is often missed, but the victim is caught retaliating. It sounds fair on paper, but punishing everybody involved does not work.

If you punish a kid that didn't retaliate just because "he was involved in a fight" you remove every incentive for that kid to restrain themselves next time. If he's gonna be punished, he might just as well be punished for something.

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

#673

Post by naasking »

vidarh wrote: post #591
postalrat wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Anything is cruel if "overused". And nobody is claiming "it's the same" as corporal punishment, the argument is whether corporal punishment should be on the table in some circumstances at all, and what those circumstances should be.

I think the conclusion that it should never be permitted is completely unjustified, based on fantasy notions that everyone is innately good if properly directed using words (false), that we understand psychology enough to change people using words (we don't), and how common and abused the power for physical punishment can be (it can be bad, as can many things whose risks we manage).

I think there are many functional and legitimate ways that humans can organize themselves (law and culture), and the idea that corporal punishment cannot be justifiably used in any of them seems almost certainly false.

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

#674

Post by badboysg »

JackOneSG wrote: post #363

About three decades ago, a student attacked me by poking my face with a pencil very hard, close to my left eye. I could have become blind, but fortunately I did not. Yet the student was not even punished in the kindergarten run by PAP. Besides that, I was slapped hard across the face by my Primary 1 teacher (Miss Maisura, iirc... or might get zero marks for mispelled her name) at Queenstown Primary School because I u…

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

#675

Post by badboysg »

oompydoompy74 wrote: post #69
rvnx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, think of it like this: these teenagers take pleasure harming defenseless animals. They like to torture them psychologically and physically, precisely because they are defenseless. Well, these animals are just big animals: human. It means: they find it fun so they actually enjoy harming humans. This is precisely the reason for bullying. Punishing these behaviors early, and you might actually stop this pleasure-l…

Most bullies are responding to a poor home life where they are bullied and beaten.

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

#676

Post by mantas »

blks wrote: post #616
mantas wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots and lots of jobs where physical strength makes a fuckton difference. I don't see construction workers, garbage people or figherfighters using exoskeletons yet. Also, ask women how their mood and abilities swing during their cycles. Both menstrual and life cycle with menopause and stuff. Some have it easy, but many women I know have quite big swings in both cases. And yet modern society requires one to pe…

When was the last time you spoke with a woman other than your mother?

Nice insult. But what's your point? That women do not tend to have hormones-induced mood swings?

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

#677

Post by zamadatix »

kelipso wrote: post #563
zamadatix wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science fanboyism is just in understanding what you do and don't know, not eschewing the possession of beliefs or actions made from them.

Theory vs practice.

One can practice the theory of practicality without needing to be ignorant of how uncertain they are as they do so.

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

#678

Post by dotancohen »

gambiting wrote: post #651
chr1 wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in school does not make one educated. Keeping disruptive child in the same room with normal children, means we get fewer educated people, not more.

Which is exactly why I advocate for not keeping them in the same classroom as other kids.

Most bullying happens outside the classroom.

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

#679

Post by CGMthrowaway »

tzs wrote: post #539
coldtea wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's based on millions of years of biological differences in their capacities and functions (starting from body strength and role in reproduction), plus differences in social roles, of which some of the latter might be arbitrary, but some are necessary adjustments every historical society understood.

Which of these biological differences in capacities and functions make it so that girls should not be punished by physical pain but it is OK to punish boys with a physical pain using a method that often leaves permanent scars and lasting psychological damage?

Men bear greater physical risk (war, dangerous labor etc) and boys/young men have always been subject to violent "rites of passage" that prepare them for this.

Girls and women receive greater physical protection, as required to manage reproductive capacity and long‑term demographic stability.

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

#680

Post by techblueberry »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #668
techblueberry wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that we treat men and women differently because we don't respect that there's a difference between men and women? I'm not saying that something is not rotten in the state of Denmark, I just don't think you've managed to clearly articulate it at all, I think it's much more complicated than "we need to respect the differences between the genders" as your word salad reflects. In fact, as usual I think wit…

> "we need to respect the differences between the genders" as your word salad reflects. describing my points as "word salad" seems a bit dismissive and unnecessarily pejorative - but I digress. I'll ignore your obvious ideological axe to grind and see if we can at least reach common ground. Watch any group of boys and girls at play. sure you have outliers but by and large they do tend to conform to one of two specifi…

I don’t necessarily have a problem with talking about gender differences but I’m not sure I’m convinced by the focus of your argument.

Historically teaching has always been “women’s work”. It’s skewed a bit more female in recent years, but that’s because it skewed male temp rotation before then. it’s always seemed like an odd retcon to say that we turned education female, combining that with the low pay of education which will turn away more men.

I also feel like school has only gotten more flexible over time, my parents generation talked about how easy we have it and school was more about sitting still for them, as it was for me twenty years ago.

I’m not saying the education system is great, or that there aren’t ways to improve it, or that we couldn’t improve it based on gender differences, or that there aren’t more “college prep for girls” programs than “college prep for boys programs” just that your specific description of concerns I don’t think is quite historically accurate. I think it’s weird to complain that we need to treat men and women differently when most people’s problem seems to be that we treat women differently; we’ve had 60 or so years of women’s studies and feminist theories playing out. Should we start caning boys? Is that the solution to all our problems?

As with most things, it’s probably just the end of postwar American Economic domination. Go before World War 2 and the high school graduation rates aren’t high enough to describe anything about the way things “used to be”.

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