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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
by quiet35 5mo ago
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 am very much out of the school age, but just thinking about this perspective is making me feel uneasy)
So what is the possible solution then? Protect those who are vulnerable. And work with bullies to resolve/ease their life issues. I suspect most of them do what they do because of tough situation in family. In severe cases, I can think of suspension or exclusion from school or another kind of isolation. Probably way better than showing ALL kids that violence is a fine casual way to solve issues.
Applying violence to kids is not the way to make them stop applying violence to others.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- davyAdewoyin 5mo agoAs I previously mentioned, if you actually grew up in a system where corporal punishment is carried out, you would find that point two is not such a bother. No one cares whether a parent or teacher can cane them except they were in the wrong of course, perhaps because it is a culture and a shared experience and I knew a lot of children growing up who prefer the canning to other form of punishment. I think the issue lies in your conflating caning and other forms of corporal punishment with physical harm. It is not the same as hitting a student or throwing a bottle at someone; it can be done very humanely. Sure, abuse is inevitable, and I could point to many teachers who were terrible and took out their issues on students, but such cases were easily resolved by reporting them to the principal or bringing parents to school the next day to file a complaint. In
- gramie 4mo ago> such cases were easily resolved Hah! In any case, 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.
- naasking 4mo ago> 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.
- PythagoRascal 4mo agoConversely, 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.
- naasking 4mo agoI 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.
- maxloh 4mo agoYeah. Instead of teaching school bullies to respect others, we are reinforcing the value of power dynamics, where the one in power defines the rules, and the weak must accept and suffer.
- kelipso 4mo agoThat’s called training a person to live in the real world and not be a criminal.
- markdown 4mo agoYup. I and all of my peers would vastly prefer to get a caning, or belting, or piping (hit with a short length of garden hose), or any other form of corporal punishment over something torturous like extra homework. We'd watch Hollywood movies and be bewildered by the misbehavior and lack of respect shown to teachers in classrooms. Every class has square pegs, but with strict teachers, they'd stay in line and not ruin the learning environment for the rest of the class. Part way through high school, corporal punishment by teachers was banned nationwide, with only the headteacher allowed to administer that punishment. Since then I believe not even headteachers are permitted to strike students. Might have been as a result of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Schools have gone downhill since.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- maxloh 4mo agoI think you’re missing the point. A teacher’s like or dislike of a student is often irrational and based on personal emotion; they are human beings, after all. The real issue is that they wield significant power with very few checks and balances. They are essentially dictators. They work within a system where colleagues often cover one another’s works rather than questioning each other’s professional conduct. It is far too dangerous to grant them the power of corporal punishment while simply hoping they will remain fair. I believe that in every school, there is at least one teacher who would abuse it.
- vidarh 4mo agoThis is just a defense of violence and abuse.
- naasking 4mo ago> 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 idea to straighten yourself out, because there's always someone with a bigger stick. > In severe cases, I can think of suspension or exclusion from school or another kind of isolation. In my experience, this isn't the deterrent you think it is.
- zarzavat 4mo agoBullies 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.
- hackable_sand 4mo agoA bully is not necessarily a sadist And neither a sadist or a bully are necessarily bad people.
- bdangubic 4mo agoyes they are, bullies some of the worst of humanity
- hackable_sand 4mo ago"Bully" is an archetype.
- cortesoft 4mo ago> 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.
- ryandrake 4mo ago> - 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 am very much out of the school age, but just thinking about this perspective is making me feel uneasy) Absolutely. I would never agree to allow teachers the ability to apply violence to my kid with no due process or proof of wrongdoing. Teachers play favorites and can be just as bad bullies as the other students. They should be able to strike my kid with "trust me bro" as proof that she did wrong? No fucking way on Earth.
- strken 4mo agoTeachers where I live need, and have, the ability to apply violence to students. This is phrased as "physical restraint" and comes with extensive limitations and paperwork, the most important of which is that it is only allowed when protecting someone else. What if one child wraps a skipping rope around another's neck and begins to choke them? Do you expect the adult staff to stand off to the side and do nothing? Violence as punishment is different, of course.
- blks 4mo agoThis comment implies that you’d okay with your child being beaten if there are strong evidence against him?
- kakacik 4mo agoIn theoretical land - if my son had beaten some other kid to pulp, and he got a slap from teacher to stop that (on top of probably being expelled)? Absolutely, the least of the issues in such problem. This is very far from organized canning as a punishment, but stating teacher should never ever use violence or they end up losing their job for good and getting dragged to courts with possibility of jail is just as extreme position as letting them be beaten at teacher's will. Middle path folks, middle path. If you don't trust teachers at all in the first place, why do you give them your children to co-raise them? Schools should do procedural punishments, not corporal. But 100% is a fairy land, and some psychotic parents who never admit their child is doing something bad (and there are so many of those, aren't they just ask literally any teacher) take it as a gospel and go to jihad mode against anybody. World doesn't need more empowered Karens, do we.
- InsideOutSanta 4mo agoLooking back at my own time in school, my primary bully already got beaten up by his own parents, which probably caused him to act out in school in the first place. I would not wish him to also get beaten by the school, and I do not believe that this would have helped me in any way.
- beng-nl 4mo agoWell said. I think we all shouldnt be too quick to assume that the problem starts with the person doing the bullying, nice and simple as that would be.
- Tade0 4mo agoMy bully had two much older brothers and I guess that's how he learned to communicate, so I communicated back. We became friends afterwards. Looking back it's not the physical bullying that was the most damaging, but social. I went to a different middle school and without a support network it was difficult to say the least.
- naasking 4mo ago> I think we all shouldnt be too quick to assume that the problem starts with the person doing the bullying I don't think anyone is making that assumption, but being ok with corporal punishment likely comes down to three things: 1. We should care more about victims of violence than perpetrators, and all measures should be taken to protect victims and prevent victimization, even if it hurts perpetrators. Meaningful consequences for violent behaviour is critical. 2. The belief the physical deterrents work, if applied consistently and not abused to the point where it doesn't provide clear guidance as to acceptable behaviour. 3. That the primary job of schools and educators is to provide a safe and effective learning environment. Being therapists that get to the root of problematic behaviour is neither in their training nor in their job description.
- danparsonson 4mo agoHow about when the perpetrators are also victims? If child A is bullying child B because they themselves are suffering abuse at home (as is often the case), don't both kids deserve help and support? Just beating up child A is no more productive a solution than throwing people in jail.
- latentsea 4mo agoThere's entire classes of people who base their employment centrally around an occupation that enables their worst vices. I'd wager there's a group of people who have no interest in becoming a teacher but put corporal punishment on the table and suddenly they're interested.
- defrost 4mo agoTenuous at best in many school systems where it's typically not teachers that apply corporal punishment but headmasters. The notion that people train to be teachers followed by spending ~10 years in the system holding out for the chance to be a headmaster just so that they can beat people is a stretch. Bound to be one or two, but there are surely better paths for a sadist - prison guard, et al.
- latentsea 4mo agoGive this a watch - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070649/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070649/
- abc123abc123 4mo ago[flagged]
- CJefferson 4mo agoWhere the proof that caning people for mistakes creates in the the desire for vengeance where they will hit their children. Naughty children won't work, or do vocational training. Have you worked with children?
- abc123abc123 4mo agoDepending on the age, yes. Strict discipline, punishment and rewards works very well. What does not work, is the past 30 years of wokeism, where children are granted their every wish.
- econ 4mo agoBeat up their dad
- dana-s 4mo agoWell, one of my formative memories while being a child at school contributes to it, I was once saying some mean thing to another child because of other kids, that child slapped my face back quite good, I don't remember what I was saying, just that it was mean and that the slap made me question "why was I being mean for no reason?", an epiphany which helped me greatly. On the other side of things, I do remember having suffered some forms of violence from parents and those really did not contribute to anything than showing me why they were bad parents.
- salviati 4mo agoThat slap was not official punishment. You were interacting with a peer. It's different from what's being discussed here.
- salviati 4mo ago> A light slap in the face can be very beneficial for snapping hysterical children out of tantrums Even “light” physical punishment is not proven beneficial. The research generally does not find a safe beneficial threshold where hitting becomes good if mild enough; it finds that physical punishment may suppress behavior briefly but is associated with worse outcomes over time. “Light” changes the severity, not the evidence.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- TacticalCoder 4mo ago> 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 an amazing lesson. Something has to be said about peaceful time that create weak men who then find all the excuses towards abusers. The issue with the "well-thinking" mindset is that when pushed to its logical end, rapists are walking totally free after having been caught (UK) and people can break a female police officer' nose at the London Heathrow airport and walk totally free too. With weak judges from a weak society ruling that: "In their culture/countries men don't know that you're not supposed to rape women". We then end up with people, in the west, who genitally mutilate women and non-sense like that. When, on the contrary, you decide to take the psychopaths who ruin society for everyone by the scruff of the neck and put them in chain, you get the homicide rate slashed, in ten years by 100. That's not being decimated: that's being decimated and then being decimated, again. 1/100th. > So what is the possible solution then? Protect those who are vulnerable That's typical victimization, which create more weak men. Weak men who then, for example, become politicians who vote ultra-lax laws and weak judges who then let rapists walk free, making the streets unsafe. If bullies getting spanked by an authority figure don't get the lesson, it's their problem. Not society's problem. Society, as a whole, is supposed to have the monopoly of violence. Instead of that in many countries (like France and the UK), the government gives up and gives the monopoly of violence to drug dealers and rapists. Drug dealers and rapists who learned, since a young age, that were exactly zero repercussion when being a bully. You've got your opinion, I got mine: putting gang members in chains in El Salvador slashed the homicide rate by 100x. Ponder that.
- likeclockwork 4mo agoOkay, 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.
- ncr100 4mo agoSingapore has 30% or more families using corporal punishment, according to this https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10311744/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10311744/
- vidarh 4mo ago30% engaged in child abuse is grotesque.
- nekusar 4mo agoAnd when it is permissible to say that a society is trash? Cause 30% who think beating children is OK, is frankly abhorrent. And yeah, Singapore society as a whole is pure trash. When you have monikers like, "Disneyland with the death penalty", you know it's a real authoritarian shithole. https://thediplomat.com/2026/05/is-singapores-legal-system-becoming-more-draconian/ https://thediplomat.com/2026/05/is-singapores-legal-system-b...
- ungreased0675 4mo agoYou should travel more.
- maxloh 4mo agoThose 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.
- PythagoRascal 4mo agoI 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.
- tintor 4mo ago> I would be so scared to be in a class where "teacher" has the power to harm me physically! How is this different from being in city where "police officer" has the power to shot you?
- nekusar 4mo agoWe're not required to be in a cop's room for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. We ARE required to be in an authoritarian's room for 8 hour a day, 5 days a week for 12 years. A whole lot more would be arrested, assaulted, and executed if we were in cops' sight like this.
- no_no_no_yes 4mo agoPoint taken on the power being abused point. But to the first point, it seems like Singapore has a strong reputation for being low in crime while high in severity of punishment. William Gibson's "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" and all that.
- bji9jhff 4mo agoOn the other hand, I got bullied a lot less after one lose a few teeth. Violence does work.