Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

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 students to a class (I was very privileged to be there) and teachers who gave a crap and put the time in to understand the problem and think of potential solutions, rather than just apply generic policy.

The problem is that most schools don't do that, would likely argue they don't have time to do that, and also probably spend a fair amount of resources and time on relatively ineffective bullying prevention.

- 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore?useskin=ve...

A boy who bullies needs to learn that the world hits back. You can teach that with a cane at 13 or let him find out at 25 when he mouths off to the wrong person. One of these comes with a controlled environment and a school nurse on standby.

I can't see the threat of three strikes with a cane on the bum over clothes, or on the hand being any kind of disincentive to a determined trouble-maker. I do think the _threat_ of corporal punishment does help keep some kids on the straight and narrow, but I don't think it'll deter people like I was - terribly angry teens.

> Spanking has greatly decreased in elementary schools but increased at high schools, especially in non-urban districts.

> Between 2010 and 2025, over 180 high schools reintroduced paddling —- often justified as an alternative to out-of-school or in-school suspension.

https://www.corpun.com/rtsd.htm

  I and the public know
  What all schoolchildren learn
  Those to whom evil is done
  Do evil in return.

As a child I went to a well funded Catholic school in Chicago. Fighting was discouraged by priests who would put the two kids in a boxing ring - we were made to use gloves (but I don't remember helmets). Both kids would have a priest in their corner, but really for their own amusement. Then they would ring the bell and the two combatants would have at it.

What those who don't box don't know is that unless you are trained, boxing exhausts you almost immediately and the gloves very quickly become so heavy you can hardly lift them to punch. At the end of the first round, the priests would ask us if we wanted to continue, we would exhaustedly decline.

My only introduction to the ring ended with my opponent becoming a best friend, and most bouts ended the same.

Again, I'm not condoning this practice, and I'm not nostalgic about the period, but it seemed to have positive effects in a milieu that seems no longer to exist (I'm 73).

Which is a direct result of parents influence on the schools.

What was quietly done in my school instead was the creation of a "sports-oriented class". All male staff, way more PE classes, including judo and the like. Nominally unisex, but only some boys showed interest. Also candidates needed to pass a test of physical fitness, so they saw it as a point of pride that they qualified.

Enrollment began with third grade and enabled me to enjoy a solid four years of relative peace, without the most high-energy part of my class to date.

Interestingly one generally well-behaved classmate also went there, but since he was also physically competent, he didn't experience any issues.

- Some Stephen King-styled cretin who is just big and dumb and wants to hurt people.

- Kids vying for status in an unhealthy way and trying to cut people down.

- That weird "smelling blood in the water" problem that happens when a group of people come across someone who is just _too_ weak and their biology just seems to rev them up.

- A weird kid who is socially maladjusted and thinks they're being bullied, but actually it's just that no one likes them.

Bullies don't usually bully other people in front of their authority figures. Most "anti-bullying" policies in the past 25 years have the unintended consequence of fostering a more clever species of bully called the "crybully". People who are skilled at being assholes and manipulating authority figures into treating them as the victims.

In criminal law, increasing the odds of getting caught is statistically far more effective in decreasing the incidence of violent crime than increasing the punishment.

Other than that, I'm not particularly interested in the moralizing from either side about corporal punishment. Some problem children need mentorship, some just need consequences; most of it depends on their home life. Kids from abusive homes need to be moved to a safer environment and treated with therapy. Kids who are neglected or enabled by their parents need to learn that the world doesn't revolve around them and other people don't have to put up with their crap.

Besides, why is the teacher right? They make mistakes , they can be racist etc.

Just stupd

> In a much milder form, caning is used as a disciplinary measure in schools. Boys aged between 6 and 19 may be given up to three strokes with a light rattan cane on the buttocks over clothing or the palm of the hand as a punishment for serious misconduct, often as a last resort.

> Based on first-hand accounts, the student typically feels moderate to acute pain for the first few minutes, depending on the number of strokes. This soon leads to a stinging sensation and general soreness around the points of impact, usually lasting for some hours; sitting down is likely to be uncomfortable. Superficial bruises and weals may appear on the buttocks and last for a few days after the punishment.

For comparison, criminals get:

> A report by the Singapore Bar Association stated, "The blows are applied with the full force of the jailer's arm. When the rattan hits the bare buttocks, the skin disintegrates, leaving a white line and then a flow of blood."

> Usually, the buttocks will be covered with blood after three strokes. More profuse bleeding may occur in the case of a larger number of strokes. An eyewitness described that after 24 strokes, the buttocks will be a "bloody mess".

> Men who were caned have variously described the pain they experienced as "unbearable", "excruciating", "equivalent to getting hit by a lorry", "having a hot iron placed on your buttocks", etc. A recipient of 10 strokes said, "The pain was beyond description. If there is a word stronger than excruciating, that should be the word to describe it".

> Most offenders struggle violently after each of the first three strokes and then their struggles lessen as they become weaker. By the time the caning is over, those who receive more than three strokes will be in a state of shock.

> The wounds usually take between a week and a month to heal, depending on the number of strokes received. During this time, offenders cannot sit down or lie down on their backs, and experience difficulties controlling their bowels.

I understand that many people feel that any form of corporal punishment is wrong. But I think it’s still important to point out that this is not the same type of caning that Singapore is (in)famous for internationally. And the BBC article, which also makes reference to judicial caning, makes no attempt to explain the difference - which to me feels rather sensationalist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore

A bad person sees such a punishment as an opportunity to intimidate others.

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.

It's probably not for everyone. For the thinking type, it's a solid shortcut to empathy and effective antidote to hostile ego.

If it were up to me, there'd be an option for The Stick, or a brutal psychology session, at least initially. A bit idealistic though when the kinetic purity of the stick often just works.

As adults, I think we tend to forget about the difficulties of childhood bullying, some parents being obvious exceptions. For many, the experience is profound and the impressions lifelong. I get confused here, because I want children to be tough, or prepared to defend themselves, which usually is more effective with experience. But with so many personality types, that cannot apply to all.

There's also the eternal ghost of error and some children who did nothing wrong will inevitably be receiving the stick. That's a small but significant can of worms.

For me this is yet more evidence of humanity's aversion to holistic consciousness. One can argue violence is intrinsic. I think it is but do not agree that its manifestations necessarily are; or rather, we have the potential to change the the output if we really try. Idealistic, yes. The stick is real.

There's also the bizarre possibility that if humanity managed to develop an effective method of imparting empathy, respect, and consciousness to children, that it might break the present system. An awful lot of business wouldn't happen if both parties cared about each other.

My school (posh, British) turned a blind eye to bullying and fighting, there wasn't a great deal but I distinctly remember walking past a teacher having recently been punched in the face, bleeding from my mouth, and him acknowledging that I looked in a state but doing nothing.

Since I never turned away from a scrap I never really encountered bullying, now I have boys of my own and hope that when they're of school age they don't have to run the gauntlet as I did.

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 unknowingly brought my spelling book home and had difficulty understanding the instructions. Years later, I happened to meet her on a public bus in Singapore, but she had no recollection of who I was.

I was also physically abused by classmates for months. Some stole my coins or manipulated me through social engineering.

Some teachers were ridiculous and unprofessional when caning students. I witnessed that many times.

Despite all these terrible experiences, a school belle, Lisa Huang Shu Shung, once became smitten with me. We lost touch after graduation — I was in the worst class while she was in the best class. Sometimes, I still wonder how she is doing now. But why should I post in HN?

I have become semi-disabled in my 40s, now living with night blindness and no love life.

Even after growing up, you can still encounter people who would beat others up. That even happened to me during NS, my phone was even stolen by one of them in our room but the officers could not do anything.

My view is that caning only provides a short-term solution; it does not solve long-term problems.

Of course, some of the naughty classmates (gangsters who loved causing trouble and making noise) were eventually sent to jail — one for voyeurism and another for assault — while others were expelled from school.

Years later, I came across some old schoolmates again, but we had become strangers on the street. We were no longer the students we once were.

So I hope the future kids would never have to go through the same expereince. Just don't be selfish and don't lose your empathy towards others, because we won't be reborn after billion years just as we did not experience the pain of waiting 13.6 billion years.

Humans are imperfect mammals.

My peers learned they could trigger me in the same way, and were always careful to be subtle and passive, lest they also get punished. I suppose that is also, street justice.

The cycle continues.

Caring would be more effective than caning. But Singapore gonna Singapore.

This should be solved by nonviolence.

I think it ceases to be a good form of punishment when it's repeatedly used. I built a resilience toward spanking. In one hand it meant that the threat of the punishment, and the punishment itself was ineffectual, and in the other to regain efficacy it would've required escalation—fortunately for me it began and ended at spanking.

I think the issues are manifold, though. People willing to step outside the line and assault and or batter students are willing to break the rules for one reason or another. For instance the aforementioned resilience.

The natural social dynamics one would reasonably expect to play out are fettered by the rules, irrespective of the nature of retaliation. Fighting in retaliation, bullying in retaliation, shunning, shaming and so forth—all beyond the pale.

Teachers and admin are then deferred to, but the tools at their disposal are, from what I experienced and saw, pretty minimal. However they carry the unnatural burden of handling belligerents while maintaining professionality is a difficult tight rope to walk, and frankly ineffectual, but this is worsened when the students can be part of a protected class. At this point the school assumes legal liability for their treatment.

With a chronic misbehavior you end up with a treatment-resistant student, and with that it saddles the parents almost exclusively with the governance of their children. This can have mixed outcomes, if you can imagine, spanning from extremely responsible to complete absenteeism.

I think in an ideal situation the prevailing culture would be one where students self-police, within reason, as they're allotted the most freedom in interacting with one another, but we've largely wrested their hands in these contexts and bred a culture of bystanders in so doing. And I think that is seriously problematic and has had long-running consequences on the culture at large.

I find the evolution of §1631 of the German civic code interesting from 1900 to the early 2000s it slowly moved from "the father has the right to chastise the children" to "the parents have the right and obligation to bring up their children. humiliation is no appropriate means for upbringing."

so no form of violence, psychological and physical, that goes beyond merely protecting the child or it's environment from harm, is appropriate. any such acts that are covered elsewhere in the code actually turn violent into a felony: insult, beating, locking in the room, even grounding? that's not how you turn a young human into a decent adult.

the turning point btw was Astrid Lindgren of Pipi Longstockings fame, and her acceptance speech "Never Violence!" for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, a prestigious event with high reach in politics and intellectual elites. The speech was rocking the boat, indeed, she was asked to only hand out the prints and not actually give the speech, to not spill the event. Yet she insisted...

Never Violence! - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Violence!

Not sure how it helped, I just lived in constant stress of homework. But more importantly, the 'naughty' kids got immune to it. If you pipe everyone for minor infractions, then people just took it in stride.

____

Then we were posted in to Saudi in the early 00's, and I vividly remember an event. I was in an all boys high school by then (segregated because saudi, duh), and one day, just an hour or so before end of school, we were all ordered to assemble in the main ground. It was surprising since no event was planned, and the teachers were grim faced.

Soon a van came into the forefront, and out came the police (both the normal uniformed police and the religious police, remember this was saudi like 3-ish kings back) and a few kids.... who were caned in front of us. Not much, 3-4 strikes each, and their backs were clothed, but it was whole dramatic production nonetheless, with a speech in arabic and everything.

Turns out (explained by teachers after we came back to class) they were boys from our school who had loitered around the girls section, and upon the security guard's attempt to shoo them away, had bullied and hurt him badly.

Now THAT put the fear of god in the kids, at least for awhile. It didn't mean there weren't kids smoking in the bathrooms or other teenage bullshit even after, but the reminder that you could be caned in front of the entire school did put a damper on the amount of mischief that kids committed for some time.... until of course the kids who saw the scene graduated and the memory was lost, I guess.

____

So, while there is some merit to public corporal punishment and the humiliation ritual... but even then, kids are stupid and will justify to themselves many things (hey I'm not going to the extent of going to the girls section, nah it's just me and the lads messing around with a fellow classmate, doesn't rise to the level of caning, does it?)

And secondly, teachers will react by lower the bar further and further down until they go back to corporal punishment for everything (when all you have a hammer...)

____

One of the best way to control mischievous kids, imho, is to just kick them out.

Sounds brutal, but when you have a collective environment like a school, you can't waste the time of the overwhelming majority of kids for the very few who just don't want to 'fit the system'.

And yes, 'fitting the system' was a deliberate choice of words, because usually that terminology is used for kids who need guidance... but these aren't 'naughty' kids who just need a 'creative outlet', we are talking about bullies here; if you have reached highschool age and you still haven't grokked that you can't just hit fellow students just because you are miserable... then you need to spend time elsewhere and learn the costs of fitting in society.

Maybe very [south]asian-coded of me, but our parents put a lot of time and expense in our educations (literally the only source of social uplift for us), and if we can't study because some other parent is lacking in raising their child.... that should not affect us, the education market is already very competitive and we can't risk falling behind.

The question of course arises, what to do with the kids who have been kicked out? Can't let them roam around or the problem gets worse, nothing more dangerous than a teenager with no goals, they are walking loose cannons.

Honestly... I don't know. Caning will work for a bit... but how long before the shock value passes? Some sort of juvie? That again just gets them into the crime pathway. Maybe some special school for them? But isn't that a juvie by another name?