Spanking!

[Guest Len B'stard]

I don't reckon all this looking down on the personal experience aspect. Nothing teaches you about life better than your own observations.

Your own observations only teach you about your own observations.

What you need to do is look at larger groups of humans and then divide them into two subgroups: one that have been spanked and one who hasn't. You can then look at differences in crime records, especially in regards to violence among these groups. If one of the groups differs from the other in a statistically significant manner, then that information is immensely more valuable than one's own personal experiences. In other word, the experiences of MANY is much more interesting than the experiences of ONE when it comes to establishing general trends among large population groups. If the groups are large enough, and the studies are done properly, you can reveal patter/trends/laws that are relevant for humans in general. This is trivial to one as intelligent as you.

Of course the studies underlying the findings that spanking cause a higher probability for violence and anti-social behaviour are much more complex than what I have sketched out above, for various reasons; I just wanted to describe the general principle. Dismissing group studies where thousands of people have been studied in favour of one's own highly limited experiences is a weird thing to do - do people think their own experiences are somehow more reflective of how humans behave than the accumulated experiences of thousands of others? That is so delightfully arrogant that it makes me all warm inside.

Yes, your own observations, to my mind, are more reliable and trustworthy than some study, I sincerely believe that...and not just your observations of what happens/happened to you but others around you too. Studies are all well and good but how do i know how on the level a study is, how do i know that people tell the truth to people asking them the questions that these sorts of studies are based around. And how do you know what other factors have a bearing on the topic at hand? There's just SOOO many unanswered questions, so much grey area, so many relevant details, this whole thing is like...a very very one dimensional picture. I'm not saying they're completely useless, far from it, they can be quite illuminating but at the same time i don't think they can substitute for common sense and a pair of eyes.

Whereas in personal experience you know people, you see the reality of who they are and what motivates them, or at least you see more of that shit, you get a much broader and case specific and more human picture.

Cuz, OK, as a hypothetical example, lets say there's this working class ghetto type area where the majority of parents give their kids a slap or two and then over in the middle class neighborhood across the way you got a bunch of nicey-nice parents who all are anti-slappers or whatever, so you build a bunch of statistics about these motherfuckers that reflect that, OK, the majority of the kids that got spanked had like criminal records, showed some kinda predilection towards violence that, according to your perspective, clearly shows that because they got spanked that they turned out bad eggs or whatever.

BUT...maybe it's cuz they live in a violent part of town, are exposed to a different kind of world and a different kind of life in which violence factors in more and it has nothing to do with Mum giving you a slap for coming in 3 hours late one night and more to do with the fact that you live amongst a section of society in which if you're not a violent person then you fuckin' eaten alive.

Thats just a reeled off the top of my head hypothesis and possibly doesn't bear scrutiny but the idea is that...y'know, these kindsa statistics, in terms of like sociological yardsticks are kinda shaky because there are a multitude of factors that come into play.

Edited May 19, 2014 by sugaraylen

[Dazey]

What do people think about the ban on corporal punishment in schools?

Standards of behaviour these days are far worse than back when a teacher was allowed to give the kids a good kicking.

Corporal punishment IS bad behaviour.

Yeah but some kids deserve a good fucking walloping!!!

Regardless, I don't think teachers should be empowered by the right to exercise violence on kids. I don't think anyone should. I am confident other tools are available to teachers as it is to parents.

The correlation between absence of corporal punishment in school and kids misbehaving, is also only correlation. We haven't had corporal punishment in Norwegian school in decades and as far as I know, the current generations are super-polite . Sure, hitting kids will make they behave, at least temporarily, but as I said, there are other ways. Using violence should never really be an option.

Not even the occasional Chinese burn?

[Guest Len B'stard]

I got a cousin from Bradford who got a work placement as a teacher over in Stockwell. Anyway, he's a bit of a lad, not afraid to let his hands go and that. Anyway, he's in Stockwell and these two kids, 15 yr olds, get into a fight and he gets in the middle and breaks em up and apparently one of these kids swung and clipped him on the neck and also, at one point said 'Sir, get out of the way or I swear to fuckin' God you're getting smashed!' (yeah, i liked that, Sir, you're getting smashed ) And he was like...looking at this kid thinking 'you fuckin' little slag, i could drop you like a fuckin' bitch and you wouldn't get up for a week' and...it just looked like the most hilairious scene I could imagine, cuz he's quite a tough nut of lad...and he gets mugged off by this little weenie in a school uniform, it's things like that that make me believe in the possibility of a higher power

[SoulMonster]

I don't reckon all this looking down on the personal experience aspect. Nothing teaches you about life better than your own observations.

Your own observations only teach you about your own observations.

What you need to do is look at larger groups of humans and then divide them into two subgroups: one that have been spanked and one who hasn't. You can then look at differences in crime records, especially in regards to violence among these groups. If one of the groups differs from the other in a statistically significant manner, then that information is immensely more valuable than one's own personal experiences. In other word, the experiences of MANY is much more interesting than the experiences of ONE when it comes to establishing general trends among large population groups. If the groups are large enough, and the studies are done properly, you can reveal patter/trends/laws that are relevant for humans in general. This is trivial to one as intelligent as you.

Of course the studies underlying the findings that spanking cause a higher probability for violence and anti-social behaviour are much more complex than what I have sketched out above, for various reasons; I just wanted to describe the general principle. Dismissing group studies where thousands of people have been studied in favour of one's own highly limited experiences is a weird thing to do - do people think their own experiences are somehow more reflective of how humans behave than the accumulated experiences of thousands of others? That is so delightfully arrogant that it makes me all warm inside.

Yes, your own observations, to my mind, are more reliable and trustworthy than some study, I sincerely believe that...and not just your observations of what happens/happened to you but others around you too. Studies are all well and good but how do i know how on the level a study is, how do i know that people tell the truth to people asking them the questions that these sorts of studies are based around. And how do you know what other factors have a bearing on the topic at hand? There's just SOOO many unanswered questions, so much grey area, so many relevant details, this whole thing is like...a very very one dimensional picture.

There are large fields of statistical theory devoted to removing errors and noise from such studies, and the results always come with confidence intervals. When 10 000 people have been studied and the results are significant, then you'd be wrong to stubbornly refute that because it happens to contradict your own meagre experience, especially if you know how flawed our own minds are at interpreting our experiences. I think you'd do good to read up on the scientific method

[Thin White Duke]

The thing is, nowadays when giving a kid a slap is or almost is a crime... it's not like bullying has disappeared and the general perception is that the respect towards teachers' authority or any authority in general has decreased a lot. So, of course I thinks it's great to resort to other educational methods less questionable but things like this make me question if they are actually working properly. Modern education in general. I'm not even meaning a punctual type of punishment for a punctual bad bahaviour.

[Guest Len B'stard]

I had a teacher throw a board-rubber at my head once...this is in England Missed, thankfully. I suppose nowadays they'd fuckin' sue the school. Went home and told my Dad and he's like 'Good, you were probably asking for it!' He actually struck up a friendship with that teacher on the basis of that, remember going to the parents evening and the old man goes to him 'look, if he gets out of hand you just give him a slap round the head' and I'm like oh fuckin' cheers Dad

Next day in Maths first thing he's like 'now remember what your Dad told me!'

[SoulMonster]

There are many problems with our school systems, too little violence from the teachers is not one of them

[Thin White Duke]

I changed my mind. After seeing the kind of shoes teachers wear to school, I now can understand why kids don't have any respect for them.

[magisme]

I changed my mind. After seeing the kind of shoes teachers wear to school, I now can understand why kids don't have any respect for them.

[SoulMonster]

When I was in school there were teachers that could gain the students' respect and teachers who couldn't. None of them ever slapped anyone.

One threatened to beat the fuck out of me and my friend but never did. I think he was just angry and said that 'cause we had crossed a highway while orienteering.

I don't even think "respect" is a suitable word to describe the feeling that would arise in kids who are subjected to violence from adults in a classroom situation. "Fear" is probably closer to truth. Personally I would lose respect for teachers who aren't able to control a class without violence, I would consider it a weakness and failing.

[magisme]

Machiavelli said some things about fear. His opposition was love/fear as opposed to respect/fear, but I imagine he'd say pretty much the same thing.

[netcat]

in totalitarian systems fear equals respect. in democratic systems it doesn't

[magisme]

I don't respect US leaders, but I sure as hell fear what they could do to me if I got out of line.

For what it's worth.

[netcat]

I don't respect US leaders, but I sure as hell fear what they could do to me if I got out of line.

which only proves my point?

[Guest Len B'stard]

Machiavelli said some things about fear. His opposition was love/fear as opposed to respect/fear, but I imagine he'd say pretty much the same thing.

He also said 'i keep my mind on my money, money on my mind, finger on the trigger hooray for tolerance! hand on my nine!'

[pestilence]