Comment by colanderman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colanderman | Hacker News Reader

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What weird world do you live in that "eating a dog biscuit" is "being held accountable" for one's actions?

Imagine you fucked up at your job; brought down the production server or something. And at the next team meeting, your boss brings out a dog bowl with moist dog food in it and tells you to get on the ground and eat it. And if you don't, you'll get demoted.

That's fucked up, right? No different than forcing a kid to eat a dog biscuit because he chatted too much.

Modern disciplinary theory promotes the idea of "natural consequences". If someone were chatty in my classroom, the natural consequence is to separate them from whomever they're chatting. It's both a punishment (can't sit near friends any longer) and solves the problem (not near those kid wants to chat to). Alternatively, if the kid just speaks out a lot and ignores material, start asking them to recap for the class what we just went over. Again, both a punishment (has to do extra work) and solves the problem (forces better attention, redirects attention-seeking behavior). No humiliation needed beyond simply getting called out by the teacher for the disruption – again, a natural consequence.

Public humiliation is especially insidious in multicultural classrooms. While western students may take public humiliation in stride (as me and my co-conspirators did), students from some backgrounds (e.g. east Asian) take public humiliation, especially from an authority figure, extremely harshly, making such disciplinary actions a very poor idea.

We live in a civilized society with lots of behavioral research. No need to resort to arbitrary public humiliation to enforce discipline.

>> No different

Except that you intentionally changed a lot of details to make it seem even less pleasant? So yeah, it would seem that even in your mind it's different. I'm all for NOT doing this in a classroom. I'm not saying it's remotely a good idea, or appropriate. Although I'd also wager that the overwhlmling majority of the research you refer to has been published after the incident took place. I got physically beaten in school, and that also doesn't happen. But that and this are pretty low on the scale to be considered abuse and trauma. Another comment even said that the dog biscuit has nothing to do with it being abuse, but that it's the humiliation aspect. If being called to the front of the class for being too chatty is traumatic abuse, you are in for some serious problem in life and you need to get that settled sooner rather than later. If you consider this abuse, more serious abuse will be taken even less seriously by even more people. If you were made to eat a biscuit and are haunted by the horrific memory, you need to get over it and focus a lot more on what other people are going through.

But can't we separate between something being really stupid and - IMO - a fireable offense if repeated (like a teacher giving kids dog biscuits) and childhood trauma?

Or am I misunderstanding and there is some stronger word that I'm not aware of for getting beaten up, forgotten, abused etc?

Otherwise I feel we are mixing basically privileged kids like

1.) myself (poor parents, no tv, mostly didn't get to play football with the boys at my age until I was approaching teenage)

with kids who

2.) has been beaten or otherwise abused, suffered food deprivation either as punishment or because no food was available etc.

While I sometimes foolishly could wish I was accepted in childhood I really don't want to pretend I suffered a lot.

I even think that it would just make me weaker.

I think we're arguing over the definition of a broad term – "trauma". What's emotionally traumatic (causing psychological injury or great distress, per Wiktionary) to one student can be a chance for fun for another (as the OP pointed out, he had fun with the dog biscuits, good for him). It varies by culture too.

But I think everyone here can remember a time they were forced to do something humiliating by one's peers. That's a basic form of bullying, which studies have shown has lasting effects into adulthood. [1] Great distress + psychological injury = emotional trauma. ("Great" and "injury" are again broad terms so we could keep going here…)

Being forced to do something humiliating by an authority figure – even as a punishment – is not really much different from being forced by a peer. It's arguably worse, since the authority figure models to the child's peers that humiliating this child is OK. It's not really excusable when there are plenty of other disciplinary options available. (Certainly I've never taught at or attended a school that found it necessary to keep a supply of dog biscuits at hand.)

Yes, being beaten or denied food are much worse – the stronger word I would use there is "child abuse". Doesn't mean that denigration by an authority figure isn't traumatic.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/long-term-effects-o...

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