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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

“Writing lines” was (perhaps still is) a common punishment in British schools: copy something out 100 times then the teacher would tear it up in front of you with a big grin on their face. Not sure it actually taught anything other than “don’t get caught next time”.

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If we got a deans' detention at my high school in New Zealand, we had to write numbers for 1.5 hours on a Friday, starting at 1000 and going up. There was a minimum you had to write too, if you took the piss and didn't write anything you'd get another detention.

I always thought these kinds of busywork are completely useless, and don't do anything to stop you from getting into trouble again, they never did for me at least.

There's always been an element of sadism in commonwealth country's schooling systems. We had to wear shorts to school until 5th form, even in winter when it hit sub zero temperatures (at least it didn't snow).

At least they got rid of the privilege of prefects being able to hand out detentions after the entire school collectively told them to fuck off.

As someone who has issues with authority, high school was a very difficult time for me.

I wonder how important the ritualistic effects end up being. If you get in trouble, for presumably large classes of trouble, you face detention. That's better than suspension or expulsion or something else that could have far-reaching impact. That people then actually show up for detention is also quite remarkable, especially if the threat of missing it or not doing the numbers is just...more detention. The waste of time reinforces the idea of "doing the time" for your crime, afterwards things are square again, like a ritual cleansing. It lets you know you can make mistakes bad enough to get detention, repeatedly even, but you can still come out of it ok in the end.

Don't understand the shorts thing in winter though.

Don't understand the shorts thing in winter though.

It is usually for “character building” so they say

That is how I learned cursive. Trying to write one line hundreds of times, the only efficient way is cursive.

My trick was to write the first word on each line, then the second, and so forth. I don't know if it was truly faster, but it sure seemed that way.

Teachers also felt like that wasn't in the spirit of the punishment so it had the added fun of sticking it to "the man!"

>My trick was to write the first word on each line, then the second, and so forth.

You basically used Taylor-esque division of labor with yourself. Doing the same task a lot usually you become faster and more efficient at it. If you only have yourself it still might be faster if the task is repetitive enough and your context switching time is less than the time you save by writing one word so many times.

I learned to write on a blackboard with both arms at the same time (an ability which has had me labeled a freak!). In this case, it worked great so long as nobody saw you do it, and, the phrase wasn't two long.

I knew simultaneous ambidextrousness wasn't that unusual.

Still yet to tackle that one (after I learn ambidextrousness).

my high school math teacher could - write perfectly on the board while looking at the class - write a complete sentence starting from both ends meeting perfectly in the middle

More things to aspire to with tentative hopefulness! :D

(Said as someone whose hand-eye coordination could do with some serious tuning)

We had a cool trick of attaching 4-5 pens/pencils together, and then writing. Took a little practice but then a big time save.

I was beginning to wonder if my friends and I were the only ones who figured this out :-)

I made a couple of sheets in advance once, as my teacher always said to write 50 lines before you could leave for recess. The look on her face when I just pulled one out of my desk... to her credit she let me go!

negative reinforcement encourages negative behavior in subjects with varying results but systematic abuses you'd find with the likes of British boarding schools where a theory suggests homosexual power dynamics often found in such environments void of women produces predators (Jimmy the SAville) or the horrible Ceauşescu's Natalist policies that resulted in the ban of contraception and abortion in hopes of an increased economic output from an increased population (wtf) resulted in an entire generation of unwanted children growing up under state apparatus....

positive reinforcement I think is better.

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