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Comment by bentley | Hacker News Reader

In adulthood I’ve never had to resolve a problematic interaction through physical violence, and I hope to never have to. The methods I have used—distancing myself from the bully, reporting to management/HR/oversight agencies—are quite like the methods I used to avoid bullying in childhood. I never used violence back then either.

The only meaningful difference between now and then is that in adulthood I have more such avenues and they are much more effective. The fact that they were less effective in childhood is an indictment of the administrative and social structure we have constructed schools to have, not of nonviolent methods themselves. I reject your assertion that it’s helpful for a bullied child to model behavior on chimpanzees in the jungle or criminals in prison. Becoming violent in childhood would have had negative long‐term effects on me, and I’m glad nobody back then gave me the “advice” you’re sharing now.

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Good response. Toxic organisations (at whatever scale) fail to maintain an atmosphere where bullying is rejected and people are helped to be their best. Children should be taught to recognise toxic organisations and be given courage to exit them. And internalize that you do this as an adult too. There are situations where assault or battery could arise, and it is good to have some training in how to deal with those situations. Bullying, assault, battery are all abusive: it’s just bullying is legal and the others are not.

Or perhaps the conclusion here is that administrative intervention is not effective on children the same way as it is on adults.

Given that my interactions with adults outside of school (and later, when I was pulled out of public school to be homeschooled) were almost always positive, I’m willing to specifically blame school administration and/or their techniques.

I think you problably have some sampling bias in your adult interactions.

Im guessing most of them don't involve the lowest functioning portion of the population, eg, people who regularly comment violence, rape, and beat their wives, or are currently incarcerated. Public schools cut across the entire population spectrum and include children with legitimate social and cognitive deficiencies.

Adults also have more developed brains and better incentives to obey. a hostile worker might still care about losing their income, car, or house. It is hard to find comparable incentives for children and young adults.

>I think you problably have some sampling bias in your adult interactions.

Is there anyone who doesn't have 'sampling bias' in their adult interactions? This seems like a misapplication of a technical term.

I think it is a fair description of the error.

"the well adjusted adults I know easily resolve issues without violence" does not mean that you should expect the same results for all adults, or for all children.

The original assertion I disputed was that we should accept that the social dynamics in a school match those of a prison.

Certainly I don’t pretend there aren’t environments where adults are violent and unreasonable. Such as prisons, or other places with “people who regularly commit violence, rape, and beat their wives.”

If your argument is that school environments must be similarly unpleasant because they take students from all strata of society, I counter: we do not take teachers and administrators from all strata of society, and society should hold schools to a higher standard than environments where violence and mental abuse unavoidably happen constantly, because we can take lessons from environments where such things are not normal.

You can hold schools to any standard you want, but that does not mean it is actually achievable. My point was that being able to meet high standards with functioning adults is not evidence that it can be met with non-functioning children

> should hold schools to a higher standard than environments where violence and mental abuse unavoidably happen constantly

This seems harmfully naïve to me. In pursuing this aspiration we ignore the realities that exacerbate conflict. Children and teenagers are literally not cognitively developed enough (on average) to function to this standard. This remains true no matter how much we wish it weren't.

More effective policy comes from embracing this reality. "Violence and mental abuse" are inevitable consequences of the construction of hominid dominance hierarchies. Instead of fighting their construction, we should create environments where they can occur most naturally.

In another context you seem to take quite a different view:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33795206

Why do we have to violence as inevitable just when kids are involved?

Although I'm not suggesting that we literally 'arrest and imprison' bullies, I think the first paragraph of your linked post is exactly right. The best way to stop bullying is to make it clear that it's not an acceptable behavior and to punish the perpetrators.

Right, I'm suggesting that adults are sufficiently cognitively developed to take personal responsibility for their actions. Children clearly are not. I'm not suggesting we stop punishing bullies, I'm just suggesting that we apply our knowledge of childhood psychology to the engineering of the school social environment. Unlike adults, there has been no intervention that has been demonstrated effective in stopping children from applying violence to the construction of dominance hierarchies. Lord of the flies is deemed chillingly instructive for a reason. Children typically age out of this behaviour by their late teens and go on to become functional, peaceful adults. The ones that do not are indeed destined for prison.

Children and adults are significantly cognitively different, they may as well be different species. We should embrace this reality.

>Lord of the flies is deemed chillingly instructive for a reason

It tells you what children might do if left to their own devices without adult supervision – i.e. in an environment completely unlike a school. The Lord of the Flies is also a work of fiction that's not based on any real life events, as far as I'm aware. In any actual instances of kids being stranded on an island that I've been able to find, the results were rather different: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...

>Unlike adults, there has been no intervention that has been demonstrated effective in stopping children from applying violence to the construction of dominance hierarchies

In my school there was an effective intervention: you got punished if you beat someone up, and excluded from the school if you kept doing it. I guess no-one had told us that we were required to form 'hominid dominance hierarchies' and that we were cognitively incapable of responding to simple incentives.

>I'm just suggesting that we apply our knowledge of childhood psychology to the engineering of the school social environment

And what would this mean, exactly, beyond just accepting the inevitability of violence?

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