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Comment by davyAdewoyin | Hacker News Reader

As I previously mentioned, if you actually grew up in a system where corporal punishment is carried out, you would find that point two is not such a bother. No one cares whether a parent or teacher can cane them except they were in the wrong of course, perhaps because it is a culture and a shared experience and I knew a lot of children growing up who prefer the canning to other form of punishment.

I think the issue lies in your conflating caning and other forms of corporal punishment with physical harm. It is not the same as hitting a student or throwing a bottle at someone; it can be done very humanely. Sure, abuse is inevitable, and I could point to many teachers who were terrible and took out their issues on students, but such cases were easily resolved by reporting them to the principal or bringing parents to school the next day to file a complaint.

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> such cases were easily resolved

Hah!

In any case, it is a curious argument that, in order to show that stronger people should not hurt weaker people, you think it's okay for stronger people to hurt weaker people.

> it is a curious argument that, in order to show that stronger people should not hurt weaker people, you think it's okay for stronger people to hurt weaker people

Not curious at all. Ingrains the lesson that, should you feel inclined to abuse your strength, there is always someone stronger. That's a clear lesson that even works on psychopaths who otherwise feel no remorse and cannot be influenced by other means.

Conversely, it also ingrains the lesson that it is ok to abuse anyone weaker than you A) if you know you can get away with it (because someone stronger is not always around/aware/inclined to intervene), or B) because that is just normal / the way the world is.

I don't see how that follows. In an environment in which physical correction has no reason, and is doled out unfairly (as with alcoholic parents), then sure, someone would ingrain the idea that the world is callous and unfair and they should get theirs at the expense of others if they can. If they instead only experience physical correction due to specific reasons that are deemed far outside the bounds of acceptable (such as inflicting violence on others), that's a whole different lesson.

Yeah. Instead of teaching school bullies to respect others, we are reinforcing the value of power dynamics, where the one in power defines the rules, and the weak must accept and suffer.

That’s called training a person to live in the real world and not be a criminal.

I think you’re missing the point.

A teacher’s like or dislike of a student is often irrational and based on personal emotion; they are human beings, after all. The real issue is that they wield significant power with very few checks and balances. They are essentially dictators. They work within a system where colleagues often cover one another’s works rather than questioning each other’s professional conduct.

It is far too dangerous to grant them the power of corporal punishment while simply hoping they will remain fair. I believe that in every school, there is at least one teacher who would abuse it.

Yup. I and all of my peers would vastly prefer to get a caning, or belting, or piping (hit with a short length of garden hose), or any other form of corporal punishment over something torturous like extra homework.

We'd watch Hollywood movies and be bewildered by the misbehavior and lack of respect shown to teachers in classrooms.

Every class has square pegs, but with strict teachers, they'd stay in line and not ruin the learning environment for the rest of the class.

Part way through high school, corporal punishment by teachers was banned nationwide, with only the headteacher allowed to administer that punishment. Since then I believe not even headteachers are permitted to strike students.

Might have been as a result of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

Schools have gone downhill since.

This is just a defense of violence and abuse.

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