5/8/2026 at 4:50:19 AM
The only effective punishment/threat that I saw work on my bullies at school was the threat to remove one of them from the football team and prevent him from playing for the school. He turned it around and was ok after that.It was highly effective because it was a bigger punishment than those used for not doing your homework, and because it was highly relevant to him specifically. It worked because we had 16 students to a class (I was very privileged to be there) and teachers who gave a crap and put the time in to understand the problem and think of potential solutions, rather than just apply generic policy.
The problem is that most schools don't do that, would likely argue they don't have time to do that, and also probably spend a fair amount of resources and time on relatively ineffective bullying prevention.
by danpalmer
5/8/2026 at 11:30:09 AM
Some of the generic policies can be very strange, too.I once got detention for getting punched in the arm. I was much taller than any of the school bullies, so they mostly didn't start anything with me. But every now and then, they would try. The punch barely hurt and I didn't really care, but another student saw it and reported it. The staff knew what happened, understood that I was the only one that got hit, and then gave us both detention. I couldn't believe it. That angered me 100x more than the bully. Looking back, I assume this policy was intended to deal with cases where it's unclear who hit who or who started it. But I became fixated on how unfair it was. If they wanted to create another troublemaker, they almost succeeded.
by sholladay
5/8/2026 at 11:39:16 AM
That’s “zero tolerance” hard at work.Wouldn't want a kid who is being bullied to think about retaliating.
Also, because the bully can time the bullying, the initial event is often missed, but the victim is caught retaliating.
It sounds fair on paper, but punishing everybody involved does not work.
by doubled112
5/8/2026 at 11:59:21 AM
Zero tolerance can lead to a new type of bullying: state sponsored. I remember a younger colleague who talked about her school experience, this was just at the start of zero tolerance because there was a belief that bullying caused school gun violence. Bullies quickly found out it was easy to just report "weird" kids as potential shooters and let the school torment them with investigations.by sybercecurity
5/8/2026 at 4:17:18 PM
> Zero tolerance can lead to a new type of bullying: state sponsored.Absolutely. The more of a victim you're perceived the more attention and the more punishment the bully gets. If the system overreacts, bullies would be stupid not to use the over-reaction in their favor. One of the kids at my daughter's school figured it out and was getting others in trouble by falling down then telling the teacher so and so pushed her and that was like 2nd grade. They can also team up together to accumulate these reports against student they don't like and just let the state come down on them and ruin their life.
by rdtsc
5/8/2026 at 5:15:09 PM
So, what you’re saying is, HR department behaviours start long before HR department employment.by bonesss
5/11/2026 at 9:33:56 AM
HR and school admin are the same in that many mistakenly think they are there to help the employee or the student. That is not true. They are there to protect the institution, to manage and mitigate risk and liability. Any assistance to employees or students is a side effect of that work.by joeross
5/9/2026 at 2:15:15 AM
The institutions we force on our children often closely mirror the institutions we implement for ourselves. Conversely, the institutions we go through as children mold our perceptions of how they should appear in adulthood.by natpalmer1776
5/9/2026 at 12:13:56 PM
> the scapegoat cannot appear as scapegoat, as it does in the Gospels, without losing all credibility. To account for it, let us look more closely at an expression I have used throughout these lectures as if it signified something quite obvious — scapegoat. It is not an ordinary concept. Instead it is something paradoxical, a principle of illusion whose efficacy requires complete ignorance of it. To have a scapegoat is not to know that one has one. As soon as the scapegoat is revealed and named as such, it loses its power. To reveal its purely mimetic nature, as the Gospels do, is to understand that there is nothing in the scapegoat phenomenon intellectually or spiritually deserving of faith; it is to see that the persecutors of any scapegoat, and not only of Jesus, hate him without reason, by virtue of an illusion that propagates itself irresistibly but no less unreasonably among them. It is pure, collective illusion, spectacular but deceiving.René Girard
by Xmd5a
5/9/2026 at 5:15:54 AM
This doesn't sound like a result of "zero tolerance" policies, unless the one faking being attacked was also punished, but you didn't mention it.And if that's the case "zero tolerance" would on the face of it seem to discourage this kind of fakery by punishing the faker too.
Even the comment before doesn't sound that relevant to the normal complaint because again, the two parties aren't both being punished, just the one reported to the system as a potential threat.
So we are complaining:
1. The victim and the perpetrator are equally punished (because it's hard to figure out who started it when a physical fight starts)
2. People shouldn't always believe reports of kids being potential school shooters, because they might be liars doing a mini-(or indeed literal) SWATing by weaponizing the institutional response.
3. People shouldn't always believe people who complain about bullies generally, because they might be liars being "cry-bullies"
These individually sounds like hard problems to solve. Combined they have further complexities and solutions for one seen to make others worse.
The tone of these complaints often make it seem like there is an obvious better way, but that may in fact just reflect the strong feeling that they were the victim, and that the other person should have been punished, not them (or their child).
Which is understandable but not really a great basis to make policy on.
by ZeroGravitas
5/9/2026 at 9:19:14 PM
> This doesn't sound like a result of "zero tolerance" policies, unless the one faking being attacked was also punished, but you didn't mention it.The implication is that the system overreacts one way only, taking the word of the victim at face value and then applying "zero tolerance" towards the perceived bully.
Like I mentioned "if the system overreacts, bullies would be stupid not to use the over-reaction in their favor". Think of it like a tree that's unbalanced and leaning heavily one way, well you can make it fall on someone by pushing it in the way it leans, it won't take much effort to do that, it's already leaning as opposed taking tree standing tall and trying to topple that down on someone.
by rdtsc
5/8/2026 at 12:29:39 PM
You can also use the school staff to help you bully other kids.Play the victim, they can't allow that, now the other kid is in trouble for nothing.
Start a fight knowing you'll both get into trouble, laugh at the other kid who is in trouble because of your choices.
by doubled112
5/9/2026 at 3:18:50 AM
My (private) school had the luxury of sorting this through a multi tier system. a) detention was 3 hours minimum on a saturday. It involved manual labor like mulching flower beds, picking up litter while rolling around 50 gallon drums, etc. b) if you liked manual labor you were made to do homework with someone paying direct attention or lecturing subjects you were bad at. c) if you attempted to opt out of that they would have you dig holes 3 feet deep with a post hole digger and fill them back in. d) if you attempted to opt out of that you got 2 options 1) the teachers thought you were redeemable. you pushed the dumpster around campus picking up the 50 gallon drums. 3 times during the circuit you'd come back and raise a 50 lb plate overhead and drop it to smash the garbage. Aroudn 30 times each round. One of the philosophy teachers would expound on your life decisions for the full 3 hours. 2) you were enrolled at your public school immediately, and truant the next day. your parents were called and told to pick you up and returned the balance of the tuition.it was a large luxury of privilege.
by grogenaut
5/8/2026 at 2:31:03 PM
Bullying via playing the victim can work after school too. Eg. some legal cases are like this.by thih9
5/8/2026 at 4:19:19 PM
It works too well. Especially with the "first to call" or "first to complain" gets automatically a 500 point boost in credibility. "Clearly if they called the police first, the to other party must be at fault".by rdtsc
5/8/2026 at 12:15:57 PM
> It sounds fair on paperTo who!? It doesn't sound fair at all. It sounds like an "authority" being embarrassed their precious system wasn't able to catch the perceived issue. "I can't see everything so, until I can (ominous foreshadowing camera angle), every suspect is guilty."
by kgwxd
5/8/2026 at 5:40:35 PM
Yeah, this is about avoiding a decision, not trying to even pretend to be fair. The administration is betting the parents won’t escalate the issue.by JumpCrisscross
5/8/2026 at 12:34:22 PM
It isn't sold like this though, hence it working differently on paper and in practice.There is no tolerance for violence. The kid is involved in a violent situation, and the kid is punished for it. That is a fairly logical set of steps until you realize how vague "involved" is.
by doubled112
5/11/2026 at 7:24:52 PM
I don't know why you were downvoted to hell. You were not defending the school's disciplinary approach, you were just describing it.by president_zippy
5/8/2026 at 11:59:38 AM
I can't tell whether you are being sarcastic about it discouraging retaliating. When they had us both in the room, I said to the staff, "If you're just going to give me detention anyway, then the next time he punches me, I'm punching him back." Needless to say, they didn't like that. But I think it kept the peace. At the time, it seemed like the only logical move. Otherwise, the bully would just have another reason to do it, to get me in trouble without any additional consequences. As I saw it, half the reason to punch back would be to show the school how stupid their policy was.by sholladay
5/8/2026 at 1:04:10 PM
That's 100% how it worked in practice. Hell, I've even heard of some parents encouraging their kids to do that if they get hit precisely because the notion of "no tolerance" is absurdby mghackerlady
5/8/2026 at 12:29:10 PM
> can't tell whether you are being sarcastic about it discouraging retaliatingI'm 100% for the retaliation. If I'm going to get kicked out for fighting, I'm not going to do it without hitting the other guy.
One time I was almost kicked out for a "serious fight" I never threw a punch in. Was a friend who was having a rough time and I knew I just needed to give him a minute. Arm up to keep some space, stepping back. Caught and detained for it. Couldn't figure out what else I was supposed to do. Didn't matter because I was involved.
> bully would just have another reason to do it, to get me in trouble without any additional consequences
This is exactly how it plays out other times.
by doubled112
5/11/2026 at 12:50:07 PM
If you punish a kid that didn't retaliate just because "he was involved in a fight" you remove every incentive for that kid to restrain themselves next time. If he's gonna be punished, he might just as well be punished for something.by scotty79
5/9/2026 at 12:26:33 AM
The next step is parents' lawyers going zero tolerance on the school system.victims shouldn't be accountable for contributing to the problem.
by m463
5/9/2026 at 7:02:25 AM
[dead]by edrobap
5/8/2026 at 1:26:21 PM
> But I became fixated on how unfair it was.I hope from this episode you learned your lesson that if any form of enforcement authority is given to any person or institution, this entity will sooner or later abuse it.
If you "got" this lesson, you learned something insanely important for your life: to deeply distrust every authority with (enforcement) power - something much more valuable than basically everything else that school teaches you.
by aleph_minus_one
5/8/2026 at 7:37:11 PM
The real lesson is that people in authority prioritize preserving that authority rather than solving problems with it. Even if they're not deliberately malicious, they will risk others before risking their status. The sooner kids understand this, the better they will understand adults.by ASalazarMX
5/8/2026 at 1:50:59 PM
I had a similar issue. A teacher found me with a smaller boy (poor kid had some genuine emotional issues, in retrospect was probably being abused outside of school) who was nevertheless doing his best to rip my ears off. The fact that I had my hands on his wrists was seen as reason to split the resulting punishment between both of us.These days I pin a lot of this kind of thing down to the psychology of teachers, which seems to skew hard towards an unmet desire for respect/authority coupled with a relatively dull intellect. Most just aren't equipped to take charge of children.
by dtj1123
5/8/2026 at 7:54:04 PM
> relatively dull intellectYou can see data for this by looking at GRE or SAT scores across intended majors. It made me sad to see education majors generally do very poorly compared to the rest.
by donkers
5/8/2026 at 4:30:31 PM
I stopped a kid from hitting me and the school tried to punish me for another kid attacking me, and I non violently grabbed his fist and stopped the attack.When I learned I'd be punished the same as the attacker, or if I had hit back, I told the school, "Next time, I will knock him out."
I don't recall if the policy was changed, but I was not punished, and no one bullied me when they realized I would defend myself and was prepared to fight back. Don't pick on the quiet fat kid.
by newsclues
5/9/2026 at 12:42:07 AM
And where were your parents in this? My school in USA tried this... Once. My dad went to have a talk with them. I do not know what was said, but the principal walked out of the room white-faced and they never tried that bullshit on me again.by dmitrygr
5/8/2026 at 7:16:56 PM
Ten minutes ago my son came home from school and told me there was a fight and that the kid who started it has no punishment but the kid who finished it got a weeklong suspension.I have no clue how they come up with this stuff.
by rpdillon
5/10/2026 at 5:07:59 AM
That's exactly the kind of situation that made hateful as a teen. I'm so glad to be free of that now. Therapy works (over the long term, not a quick fix).by alsetmusic
5/8/2026 at 11:56:17 AM
If your parents didn't make a serious stink about this, they failed you.As it is, I guess you learned a valuable lesson about what sort of person seeks the profound authority granted to school administration.
by ubermonkey
5/8/2026 at 1:03:53 PM
School administrators have much less power than you might think. In public type school systems they're left answering to a lengthy hierarchy which doesn't even end at the superintendent, because they in turn are often beholden to various bureaucrats. And in private schools of significant size, there are usually investors or other monetary types at the top, but well out of sight.In either case, the people at the top tend to know very little about education and they're often the source of really stupid policies that sound decent only if you know nothing about schools and/or are incapable of seeing second order effects, such as with zero tolerance.
In any case, the admins there probably wished the OP would have punched the bully back. That's what stops bullying, and oddly enough often even results in friends being made. At least among boys - girls that get physical with each other will hold a death grudge til the end of time, but also get physical far less often as a balance to that.
by somenameforme
5/8/2026 at 1:33:00 PM
> In either case, the people at the top tend to know very little about educationThere don't actually exist so many things that you need to know so that you can at least make decent decisions:
For this particular case, it suffices to know the trivial fact that if children are in half-time jail ("compulsory school attendance"). From this, one can easily conclude that thus structures that one knows from prisons will develop on the schoolyard.
by aleph_minus_one
5/8/2026 at 12:30:33 PM
Your 1st sentence is spot on.Your 2nd one is kind of nonsensical.
by chrisweekly
5/8/2026 at 12:55:46 PM
Pretty sure the second sentence was meant to be ironic.by lisper
5/9/2026 at 2:38:37 PM
I had something similar to this happen to me, where some kid was causing trouble during nap time in kindergarten.I was an obsessively good kid, my parents took me everywhere with them and treated me like a peer, within reason. I was well behaved for my age. At the end of the day in kindergarten class, if you didn't cause problems, you received a stamp on your hand. The stamp was everything. A brand that I had ACCOMPLISHED that day.
Nap time was a post lunch, thirty minute time when we turned the lights out and laid down. Some kid near to me was making faces and making weird noises behind the teacher's back during nap time. Of course, he's five, maybe six, so this is not going undetected by our teacher. She storms over and asks "who is making all this noise?". I, being a total narc at 5 simply point. Assuming of course, this means I will receive a daily stamp, maybe even more, for my quick and wonderful detective work.
Then the unthinkable happens. His name goes on the board. MY name goes on the board. A wave of confusion sweeps over me. This is a massive blow to my tiny ego, only bad kids get their name on the board, surely there is a mistake!
It's nap time. I cannot make any noise, else I will risk A CHECKMARK NEXT TO MY NAME, which will only escalate the punishment in 198x to TIME OUT. Bad kids are always in time out. I am NOT a bad kid.
I am crushed. My small brain cannot process the enormity of what has happened. My name is on the board. I am smart enough to know what's not coming.
2pm comes, we're sitting on the square rug, and we're all putting our hands on our heads to receive our daily benediction: the stamp. I desperately keep my hand on my head, hoping I might trick our assistant teacher into giving me what I know is very far away.
She passes right by. I look left and right and realize, there is no mistake.
I held immediately held back a flood of tears, feeling deep failure. I stood up, and slowly gathered my things. I slogged my way to the bus and remember staring out the window thinking, what if the same thing happens tomorrow? I will never receive another stamp under this system, how could they do this to me?! The stamp continued the next day, but a different mark was made.
I had a short villain era after this, realizing a true injustice of the world: no matter how good you are sometimes things will not go your way.
by anarticle
5/11/2026 at 6:50:12 AM
[dead]by hufdr
5/9/2026 at 8:54:30 PM
thats called collective punishment when persons aside from the offender are also punished for the crimes of that one offender.a school being a government entity, cant be doing that malarchy.
by rolph
5/9/2026 at 11:59:45 AM
Or, it was a pop quiz to stand up for yourself, which you then failed.by kordlessagain
5/8/2026 at 5:37:34 AM
The generalized version of this is "take away something they care about". But it's not always easy to do. In many cases, schools have nothing the kids care about. If they do, rules often prohibit them from using it as leverage. And in many cases parents also are unwilling to apply any kind of consequence that would make their kid unhappy.by BrenBarn
5/8/2026 at 7:57:23 AM
Expel the kidI want everyone to succeed as much as possible, I feel bad for such kids. But at that point, the kid won’t learn, won’t launch, there’s no benefit to keeping them in school and massive consequences for the good kids.
by armchairhacker
5/8/2026 at 8:04:15 AM
Two problems:1) school education is mandatory until 16-18 in most countries, so what do you do with them once they get expelled. They have to be in education somewhere - so do you just put them in one school for all the expelled students, which is just constantly on fire? You made the problem much worse for yourself(as in - the state).
2) " there’s no benefit to keeping them in school and massive consequences for the good kids" - the massive consequences for kicking them out and not dealing with the problem are then on us, the society, because you get dysfunctional kids that got no help and just got kicked out instead. What kind of adults do you think they will grow into? Or is the answer "I don't care"?
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 8:19:06 AM
Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any way, it merely transforms school from a place to learn into a mini prison where dysfunctional kids do not allow other kids to learn too.15 year old who decides that he doesn't want to learn would be much better off if he gets expelled, goes to work at macdonalds, and comes back later, than the current situation where he gets to go to school and do nothing.
Also the mere possibility of being expelled and having to go to work will help many more children to keep studying.
by chr1
5/8/2026 at 9:36:26 AM
>>Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any wayWell of course not, because schools don't have the support they need to help those students in turn.
>>goes to work at macdonalds
I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?
>>and comes back later,
How would that even work? You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education? With what money?
The path isn't "well they get expelled so they just go to work" - most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them, or they just turn to vagrancy/crime. No 15 year old is going to go "well I got kicked out of school so I better look for the most basic job" - it's some kind of unrealistic pipe dream of how society works.
But either way - you haven't really answered my question. In most places a child has to be in education until they turn 18. So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 10:29:10 AM
> You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education?I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.
> most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them.
That's up to the parent to decide: leave them at home, convince them to find a job, go to special school or a class for misbehaving children, go to trade school etc.
Those who turn to vagrancy/crime do it anyway, as they have enough time outside of school too.
> child has to be in education until they turn 18.
> employing 15 year olds is [not] legal
These are not physical laws given to us from above, these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.
Imagine that instead of prisons we were forcing criminals to go spend time sitting in offices and disrupting normal work. What we do with children now is equally effective.
by chr1
5/8/2026 at 2:25:45 PM
>>I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.So you want to financially incentivize kids to drop out of school? "Drop out now, we'll give you a bunch of money later".
>> these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.
Saying that keeping 15 year olds out of a job is harmful to the society is....certainly a take, for sure.
>>What we do with children now is equally effective.
Well, thank you for editing this sentence from what you wrote originally, but just to be clear - I'm not advocating that misbehaving kids should be forced to sit in normal classrooms and disrupt everyone else - rather that schools should be given the resources to deal with it - the school I went to had special classes for unruly kids which were much smaller and where you basically had to meet up with specialists every week and your grades were severely impacted. It does work in most cases. Sure there will be ones that are truly beyond any kind of help - but that is very very rare. Most of the time you just have kids who could get on the straight path if someone helped them, but public schools are usually so underfunded they can't help even if they want to.
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 8:09:57 PM
> Drop out now, we'll give you a bunch of money laterLater they only get ability to sit at the same classes at the same public school, so there is no financial incentive.
15 year olds forced to sit in classes they don't want are way more miserable than those allowed to work and feel like adults. In any case people should be allowed to make choices by themselves not be forced by the government.
> the school I went to had special classes for unruly kids
That's a great solution too, and must be available option for parents. Sadly very few schools do that, making both unruly kids and good kids miserable as a result.
> schools should be given the resources
I don't think the problem is the lack of resources, specialist for helping unruly kids is not going to cost more than a math teacher. The problem is that most schools are simply opposed to the idea of splitting students based on their ability and willingness to study. As a result they have a system that harms everyone involved.
by chr1
5/8/2026 at 9:39:47 PM
>>Later they only get ability to sit at the same classes at the same public schooI have to ask, what public school would accept adults taking classes along the rest of 15 year olds?
>> In any case people should be allowed to make choices by themselves not be forced by the government.
I'm sorry, but kids/teenagers are generally not allowed to make these choices, for good reasons. If you're an adult, then sure, do whatever. But kids should be in school, whether they like it or not - it's really not their choice to make. We can argue that maybe 15-16 year olds are at the cusp of being able to do this - but I'd say the cut off should stay at 18. You're under 18, you go to school. There's no other option. The question is how does the state manage this.
>>The problem is that most schools are simply opposed to the idea of splitting students based on their ability and willingness to study.
And I agree that it's an awful thing(that the schools are unwilling to do this)
by gambiting
5/9/2026 at 8:22:43 AM
I went to school at 6 years, our schools were for 10 years, and at 16 i went to university. At the university with us were some 20 year olds, who went to school at 7 years, were not able to get to university in their 17, were drafted to army at 18 and came back. 20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe.20 year old who wants to study is not going to cause any problem for the public school either, it will even be beneficial for the class as children will see that studying is useful.
> teenagers are generally not allowed to make these choices, for good reasons
When they are not allowed to make choices, the parents are supposed to make choices for them, not corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.
by chr1
5/9/2026 at 7:22:12 PM
>> the parents are supposed to make choices for themParents don't have any choice in this either. A child under 18 should be in full time education - there is nothing to choose, maybe except for the school they can be in.
>>20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe.
I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds.
by gambiting
5/9/2026 at 8:25:21 PM
> Parents don't have any choice in this either.That's a very fucked up thing to say, governments or random strangers from internet do not have a right to decide how parent raises his child. Do you even have a child?
> I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds
It was just my own experience, if you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.
And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?
by chr1
5/10/2026 at 3:53:08 PM
>>Do you even have a childI do. And like I said, you as a parent have a choice about the kind of school you send your child into. You don't have a choice whether they are in education or not.
>>And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?
When you were at school were there many adult students in your classes?
>>you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.
Yes, 100 years ago in the early days of the soviet union the classes were offered to everyone to increase literacy rates. I can assure you that throughout the rest of history of the soviet union you didn't have adults attending primary/secondary school, gymnasiums or other types of schools for children. Soviet union had schools for adults from very early on.
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 4:37:31 PM
Show me a single law that was not given by a politician? I don't think there are any. Aside from maybe F = MA or Pie are squared LOL.by stevetron
5/8/2026 at 8:31:37 PM
Laws like "do not kill", "do not steal", have been found long before politicians existed, by the natural selection of societies. That is groups of people who did not follow these laws were largely outcompeted by those who followed.If you decide to break the law of "do not steal" in large extent you get millions dead like it have happened in communist Russia or Maoist China. If you break it in smaller extent (e.g. by very high tax) you get stagnant economy like in EU.
In contrast to that, the laws banning children to work were adopted at the point when children did not need to work, so they are largely irrelevant. If these laws existed in 18th century London or Paris they would cause many deaths too, since there was no other way to feed these children.
So not all laws are given by politicians.
by chr1
5/12/2026 at 5:09:15 AM
Right now, today, there are hundreds of millions of 15 year-olds with jobs all around the world. In the US this wasn’t uncommon two generations ago.by ungreased0675
5/8/2026 at 1:05:50 PM
>I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?I live stateside, and I've seen adverts saying they hire 14 year olds
by mghackerlady
5/8/2026 at 2:36:58 PM
They do but not many and with very limited work hours.by SoftTalker
5/8/2026 at 10:02:08 AM
> So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?
The threat of such should help encourage parents to actually raise decent children.
by dotancohen
5/8/2026 at 8:39:59 AM
Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institutions.To be clear, abuse in these programs should be prevented as much as feasible, and there should be an opportunity for any kid who demonstrates redemption to get back in school.
It’s a bad solution, but I don’t know any which is better. Keeping them in society is worse for innocent people (and doesn’t seem to usually benefit them either, misbehaving kids usually seem miserable).
And yes, the state pays to take care of them. Otherwise it’s paying for the damage they cause outside.
by armchairhacker
5/8/2026 at 3:24:36 PM
> Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institutions.People with this mentality should never, ever be given any semblance of power. In almost every one of your comments you went to the extreme but "forced labor" and "committed to mental asylum" really take the cake.
> but I don’t know any which is better.
Are you genuinely wondering what's better, investing in prisons or in education? As far as I can tell your solutions involve making the problem worse by cutting the access to the only thing that could fix it (education), then building forced work camps and asylums to contain the now exploding problem.
The US stands proof that building more prisons doesn't lead to having fewer criminals. Education does. The first thing you thought of axing.
by buran77
5/9/2026 at 12:14:47 AM
I think he makes a good point. Why do we let disruptive kids stay in the same class as the kids who want to study? The current state is terrible.by kelipso
5/8/2026 at 4:42:36 PM
> Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in > mental institutions.That was how NAZI-Germany and USSR (communist) governments 'solved' their problems.
In the USA, we had this president named Ronald Reagan who solved the mental institution problem: he closed all the mental institutions and expelled the patients so the patients live on the streets. That's really gave us a new influx of homeless people on a national scale, and it hasn't improved.
by stevetron
5/8/2026 at 4:55:34 PM
I'm a bit confused. Are you saying Hitler and the communists were right for putting people in mental institutions or Reagan who didn't?by ImJamal
5/8/2026 at 9:38:08 AM
>>Put them in work programs. If they can’t be productive, put them in mental institution....what kind of work programs can you put 12 year olds into? I'm really curious.
And I'm sure it's clear that putting anyone into a mental institution costs the state far more than providing resources to a school to deal with this would cost? Psychologists, separate classes, teachers specialized in this. We struggle to put people with actual mental problems into mental health insititutions(because there are so few and they cost a fortune to run) but we'd start putting misbehaving kids in them?
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 9:59:09 AM
12 year olds? My son was hammering nails into wood and drilling into masonry at 8. The Bedouin children are in the fields unsupervised with the goats at age 6. 12 year olds are not babies.Both my daughters were skydiving at 9. Kids can do a lot.
by dotancohen
5/8/2026 at 2:27:25 PM
>>My son was hammering nails into wood and drilling into masonry at 8And was he doing that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? Like you know...he would do at work? Or was it just a nice thing he did with his parents helping out with some construction projects you had going on?
>>12 year olds are not babies.
Of course not, but then again I have to ask the same question once more - if you were in charge of national policy, what kind of work program would you establish for 12 year olds that misbehave at school? What would you have them do, exactly?
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 8:02:30 PM
> And was he doing that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? Like you know...he would do at work?
> if you were in charge of national policy, what kind of work program would you establish for 12 year olds that misbehave at school?
by dotancohen
5/8/2026 at 9:43:50 PM
Ok, so answer the question then - what work program would there be for those 12 year olds that cannot function in the company of polite society. Like what kind of work would you have them do and how would you ensure compliance.by gambiting
5/9/2026 at 5:13:57 AM
I don't have to answer the question because my goal is more the welfare of the remaining children in the school and less whatever happens to the bully. I really don't care what happens to them. Let their parents care. Let their parents find some solution. The more difficult that is, the better.by dotancohen
5/9/2026 at 6:08:07 AM
But someone has to answer. Saying "I really don't care what happens to them" is just such a lazy way out of this conversation. The whole problem is that we have to decide as a society what to do with them. You suggested work programs - great! Now give some examples of work programs you would put 12 years old in. If you can't or won't, then you have no more solution to this than someone who thinks having an idea equals having a business - it's precisely the execution that matters.by gambiting
5/9/2026 at 12:19:09 PM
For instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_service. 12 year old would be pretty fine to spend 4-5 hours a day cleaning streets for a while.Btw. I am not advocating for work programs as a particularly good solution, expelling and letting the parents to figure out what to do with their misbehaving child is a good solution too. School is a privilege for smart children to study, not a prison for those who do not want to learn.
by chr1
5/9/2026 at 7:23:34 PM
>> School is a privilege for smart children to study, not a prison for those who do not want to learn.It's actually neither of those things, because we discovered hundreds of years ago that having an educated population is good for everyone. No, it's not a prison, but it's not a privilege either - you have to be in school until certain age. Work is not substitute for education.
by gambiting
5/9/2026 at 8:06:08 PM
Have an educated population does not mean that every last uncivilized brat needs to participate. Especially if he is distracting other people from acquiring an education.by dotancohen
5/10/2026 at 3:54:26 PM
...how do you think we got to the literacy rates we have now?And schools have been able to deal with "brats" for over a century without kicking them out of school.
by gambiting
5/9/2026 at 8:07:45 PM
Being in school does not make one educated. Keeping disruptive child in the same room with normal children, means we get fewer educated people, not more.by chr1
5/10/2026 at 3:54:55 PM
Which is exactly why I advocate for not keeping them in the same classroom as other kids.by gambiting
5/11/2026 at 5:06:53 PM
Most bullying happens outside the classroom.by dotancohen
5/11/2026 at 10:27:08 PM
I mean, we can repeat facts at each other, or we can carry on with the conversation in some more specific direction if you wish?by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 10:18:41 AM
So other kids should just be their victims? How is that better?We should do whatever we can to help kids with problems, but that doesn't include victimising people. Remove the bullies and deal with them elsewhere.
by verve_rat
5/8/2026 at 2:30:32 PM
>>Remove the bullies and deal with them elsewhereEveryone agrees on this, no one agrees on what "elsewhere" should be. Like I said in my post - do you just send them to one special school for unruly children, which is just basically on fire all the time? Or prison? Or like other commenters have said - just send them to work programs, let them work at mcdonalds, or send them to a mental institution? Like, we're not the first people on earth to come to this stunning conclusion that it would be better if bullies were taken away from the rest of the class - the question is where and how and if that is really the best solution for us, for them, for the victims and for the society at large.
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 4:48:06 PM
Yes, that is a hard problem that society in general doesn't like dealing with, but the solution doesn't involve letting kids be abused. That's the point I'm making. Don't let kids get abused. I honestly didn't think that was very controversial.by verve_rat
5/8/2026 at 6:33:59 PM
And I completely agree with you.by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 11:09:24 AM
Some dysfunctional kids are there because of trauma, others because of opportunism and poor impulse control they'll eventually grow out of, and some are fundamentally defective and no amount of support will make them less destructive or dangerous to themselves and others.Psychopathy and narcissism are psychological/emotional disabilities. They're the emotional equivalent of being born without a limb - or in congenital cases, without the brain structures needed for empathy and adult risk management.
I don't know what to do with these people. No one does.
I do know they're the single biggest threat to our future as a species, because if they get into positions of power they wreak havoc on unimaginable scales.
And even if they don't, they reliably leave a trail of wreckage behind them, because their relationships are defined by lies, gaslighting, and emotional and physical violence.
Unfortunately we have limited tools for diagnosis, so there's no way to know for sure if a problem teen can be rescued, or if they're guaranteed to become a problem adult.
by TheOtherHobbes
5/8/2026 at 12:34:44 PM
> They're the emotional equivalent of being born without a limbFor start we could stop cutting part of their limbs shortly after birth. Doing this to dogs is considered too cruel and banned, but somehow it is ok for little boys?
> some are fundamentally defective and no amount of support
No need for support, just stop harming them!
by theoeifjf
5/8/2026 at 11:57:47 AM
It’s been said that the British executed about 1% of their population each year for a few hundred years, and that a similar number died in prison.The claim is that this made Britain a much safer country in later centuries.
by cvwright
5/9/2026 at 12:06:48 AM
One would be trading a chance of being murdered by psychopaths on the street for a chance of being murdered by psychopaths in the government.by hirvi74
5/8/2026 at 2:59:19 PM
They need real, tangible, meaningful threats. Corporal or social.Doling out talkings-to, ISS, OSS, bad grades and repeat courses are a relative joke. I spent uncountable hours in ISS for truancy, was made to walk miles to school, kicked off the bus and walk miles home, served community service, and had many talkings-to. None of it was effective.
Expulsion is treated as far too extreme and should be far more regular as both an incentive to the student and to the parents. For many of these kids school is an impediment and a detractor and they would do far better for themselves in the work environment gaining experience over the course of the 3-4 years anyways. There are far more permissive environments in workplaces than there are in school that are better suited for the nature of certain inclinations and measures than that of school. There's also the possibility of restarting vocational education, which frankly, is a good compromise. But the current system is bullshit. And the bar is so low that diplomas are given out to nearly 90% of students which is flatly wrong as from what I've seen there are a lot more people who are either academically or behaviorally unsuited for employment or voting by any reasonable standard. Setting up clear failure modes are the guidelines by which many of these people would derive structure and meaning in their education, instead they're allowed a de minimis exception and passed into the world as acceptably educated and competent when the opposite is true. And that totally erodes the meaning of the accomplishment.
by brnaftr361
5/8/2026 at 4:19:25 PM
This is the mentality that turns public schools into zoos and drives families with means to private.by sagarm
5/8/2026 at 6:33:17 PM
...the mentality that says schools should be given the resources to deal with it, instead of (like some other commenter suggested) sending kids to mental institutions?by gambiting
5/11/2026 at 10:27:05 PM
The facts on the ground are that schools are not being given the resources to deal with it, leading to a death spiral of reduced enrollment and funding -- at least for SFUSD. I imagine the story is similar elsewhere.by sagarm
5/11/2026 at 10:27:52 PM
>>The facts on the ground are that schools are not being given the resources to deal with itWhich is why I'm advocating for the schools to be given the resources to deal with it.
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 8:07:28 AM
If corporal punishment is effective then we don’t have to terminate anyone’s education. For some kids it may just take one painful lesson to turn them around so why forgo that and ruin their lives?Certainly, if they also don’t care about physical punishment then expel them as a hopeless case but don’t do it reflexively as a cop out.
by throwthrowuknow
5/8/2026 at 8:24:57 AM
If it’s effective, yes.I think corporal punishment is fine as a last resort before expulsion. Not before, because I’m worried some kids would be traumatized, but those expelled or misbehaving indefinitely without consequence will otherwise find trauma and/or ruin other’s lives.
by armchairhacker
5/8/2026 at 2:09:13 PM
> Expel the kidI guess (from my experience) the expelled kid is actually not that unhappy ;-) about being expelled, since very commonly it actually would prefer not having to go to school. :-)
by aleph_minus_one
5/8/2026 at 2:57:46 PM
At that point it's not about punishing the expelled kid, it's about stopping them from ruining the other kids educationby bluefirebrand
5/8/2026 at 8:46:10 PM
It's a hard line to balance. In my younger years I should have absolutely been kicked out of school, but as I grew older and my hormones calmed me down, I then was a good student.I really think I would have benefited from not having schooling for around a year though
by vablings
5/8/2026 at 10:01:04 AM
You expel them and they become another person's problem. I heard recently of a local problem child aged seven. He's already been expelled from a private school but has entered a state school where he seriously injured another pupil and attempted to strangle one of the teachers.Expulsion isn't going to reform them, it will just move it on elsewhere.
by nephihaha
5/8/2026 at 3:22:34 PM
No this is not true. Expulsion works in many cases. The idea of getting expelled prevents a lot of problems. A lot of people avoid doing things that will get them expelled but this of course doesn't apply to everyone including the person in your example.It's similar to how prison is a deterrent to crime. But it doesn't change the fact that there are people who still do crimes and get into prison.
by threethirtytwo
5/8/2026 at 3:24:17 PM
Many unruly pupils have trouble at home, impoverished backgrounds, dyslexia, autism, social anxiety and a host of other things. Expelling them solves none of these things.They may be bullies themselves because of an ongoing toxic culture in the school. That can include the teachers in some cases, who are some of the worst bullies in there. I had one who persecuted me for a speech impediment and humiliated me in front of an entire class of children by making me say tongue twisters.
by nephihaha
5/9/2026 at 2:17:45 PM
>It's similar to how prison is a deterrent to crime. But it doesn't change the fact that there are people who still do crimes and get into prison.None of what you said contradicts the above.
by threethirtytwo
5/8/2026 at 9:22:01 PM
[dead]by JCTheDenthog
5/8/2026 at 11:00:23 AM
> expel them and they become another person's problemTrue, but we have institutions dedicated to dealing with people like that.
A school isn't that kind of institution and will fail in its mission (to protect and educate) if it tries to fill the role of controlling violent people.
by leereeves
5/8/2026 at 3:51:10 PM
Schools make some of these issues worse. They are riddled with bullying, and until recently made little accomodation to people with learning or social disabilities.by nephihaha
5/8/2026 at 10:22:36 AM
So directly to prison. Or must they succeed first?by 21asdffdsa12
5/8/2026 at 11:35:55 AM
I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse / sarcastic, but even aside from the ethical considerations here, prison is an insanely expensive way of dealing with the issue.In the US in 2010, cost per inmate per year in a state prison ranges between $14,603 (Kentucky) and $60,076 (New York), and averages at $31,286. That's 16 years ago, so it'll be higher now. In the UK it was an average of £32,315 in 2020-21. You might as well employ an individual case worker, and the societal outcomes would be a hell of lot better.
by frereubu
5/8/2026 at 3:22:38 PM
I was quoted a figure of approx. £200,000 per year for each patient at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital by someone who works there but I can't vouch for it. I know someone who has been in there a year. :( Carstairs, where violent psychiatric patients go, is probably even more.by nephihaha
5/8/2026 at 4:26:58 PM
Sorry to hear that - I knew someone who was sectioned in the Royal Edinburgh about 30 years ago now. A really difficult place to visit emotionally. I can believe it's expensive given the kinds of difficulties the patients are experiencing.by frereubu
5/8/2026 at 8:28:50 PM
Yes, it's some place. There are buildings lying empty (one had a Legionnaires' scare recently), and the grounds could be better but are run down. There are some mature trees that look good, but the bowling green has been ripped up as well. Morningside is a good area which is a mixed blessing as it means it may end up being developed.As one of my friends remarked to me it's not a healing environment. The staff there, in my limited experience, vary a lot in their attitude. Some of them are great. Some not so much. It depends who you are dealing with.
by nephihaha
5/8/2026 at 8:39:53 AM
The moment you abandon any attempt to correct the behavior you guarantee they are “lost” to society.by close04
5/8/2026 at 8:43:38 AM
The other kids will have to suffer so the misbehaving kids can be saved, but that's a sacrifice we're willing to make!by scarmig
5/8/2026 at 1:16:54 PM
Emotionally I’m all-in on painful punishments for bullies.But when I stop, and think slower, and more rationally:
That bully is a human being who will grow up and he will be a neighbour to somebody (some will die, some will go to prisons, but most of them will be somebodies neibhours).
If we show him only more and more cruelty, he will be a terrible neighbour to somebody (so indirectly, the system made that somebodies life worse).
One anecdote of creative solutioning: to reduce vadalisations of waste bins in the village, teacher somehow convinced(maybe by promising bad grade if they don’t) several bully’ish kids to make baskets, to be used as waste bins.
Idea was that makers will feel some ownership for it, so they won’t damage it later and maybe even prevent lower ranking bullies as well.
by lucketone
5/8/2026 at 11:21:17 AM
The cases where the bully is truly irredeemable are few and far between. Most of the time the adults just abandon too quickly. Especially in school where teachers are stretched thin and have no “blood duty” to the child.But more importantly, children who are abandoned “to save others’ suffering” grow up to be adults who can and will cause even more suffering. Education and care are like a debt, if you don’t service it early eventually everyone pays with interest.
by close04
5/8/2026 at 8:57:21 AM
Yes, which is why it’s a last resort, because some kids are lost either way.And kicking them out of school isn’t yet abandoning them. They can be put into a vocational school: maybe some kids misbehave because they can’t sit still, but would behave and be happier following a simple job that involves moving.
by armchairhacker
5/8/2026 at 10:18:51 AM
That can be just fine to me.I still live in my hometown, and while I was never bullied, a bully a year or so above me killed himself in his late 20s.
lol lmao was my reaction xD
by Scroll_Swe
5/8/2026 at 6:12:40 AM
Which is probably one of the biggest problem with the outsourcing of parenting for half their awake time that is happening with our established school system.Not that I claim it is super easy to find an alternative on a large scale, but I think societies need to think hard about how to enable involving parents to be as much involved as possible in the kid's day. (For parents working full time shifts + commuting in a major city, this is very hard).
by samuell
5/8/2026 at 6:45:33 AM
> outsourcingIt should also be pointed out that children and teens especially benefit from a range of role models and mentors. Having the parent(s) provide 100% of the (life and academic) lessons is not actually ideal.
You say outsourcing, I say providing a range of different people to learn from. (It takes a village to raise a child…).
Not saying the current school system is perfect (it’s a rather dystopian “village”!), but keeping the teens locked up at home isn’t going to help.
by andyferris
5/8/2026 at 8:21:51 AM
I think you misunderstand the premise - in fact I struggle to understand how you interpreted the GP that way. No one is arguing that parents should provide 100% of life and academic lessons or that kids should be locked up at home, but that they, rather than schools, should have the leading role.I took my kids out of school when they were eight or nine and up to 16 (the end of compulsory school age in the UK) my experience was that they met a wider range of people, and had a lot more freedom. Instead of being locked up at school they were free to do more on their own or with friends and to go to a wide range of classes and activities. They have done well academically (conditional offer from Oxford for one, the other starting a PhD later this year) and I was complimented regularly on their social skills when they were children, and this seems to be continuing as adults (and my older daughter now has work responsibilities that require soft skills - I would assume she would not have them if her managers had not observed her as having the skills).
The problem is not the involvement of other people, it is the outsourcing of responsibility and decision making and the main part of parenting. Parents are frequently little involved.
by graemep
5/8/2026 at 8:20:38 AM
I think the village would be a healthy model for sure. But that is something that was pretty much killed in the modern society as well as most people, especially lower/mid-income workers in larger cities, are spending exceedingly little time of their day in their local neighborhoods.by samuell
5/8/2026 at 6:20:22 AM
Yeah exactly, it's hard to do and requires effort.It's a sad state of affairs if there's nothing at school a child cares about, and rules prohibiting using those things as leverage may make sense in some way at a population level (to prevent misuse), but are clearly a bad idea in most individual cases.
by danpalmer
5/8/2026 at 9:16:41 AM
Community service perhaps?Would be annoying for both the kid and the parents, more so than just detention at school I would think, and if parents are also annoyed will hopefully further incentivise socially appropriate behaviour of the child.
Of course if the parents manage to convince the principal or someone else to not enforce, then the problem is with the school.
by jonathanlydall
5/8/2026 at 11:51:57 PM
It is a sad state of affairs if there's nothing a kid cares about at school.by danpalmer
5/9/2026 at 3:09:34 AM
I have a peruvian (not athletic/nerdy) friend who moved to the us a while ago. (I played through college) his son randomly started playing football his sophmore year after getting beaned by a baseball and felt baseball was more dangerous.About junior year the kid was having some issues at home. Dad didn't know what to do. I said email the coach. He's like what will that do. I was like coach can make him run (corporal punishment) and take away things. Emailed the coach. Coach was like "I'll have a chat with him".
Next day he said son came home and apologized to him. Cleaned up amazingly instantly (great kid). Pretty sure it was literally just a talk from another respected figure (who likely said maybe you should play less or miss practice while you sort this out.
by grogenaut
5/9/2026 at 6:34:42 PM
this is why those mandatory military programs for youth work. & at times boarding schools.in boarding school - if I know where you sleep & I have always access it incentivizes you to behave better.
one system - where all the aggression is channeled through. you can't bully - a bully ie drill instructors.
by dzonga
5/8/2026 at 8:54:30 AM
I was no bully, but I was caned frequently at school for various other offences.It had zero impact. I saw having to go and queue at the headmaster’s study in the morning for six of the best as a cost of doing business. Short, sharp, sore palms for the morning, over and done with.
Now, satisfecit was much more of a threat - having to report every half hour all day every day, having teachers report on every lesson, every meal, every everything, having to go to the head man every morning - was an absolute embuggerance.
Still, that said, the latter also didn’t make me change my ways - it just made me get better at not being caught.
by madaxe_again
5/8/2026 at 10:28:31 AM
Have you ever thought about or identified what could have changed your ways, whatever those were that I presume were inconsiderate of others or even violations of people? Or was it more that you were pushing back against the industrialized human cog factory we call education in the west?by roysting
5/8/2026 at 10:55:19 AM
My violations were usually of the variety of having failed to polish my shoes, or being late for a lesson, or being on a roof, or getting in fights - I was never the instigator but was always seen as the troublemaker.So, what would have changed my mind? Fuck, some human kindness or compassion? Growing up in an inescapable institution, run by retired submariners and optimised for control, did not make for healthy balanced people.
by madaxe_again
5/9/2026 at 12:15:24 AM
I was a class clown type, but not a bully.> Have you ever thought about or identified what could have changed your ways
An ADHD diagnosis and treatment.
by hirvi74
5/9/2026 at 5:35:29 PM
Yeah, I got mine 30 years too late, too.by madaxe_again
5/8/2026 at 10:08:37 AM
We called it a report card. That was a load of nonsense too. I quickly learnt how to forge signatures for it, and even getting the real signatures was a hassle... For the teachers who resented doing it themselves. Absolutely no benefit to it.We also got punished collectively for things we didn't do. Happened to me on many occasions and I'm still bitter about it. It never flushed out the perps as it was supposed to. I despise the notion of mass punishment for someone else's misdemeanours.
Sounds like you went to the posh place. LOL. Either on a scholarship or family money.
by nephihaha
5/8/2026 at 10:24:11 AM
Collective punishment is a war crime, I don't know why people think it would be effective on children? All it does is breed resistance and resentment, as you say.by verve_rat
5/8/2026 at 10:58:32 AM
It was de rigueur for us, but then again our housemaster was an Afrikaner. And no, it didn’t work, we’d just plot collective revenge on him, and collectively figure out how to escape the punishment.by madaxe_again
5/8/2026 at 1:13:22 PM
> but then again our housemaster was an AfrikanerWhat are you saying?
by andsoitis
5/8/2026 at 2:30:44 PM
That the apartheid regime and its proponents were not terribly nice people.Sorry if that’s a controversial stance these days.
by madaxe_again
5/9/2026 at 12:02:54 AM
It appears that you are saying that because someone is an Afrikaner, they must be a member of the apartheid regime or a proponent thereof.If you are not saying this, then it's unclear how this is related to your previous comment.
You could write a comment that makes sense by saying "Afrikaners usually believed in weird corporal punishments because that was normal in their culture" or something and that would be perfectly acceptable.
Or perhaps, you have some specific knowledge that this guy was actually a proponent of apartheid, which you should share.
by kaashif
5/8/2026 at 3:37:57 PM
Stereotyping all Afrikaners with that brush is despicable.by andsoitis
5/8/2026 at 5:19:55 PM
I’m sorry, calling Dutch colonists colonisers is despicable? Well, I suppose not just Dutch colonists, they did have their population bolstered by a lot of Austrians and Germans escaping war crime prosecution in the 40’s.Anyway. In the early 90’s, in the U.K.? They were coming over for one reason only. The Afrikaner masters were always racist, always fans of collective punishment and bizarre corporal punishments.
by madaxe_again
5/9/2026 at 12:01:22 PM
Some Afrikaners resent British people and Anglophone South Africans, and this dates back to the Boer Wars and beyond. The British interned large numbers of Afrikaners and some of them died in their camps. They marginalised their language, and tried to replace it with English in administration (much the same as with the Québecois etc). The Afrikaners remembered all this, and the insecurity it gave them was partly what led to apartheid and attempts to reinstate Afrikaans as the main national language.We tended to hear a lot about black-white relations in South Africa, and even fighting between different black African groups... But much less so about the split among whites. I'm told by white South African English speakers that certain Afrikaans speakers were very resentful of them. Some of them didn't like the rugby and cricket boycotts of the 1970s and 1980s either.
It is perfectly possible that some of what you experienced from that teacher came from all this.
I do not agree with this statement though "They were coming over for one reason only." Many South Africans came to the UK for economic reasons, or cultural ties much like Aussie and Kiwis. I had a white South African drama teacher at school and while I could criticise many of my other teachers, I always found him to be pretty easy going. Except in one area. Some of the children used to make fun of his accent and he didn't like that, which I can understand. He came over years before apartheid was dismantled by the way, but never gave any indication of supporting it.
by nephihaha
5/8/2026 at 7:42:23 PM
I will just say you lack basic knowledge of history of Afrikaners and South Africa in general and that, coupled with your prejudice on display, is a pretty ugly sight.by andsoitis
5/8/2026 at 9:52:26 PM
I'm sure that person must've been a pretty bad one. But to tie Dutch colonialism, apartheid and WW2 war criminals (centuries later by the way) together this way to excuse these discriminatory remarks is pretty daft. Needless to say, not everyone was/is like that.by aldrich
5/8/2026 at 12:15:57 PM
this can only be effective if the school isn't counting on the bully to help the school win various sports competitions over the next few years.often the school is in a tough spot because the only reason some jocks are there is for their sport ability, that the school needs.
by watchful_moose
5/8/2026 at 2:44:12 PM
American colleges I can understand. But other than bragging rights, why should a high school give enough of a shit about championships to look the other way on bullying?by triceratops
5/8/2026 at 3:05:31 PM
Middle America peaks in High School. Local games are televised and commentated even during the regular season. The TV series Friday Night Lights is a reasonable reference as an outsiderby georgeburdell
5/8/2026 at 3:30:30 PM
My school wasn't like that. I assumed Varsity Blues was fiction. Or at least, kind of outdated.by triceratops
5/8/2026 at 3:28:15 PM
Can any Americans confirm this?Were your high school sports games televised and commentated?
by joenot443
5/8/2026 at 4:31:55 PM
In Texas HS Football is very much the central/highest tier of social status/standing in the community, and the stadiums they play in are bigger than small college stadiums elsewhere (and are televised.)by mrkstu
5/8/2026 at 4:18:16 PM
For football, yes. Although I think it only broadcast on some small cable TV channel that you had to get special access for. There definitely were small media crews at the games (I was in the band; I went to most of them).One year I was there, the football team made it to the state championship, and got to play in one of the big 70K-seat stadiums the NFL teams use. About half of our small town bought tickets and went to it.
I just checked, looks like mine is one of many schools that streams games live on here: https://www.nfhsnetwork.com/
by alnwlsn
5/8/2026 at 3:44:05 PM
Really depends on where, and what sport.If you're in an urban school in a big city, maaayyybe some of the basketball games depending on the specific school. E.g. if your school has people who everyone knows are going into the NBA draft, sometimes the more important games get put on television with commentators.
If you're in a suburban/rural school and it's (American) football or maybe baseball, quite possibly yes as a regular thing. Especially if you're at one of the 50++ high schools that has a 10,000+ capacity stadium.
Edit: yea and as other replier mentioned, there's some regional tendencies too.
by dmoy
5/8/2026 at 4:58:47 PM
> https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-largest-high-school-...Absolutely, there are three high school football stadiums with capacities over twenty thousand, in Ohio and Texas.
by FireBeyond
5/8/2026 at 5:22:28 PM
Oof wow, that's bigger than I realized. I knew there were a lot of big ones (10k+), but I didn't realize there was US highschool football being played in stadium bigger than the smallest EPL stadiums.I guess I shouldn't be surprised given a lot of college stadiums are 50k+ capacity.
by dmoy
5/9/2026 at 5:29:54 AM
Eight of the top ten largest stadia in the world are for NCAA Football.by eszed
5/8/2026 at 3:32:36 PM
That's my personal experience growing up in a suburban area in the South (edit: in the 90s)by georgeburdell
5/8/2026 at 11:50:46 PM
In this case it was at roughly age 8-10. It was a sporty school and I don't think it prioritised that above student wellbeing, not at the level of one individual player anyway.That said, I know school sports is a way bigger deal in the US than most other countries so YMMV.
by danpalmer
5/8/2026 at 4:54:40 PM
> The problem is that most schools don't do that, would likely argue they don't have time to do thatOr actively don't want to do that. There have been cases in Ohio where football players have done things that should have them suspended or expelled (or more) and the school has literally gone on record that "we didn't remove him from the team as that would be unfair to the other players on his team, who are having a great season".
by FireBeyond
5/8/2026 at 5:23:33 PM
I think many people who wouldn't be disincentivized by demerits/expulsion/etc would find the threat of intense physical pain highly motivating.Caning is no joke.
by novaleaf
5/8/2026 at 7:45:54 PM
I went to primary school when some teachers were still allowed physical punishment, and that was even encouraged by many parents. Our version of caning was slapping your face-up palms with the yardstick, and that honestly was so terrifying most kids behaved.There was one though, small kid that probably had a harder life at home than us, he wasn't fazed by the caning, didn't even flinch. Even him avoided getting in trouble too frequently, so caning still kind of worked.
Edit: I think the most terrifying thing wasn't the pain, but the sharp SLAP!.
by ASalazarMX
5/9/2026 at 7:00:07 PM
> The problem is that most schools don't do that, would likely argue they don't have time to do that, and also probably spend a fair amount of resources and time on relatively ineffective bullying prevention.Most schools just care more about their sports teams are doing, so they'd have no interest in a punishment that involved removing a player who otherwise was good enough to make the cut. Look at how many people looked the other way for stuff way worse than bullying at Penn State.
by saghm
5/9/2026 at 2:36:26 AM
the best way to deal with a bully is to punch her/his lights out. the schools should have a martial arts / mma trainer on staff. whover gets bullied has to take classes with martial arts / mma fighter until they can hit the bully hard enough for her/him to eat through a straw for a month. this is the way.by bdangubic
5/9/2026 at 2:16:21 PM
This worked for us. A little thug was bullying my kid until I taught my kid how to land a punch to the mouth. That was a one-shot solution to that problem.Obviously that isn’t a universal solution. It’s worth evaluating the option, though.
by kstrauser
5/9/2026 at 6:12:24 PM
My daughter did the same thing. She actually “lost the fight” but no one messed with her ever sinceby bdangubic
5/9/2026 at 7:03:46 PM
You think that a child being bullied should have to suck it up until they commit forced violence against another child? Maybe beating up a bully is something that happens when adults abdicate all responsibility, but it's insane to claim that's better than "the adults should just do their fucking jobs".by saghm
5/8/2026 at 10:25:18 AM
> most schools don't do thatIt’s because most schools are industrial age conformism and propaganda machine extensions of centralized government power and control.
I suspect that those here who really care about education and learning know the extremely dark background and history of government schools in America, but, but I encourage everyone confused by me saying “extremely dark background and history” to do some independent investigation into how Rockefeller shaped what so many today defend tooth and nail as if the whole education system weren’t an industrialized human cog machine…still.
Here’s a little dip of the toe into that dark water for the naive uninitiated… but it’s way worse than this post even brushes up against:
https://medium.com/@sofialherani/the-dark-truth-of-the-educa...
by roysting
5/8/2026 at 11:10:19 AM
This is not about america. Not everything has to be turned into a discussion about some US internal issue.The medium author has this in their bio: "healing, self-improvement, meditation, manifestation". Well, does not seem like the best source to me.
Aside from that, next you're probably going to post the protocols? Because that's where this line of thinking usually seems to take people. It's really nonsensical to focus on individual people, it's much more important to talk about systems and incentives. And, especially, compare to how it works in other countries.
Did they get to a similar place without person x? Then person x is probably not the primary issue here, but rather something on the system level.
Just like how the story of epstein is not the story of one evil person, it's the story of a part of society which deliberately enabled him and a system with no real safeguards in place.
by lompad
5/8/2026 at 7:06:36 AM
Surely expelling more effective from the school's perspective.by cherryteastain
5/8/2026 at 10:03:27 AM
I've mentioned this above, but I know of a new pupil in one of my local schools who has recently seriously injured another pupil and attempted to strangle one of the teachers (she had to take time off work due to stress).He is only seven and has just been expelled from another school.
by nephihaha
5/8/2026 at 9:00:40 AM
The school, and every other student.by HPsquared
5/8/2026 at 9:47:05 AM
That moves the problem elsewhere, it doesn't solve it.by iso1631
5/8/2026 at 2:18:27 PM
Generally true, but the school's core protection responsibility is for its own students and staff - not the rest of the world. And the school's authority and resources are even more constrained.At least in some places, school systems have "special" schools or other programs for the kids who they'd rather keep out of contact with the general student population.
by bell-cot
5/8/2026 at 10:04:51 AM
It returns the problem to the source: the child's parents or guardian.by dotancohen
5/8/2026 at 7:09:55 AM
Surprisingly hard to expel a child, particularly in the more privileged schools … far more satisfying from the perspective of an educator if they can address the issue.by rusk
5/8/2026 at 8:06:44 AM
>>Surprisingly hard to expel a child, particularly in the more privileged schoolsIn my experience - it's the reverse. Expensive private schools were quick to expel students because as much as they liked the money they liked having good academic results they could boast about much more. It's the basic run of the mill public schools that can't expel anyone because the student has to be in education somewhere and they might be the only school in the catchment area, so there are no good alternatives.
by gambiting
5/8/2026 at 1:12:13 PM
The public schools are loathe to expel (unless there's an agreement in the district that one school is a dumping ground) - midrange private schools are quick to expel to protect the rest, but the highest end private schools will figure out a way to not expel, because the money is sooooo good.by bombcar
5/8/2026 at 10:04:57 AM
If it's a private school, then they expel pupils pretty rapidly.Of course, none of this addresses why there are behavioural problems in the first place. A shrink alone may not cut it, especially if there is a wider toxic culture in the school which helps create bullying.
by nephihaha
5/8/2026 at 7:15:37 AM
This very much depends on where you live, your school, and the commitment of the parent body.I went to a school decades ago that was both small, and highly effective at explusion. I can't say that this successfully led to improved academic outcomes however.
by cik
5/8/2026 at 3:28:17 PM
> teachers who gave a crap and put the time in to understand the problem and think of potential solutions, rather than just apply generic policy.Oh common, threatening to take something a kid loves away is the most bland/generic policy there is, there is exactly zero "understanding" required, though some care would be required to actually trying to do anything
by eviks
5/8/2026 at 10:56:49 AM
Bullies need to be identified as simply immature, treated as children that have not graduated to their age. That really impacts the individual. Make them wear identifying clothing as a "special case" and they will mature very fast.by bsenftner
5/8/2026 at 11:03:17 AM
As someone who was once a child and witnessed other kids getting bullied, bullies loved getting singled out. They thrived on attention. There are kids who'd punch another kid if it meant they'd get an ugly shirt that everyone would recognize and mark them as "bad"by kdheiwns
5/8/2026 at 11:30:56 AM
"Bad" is a cool label, it marks you as dangerous. But the comment proposes "immature", "behind". So give then a neat, pink shirt, not a black one with a skull on it (not saying that this works either, just clarifying).by gobdovan
5/8/2026 at 12:05:22 PM
I was bullied, a lot. The only thing that really stops a bully is shaming them, treat them like they are a child that needs to be treated as younger than their age. Bullies are demanding and demonstrating dominance, and if that is turned around on them, the bullying stops.by bsenftner
5/8/2026 at 12:34:15 PM
Right?There are lots of reasons this stuff happens, but one of them is definitely that some kids aren't acting out for school reasons but for attention from their parents.
by Quarrel
5/8/2026 at 3:27:38 PM
It's not always straight up immaturity. A lot of it could be other issues related to the bullies environment/household or many other issues.Classical stereotypical case is that the bully himself has an abusive/alcoholic father. There's a lot of complexity in what's involved here, but society is only equipped to deal with the "immaturity" case which is real but not the only story.
by threethirtytwo
5/8/2026 at 4:30:14 PM
They may also have dyslexia, ADHD or social anxiety, which cause them difficulties in other areas and this is how it manifests.by nephihaha
5/9/2026 at 12:35:22 AM
I'm tired of trying to find excuses for their bad behaviours. The first goal should be to protect the victims. By whatever is necessary. People have a right to live in security. Then, once that first step is done, we can think about pampering the bullies into conformance. Not the other way around.by bji9jhff
5/9/2026 at 11:38:53 AM
The bullied often end up becoming bullies, and in my experience, two children can bully one another, so that is not necessarily a one way experience. In some cases, a smaller child can even bully a taller one, although an adult would think that was unlikely.While it is possible to stamp out physical bullying, psychological and verbal bullying are near impossible to eliminate, and so any sizable school which denies having it is lying. It is a matter of degree, and how they handle it.
by nephihaha
5/9/2026 at 5:05:11 PM
Like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badgeby throw_await
5/8/2026 at 8:32:47 AM
> "The only effective punishment/threat that I saw work on my bullies at school was the threat to remove one of them from the football team and prevent him from playing for the school. He turned it around and was ok after that."Now you only have to deal with that group of bullies who slowly build up resentments, and might end up paying your school one last visit.
> "The problem is that most schools don't do that, [...] and also probably spend a fair amount of resources and time on relatively ineffective bullying prevention."
There's also the civil litigation-heavy system to keep in mind, where teachers and lower-ranked admin workers get burned by superiors who have to please parents.
by spankibalt
5/8/2026 at 9:01:25 AM
> Now you only have to deal with that group of bullies who slowly build up resentments, and might end up paying your school one last visit.Seems like a slippery slope fallacy? Who says the person who got bullied relentlessly doesn't show up to pay one last visit? What an odd argument.
Seems like a decent approach to me tbh.
by tommit
5/8/2026 at 9:49:28 AM
> "Who says the person who got bullied relentlessly doesn't show up to pay one last visit?"Exactly! In both (the bully/the bully who once was bullied) cases, you'd still have to deal with these threats, as evidenced by relevant case histories. People are just a little too comfortable to jump to conclusions or create false dichotomies.
by spankibalt
5/8/2026 at 9:23:45 AM
> Now you only have to deal with that group of bullies who slowly build up resentments, and might end up paying your school one last visit.Very american concern, albeit not completely unique to that place. With that kind of logic, nothing ever gets done because of endless stream of what-ifs.
by kakacik
5/8/2026 at 10:00:00 AM
> "[...] nothing ever gets done because of endless stream of what-ifs."This "endless stream of what-ifs" often enough translates to systemic "peculiarities" (e. g. ineffective bureaucracy, accountability diffusion, symptom-focus, political gaming, etc.) that result in exactly that: "nothing", let alone positive, ever gets done.
by spankibalt
5/8/2026 at 9:13:41 AM
> Now you only have to deal with that group of bullies who slowly build up resentments, and might end up paying your school one last visit.Someone that decided to shoot up a school, because they got kicked off the football team, when they could’ve just improved their behavior (and maybe demonstrated effort to improve their grades) - that kid’s reasoning is deeply flawed (even for a kid). Such kids are probably (hopefully) very rare, and I suspect they would’ve found some other reason to shoot up the school.
> There's also the civil litigation-heavy system to keep in mind, where teachers and lower-ranked admin workers get burned by superiors who have to please parents.
There should be more civil litigation for schools that allow bullying, and generally allow misbehaving students to disrupt others. If behaving kids aren’t learning because the teacher isn’t running the lesson because they’re dealing with a misbehaving kid whose parent threatened lawsuits, the behaving kids’ parents should team up and threaten the school (and maybe the misbehaving kid’s parent) with their own lawsuit.
Then maybe states can intervene and make frivolous lawsuits harder. Alternatively, they can effectively pay the parents (because they own the public schools who lose the lawsuits) to enroll their kids in private schools.
by armchairhacker