I used to get bullied a decent amount. Nothing terrible, but I was always undersized and thus an easier target for ignorant shitheads. Fortunately for me, both of the more severe accidents had positive outcomes. When I was in 2nd grade, there was a 4th grader who used to terrorize me. Chase me around the playground, throw rocks and me, basically all the juvenile punk ass stuff. Well finally, it got bad enough and my after school tears and frustrations got to the point where my parents called his parents. Turns out one of their family friends was a Police Captain. The little fucker got a pretty good scared straight lesson and was nothing but polite to me after that. And additionally, his older brother, I think a 6th grader at the time, also found him to be a little dickface and took it upon himself to protect me on the bus route, etc... the rest of the year. Nothing else came up until 7th grade. There were a couple of white trash idiots who used to basically manhandle me on the playground during basketball games and other assorted activities. Nothing too bad, charley horses and other physical shit, more obnoxious than anything. Most kids saw it happen but didn't really do anything cause none of my close friends were big enough to stop it and it wasn't that bad like i said. Well one day, I got yanked down by my collar and it ripped my shirt, which was one of my favorites, and I had enough. I whirled around and kicked the douchebag in the junk as hard as I could. To this day I've still never seen so much surprise/pain in a kid's eyes. His friends promptly leveled me but luckily a teacher came over and broke it up. Well later that week, we were in the locker room after gym, and the smallest of the group, I still see his rat faced expression just waiting for a future in meth addiction, was loudly crowing about I was going to get the shit kicked out of me after school. Exasperated, I just yelled "Why don't you do it now and get it over with?" hoping the setting and possible teacher presence would protect me. Well he and a fellow mouth breather came tearing over, but never got there cause a classmate of mine (who was a beast at 13 and would later play TE for a Big 10 school) grabbed him and basically tossed him horizontally into a locker and raised a fist to his fat associate. He walked me out of the locker room and said he admired me finally sticking up for myself. He had my back the rest of middle school and by the time I got to HS, I fell in with a crowd and bullying became less of an issue. I guess the moral of both of my stories, and the depressing thing about most situations like this, is these idiots often don't respond to anything but aggression or absolute fear. Some bullies are indeed psychopaths, but most are just kids who are older or grew faster than their peers, which is where they gain their "advantage" and often all it takes is a punch in the nose and they shrink fast. I'm in no way advocating violence, but parents/educators need to figure out ways to punish this kind of behavior effectively or its going to escalate to the point where that is the only solution sometimes.
My point isn't about corporal punishment but more about creating consequences that will help deter future bad behaviors, give the kid some sense of responsibility, and maybe, just maybe create a positive from a negative. The kid said "sorry" and got to sit home for a couple days? Fuck that.
Alt focus: I was never physically bullied, but I was an easy target for teasing. I had (and still have) a speech impediment. I was also obese, and didn't lose weight until the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year of college. Middle school was the absolute worst. I was made fun of on an almost daily basis. I was even prank called at home by a kid who I didn't know personally but had gone to cotillion with. He called my house late one night and asked if I was home while he stuttered over my name. High school wasn't that bad for me. I didn't have any friends, but I also wasn't teased that much, either. I might have been lucky that I lived in the same city and stayed in the same school system my whole life and was around a lot of the same kids.
I must have missed the original debate. Regardless, look at countries where children are generally better behaved, like most Asian countries, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, etc. Those are also the countries where it's considered standard practice to beat your kids for misbehaving. I'm certain you're wrong about those hellions being beaten, too; behavior like that goes hand-in-hand with a complete lack of respect/fear for older authority figures. Which would mean their parents probably never disciplined them physically.
But she's not an authority figure. The video demonstrated that clearly. In their minds, she's below them, weaker than them, and is thus a target. You see it all the time with kids who are hit. They cower before those they fear, and ruthlessly attack those who they think fear them. Because that's how they were raised to think, because that's what beating your child does.
This has been argued in a previous thread, but there is a difference between beating your kid and having a physical consequence for bad behavior. Just like there is a difference between bribing and rewarding your child. Lashing out in anger at your child is not correct behavior for an adult. This shows that the adult is not in control of themselves. Whether corporal punishment is an appropriate punishment (consequence) to be doled out by authority figures, especially ones who are not family members, is something to debate. I do not think having an adult physically dominate a minor because they are angry/upset and bigger than the other person is ever correct. Hmm. When I put it like that, that last bit does sound a bit like bullying, doesn't it? You lead your children by example. If you teach them through your actions that it is okay to routinely physically dominate someone because you can, how do you think they are going to interact with people that are smaller or shyer than themselves? Monkey see, monkey do.
This happened about 25 minutes from where I grew up. The town (Greece) is a horrible place full of white trash, and a police force that was mass fired for corruption. Not surprised.
Not necessarily. It could also mean that they have an "Obey the strong, oppress the weak" mindset. If you have a kid who is beaten at home but neglected at the same time, he will bully other kids because that's the way he's raised.
I think when you look at cultures that have corporal punishment, it's not enough to say that beating = subservience. Cultures like China and [insert wherever] also have the deeply held belief that with age comes respect. They don't just beat kids. The entire civil society, social network and peer groups all hold to the belief that you must obey your superiors and that respect is paramount. If you have that mentality, then odds are the children will behave with adults and act respectfully. If you do not have all the additional stuff, then merely beating your children when they misbehave - rather than instilling a deeply held respect for your authority - will result in kids who run wild and are poorly adjusted when it comes to relating to others. That's what's happening in the video. I didn't do things or not do things when I was a child so that I could avoid beatings. I did/avoided things because I wanted my father's respect and I didn't want to let him down. THAT is far more effective than merely using the strap.
To be fair... She's not an authority figure because what authority does she have over the kids? She can't have them removed from the bus route. She can't have them punished. She can't discipline them AT ALL. So what authority does she have? Except to sit and be a witness to their behavior, there's literally NOTHING she can do to them. Of course they perceive her as weaker, because her position IS weaker. She's NOT in control of the situation, and the only thing her position really allows her to be is a paid snitch. Your description of children who are hit is apt...when children are hit in retaliation, anger, and the 'hitting' is an emotional response to the situation. I don't find, through my personal experience as a parent and as someone who's had the opportunity (or misfortune, depending on the day of the week) to work with kids for the past several years, your description to at all fit children who have consequences for their actions including corporal punishment. The people who view physicality as a reaction instead of a consequence FAR outnumber the people who view it as a consequence. That said, rarely, if ever, have I had to spank my kids. I will...should I ever feel they've merited it...but...I'm lucky, my kids rise to my expectations.
The kids are never as bad as the parents. The Mrs. used to teach special ed pre-k and parents *daily* talked down and insulted teachers. It got to the point I was going to confront one directly, until the principal intervened. My kids will learn that bullies are cowards and they can talk as much shit as they want. But the second they lay a hand on you, lay that fucker out. Go bath salts crazy on that poor soul and make him the example. Get suspended, I don't care, I'll take you to Six Flags on your week off.
Honestly, this kind of response is basically the excuse given instead of "well we do it because it's what always been done, and we didn't fuck up our kids so much that it was noticeable, so it must work." Kids are resilient, and plenty of kids that were hit will "turn out fine." Similarly they're resilient physically, and plenty of kids that break bones will turn out fine physically. But saying that kids need to be hit to learn to behave is like saying a kid needs his arms snapped so they'll grow straight. It's absurd.
I really can't tell. Are you railing against parents who use corporal punishment, or are you railing against lazy breeders who don't actually parent their children? Because those are not necessarily the same types of people. Also, please note. I do not advocate the type of parenting that 'beats' a child. I advocate the type of parenting that TEACHES a child. Empathy, sympathy, compassion, critical thinking, decision making, natural consequences, etc. are all exceptionally underutilized and undertaught by most parents, I believe. Corporal punishment does not necessarily detract from any of that.
I was bullied a fair bit in middle school, but I don't really remember much of it, so I guess I turned out OK. Mostly along the lines of me being a social retard, girls pretending to be nice to me to laugh about it with their friends, etc. I had a speech impediment that I only fixed near the end of high school. My brother was more of the target - I remember some of his shit got stolen a couple times (graphing calculator, those things are expensive). My mom went to the school, blah blah, shit was worked out and the kid gave it back and apologized. So in other words, your kids aren't allowed to express their true emotions inside the house, and they've been trained like Pavlov's dog with beatings to reinforce that. "Grandma's being a hypochondriac? How dare you say that! Beatings for you!" So they bottle everything up, scream silently at the wall, and develop anger management issues and hypertension. I'm down with corporal punishment as a last resort in a predictable, rule-based, dispassionate parenting system, but fuck the "culture" argument. Like an instinctual disgust thing? I know exactly what you're talking about. I've actually felt this way towards my brother many times over the years (I've posted on here about how he was a target). And that was my brother. Kids have always been little shits. Bullying as a societal problem just seems far fucking overblown to me. I've gotta ask, where are the parents? Why aren't they teaching their little Ebenezers to stand up for themselves? Or at least how to make some friends of their own? My parents were immigrants who didn't understand white kids, but not everybody has that excuse. Can't keep running to the school district or the police or the Internet to protect you.