[jdietrich]

Good luck trying to administer corporal punishment to a young man who is bigger, fitter and stronger than you, has already demonstrated a willingness to use violence against you and has a room full of willing accomplices. I hope that anyone foolish enough to try it has good healthcare.

[CapricornNoble]

> Good luck trying to administer corporal punishment to a young man who is bigger, fitter and stronger than you

Why are teenage boys bigger, fitter and stronger than the teachers? Maybe because ~75% of teachers are women? There's value in the ability of physically-capable adult males to quietly intimidate adolescents. There's value in well-rounded men who can provide classroom instruction but maybe also coach the boxing/powerlifting/wrestling teams. The next time Mr. Smith puts some bass in his voice and tells you to sit down and stop disrupting class, there should be a voice in the back of your head that says "I should do that, because he just might uppercut me into the stratosphere". I suspect that students aren't learning the principle of "Fuck Around and Find Out" from ANY authority figure in their daily lives. Our society as a whole seems to have forgotten the importance of male role models IMO...

[pasabagi]

Yeah, a guy who 'might uppercut me' sounds like a great male role model. You could probably get Andrew Tate in for the job, once he's out of jail.

[CapricornNoble]

>a guy who 'might uppercut me' sounds like a great male role model

On average, men are more likely to aspire to be Thor or Captain Marvel than they are to be Rick Moranis's character in Ghostbusters. They are more likely to take guidance from a larger, stronger, and more assertive man than otherwise. The military has already figured this out, just look at the stereotypical Drill Instructor for an extreme example of the concept. Do you dispute this, or are you simply speaking of what works/doesn't work for you as an individual? A single anecdote doesn't really tell us much about what society-wide initiatives we should pursue.

Also, Andrew Tate is already out of jail and currently under house arrest.

[pasabagi]

Sure I dispute it, but that's not my point. You want schools to teach children the values of the society they will go on to contribute to. If you want them to internalize the idea that guys with big arms and gravelly voices have more authority than little women or effeminate academic types, then your idea has merit. That's what we did in the past. If you want them to value competence, then your idea is absolute garbage.

I'm very happy we've moved past the point where you have to have a pair of testicles to be taken seriously as an authority figure. Obviously, some really hide-bound institutions like the military haven't completely internalized that, but then, that could be why militaries underperform. Russia, for example, has a very macho military, and (surprise!) it sucks.

[strken]

In my experience and I bet yours too, authority arises from respect rather than violence, but it is lost when an authority figure becomes the victim of violence without a sufficient response.

I don't agree with the grandparent: tiny and physically unimposing women are absolutely able to keep the respect of a classroom. What you're missing, though, is the necessity of escalation at the rare times when students try to initiate violence. Having senior teachers around who can drop what they're doing and run into a neighbouring classroom is important, and it's important to have at least some big, burly, and/or male teachers in the mix as a last ditch way to stop a violent student.

Rephrased: maintaining authority is easier with the backing of a system, and that system must make confrontation a losing prospect, otherwise it rewards aggressive and violent students by letting them do whatever they want. This is harder when 25% of the teachers at a school are men and none are near an incident. It's harder when the school bans effective punishment and response. It's harder when there's an established culture of disrespect. It's harder when students are legally required to be there and have no other alternatives.

[pasabagi]

I agree with a lot of what you've said, but as a large, physically confident man, I would hate to have a job where I'm required to occasionally wrestle with people.

I think when you've got to the point where your wrestling ability is a relevant criterion as a teacher, the system is already completely dysfunctional, and we need to take a broader look at the problems that young people face.

You can't put a bandaid on that by just trying to recruit muscular specimens, and hoping that they are also decent teachers. I had a physics teacher who was a great rugby player, and I can tell you, it was not good for my understanding of physics.

[CapricornNoble]

> If you want them to value competence, then your idea is absolute garbage.

If an instructor cannot maintain sufficient control of their charges that facilitate an effective learning environment, I would argue they are not competent. They are failing to accomplish their assigned task.

> Obviously, some really hide-bound institutions like the military haven't completely internalized that, but then, that could be why militaries underperform. Russia, for example, has a very macho military, and (surprise!) it sucks.

The Russian military is underperforming for a ton of reasons beyond machismo. Corruption being the biggest, IMO. And your hypothesis fails when tested against almost any other machismo-laden western military force, in particular the almost-entirely-male and heavily testosterone-fueled US special operations community.

But the sibling comment highlights the nuance that perhaps my post was lacking: respecting the authority of the females in the organization is a worthy objective but it needs SOMEBODY to enforce it when challenged. It's apparent from TFA that isn't happening.

[pasabagi]

> It's apparent from TFA that isn't happening.

I guess for me it's a question of 'where you fix the problem'. In many machines, social machines included, you have a variety of stages where you can mitigate issues. Most of those 'solutions' are dirty hacks, and there are a few that will achieve results with a minimum of complexity and effort. I think fixing the extreme socialization problems of teenagers by making a significant chunk of teachers in normal schools double up as amateur MMA fighters is the wrong way to go about it.

On the subject of the Russian military, I do kind of agree, but I also think it's worth thinking about how much the extreme hazing culture of the Russian military contributes to the rot. It's been a repeated theme from the Afghanistan war on, that the violent 'toxic masculinity' of Russian military culture leads to tactical paralysis, a culture of hiding problems and mistakes, timidity at all levels of leadership, etc.

An observation that's been occurring to me with increasing frequency in recent years is that machismo is, in very many roles, a very impractical character trait. In roles where physical strength and physical courage are prized, like special operations, I can see the advantages, but most roles today, military or otherwise, are very technical, and so all the nonsense and communication issues that goes along with machismo is pure baggage.