[VimEscapeArtist]

The comments here are fascinating. A generation of men who've never been in a physical confrontation in their lives are absolutely certain that physical consequences don't work. How would you know?

A boy who bullies needs to learn that the world hits back. You can teach that with a cane at 13 or let him find out at 25 when he mouths off to the wrong person. One of these comes with a controlled environment and a school nurse on standby.

[mrguyorama]

Most bullies already know the world hits back, that's why they are acting out

Beating a child who acts out because they get abuse from other people in their life is a reliable way to not at all improve things and merely reinforce their broken worldviews.

If getting the shit beaten out of you by authorities was a reliable way to raise people, my parent's generation would have had zero crime and zero bullying, and the local "White trash" trailer parks would be pinnacles of human behavior.

You know that's not how it works out, right?

Being hit works on people who would respond to nonviolent punishment.

[danhau]

> Most bullies already know the world hits back, that's why they are acting out

Not in my experience. There definitely will be some problematic kids, but to the majority of school bullies, I don't think this applies. To recall two of my own experiences:

As a boy I was being bullied by a group of kids. Some day I snapped at them and decided to resolve the matter there and then. I didn't care they outnumbered me. I didn't care if I'd win or lose. I genuinely was ready to fight to the death (lol). But it never came to that. Showing some teeth spooked them and they left me alone after that. I remember the dumbfounded look on their faces. So while it didn't come to violence, the threat of violence scared them off.

On the other hand, when I was bullying a boy (I honestly don't know why), he eventually fought back. That really surprised me and I vividly remember how much respect he gained in my eyes for it. It was humbling. We became friends.

The best thing that can happen to a bully is their victim standing up for themself. Like the person you responded to said: "A boy who bullies needs to learn that the world hits back." The exception to this is kids with sociopathic tendencies (for lack of a better term) - kids that double down on their behaviour despite being confronted with the consequences. How a kid will respond is, I think, more of a function of their personality than the punishment received. But what do I know?

[array_key_first]

I just don't understand why people would think it works.

We used to do it. Shocker, it didn't work. Bullies were much, MUCH meaner in the past. Mostly it's just mean words now, which is still bad but better.

So, we had corporal punishment, it was bad. Then we got rid of corporal punishment, and it got better. Hmm, thinking caps!

Of course that's just correlative evidence. But we have literally no evidence anywhere from anyone that corporal punishment is good.

[nekusar]

A pencil makes one hell of an improvised weapon.

[aliasxneo]

"I once saw him kill 3 men in a bar.. with a pencil. With a fuckin' pencil."