Sorry – but that doesn’t make any sense to me. You are claiming the cane was a ‘standard punishment’ and used ‘frequently’ in a school where ‘In many schools, I could have smoked; played truant; swore at teachers; carved my name on desks; wandered where and when I wanted; in general do as I please – all without fear of getting the cane.’
The two claims are not compatible. If the cane wasn’t being used with girls, then it wasn’t a standard punishment in the school as a whole. If it was the normal punishment for boys, then yes, it could be referred to as a standard punishment for boys, but not for the school as a whole. If there was no standard punishment for girls in that environment, then there’s a major problem – but the problem there is ‘no standard punishment at all’ not ‘no use of the cane’.
I didn’t mean it couldn’t be considered a punishment. I said “it couldn’t be used as a punishment for any particular offence because half the school could commit that offence yet not face that punishment.” Re-reading that, I realize that first “used” should have been “considered”. Sorry for any confusion. The point is, if ten children are all caught committing the same offence, all having the same antecedence, but only one is caned. Can that caning be truly said to be for the offence committed or was it really for something else?
Yes, it can be said that the caning was for the offence committed. If the offence had not been committed, the caning would not have occurred.
Something doesn’t have to happen in 100% of cases for it to be true. Nor does it have to happen in 90% of cases. Or 50% of cases. Or 5% of cases. It only has to be true in the case where it happens. Any other cases are irrelevant to that truth.
About 30% of sex discrimination actions are being brought by men – that’s quite a “few”.
Compared to the number of men who would never consider such a claim, it’s tiny.
<i>As a percentage of total claims, it’s quite a lot – especially as only women suffer discrimination.
Now, you are just making things up. Men can certainly suffer discrimination. It’s just up to them to decide for themselves when that is the case. It’s not up to anybody else to make that decision for them.
And, yes, you are free to express
“Commonsense” is not the same thing as stupidity. It’s quite a bit different actually. What you are treating as commonsense here is like Lisa Simpson’s anti-tiger rock.
If after examination, you find that a relationship continues to hold up, and if you can’t find any contrary evidence and if you can’t find any alternative explanation, it becomes reasonable to assume a causative link. Until then, doing so, makes no sense at all
Thanks for that link. Not being a fan of “The Simpsons”, I wasn’t aware of that particular example but I’ve met that type of fallacy many times. The point I was making was that, taking those two facts alone, the conclusion that CP causes long term psychological damage to boys wouldn’t be unreasonable. The studies you refer to that shows there is unlikely to be a link, had not been done at the time we were discussing.
I’m not sure if the term “commonsense” has a different meaning for you (I suspect Australian English and (real 
)English have a few differences) but, here, it often refers to what the ordinary person believes – no matter how illogical when examined.
In the case of males, corporal punishment, and suicide, as soon as we compare men who received corporal punishment and men who did not, and find a slightly lower rate of suicide in the former than the latter, we have both contrary evidence, and that the relationship does not hold up under examination. We’ve already lost two of the three pre-conditions necessary to assume a causative link.
I agree but we draw conclusions from the available data. I believe those studies were done quite a bit later than the time we were discussing so, at that time, the additional data wasn’t available
Why do you think believing CP causes psychological problems in girls was “commonsense”?
Well, in actual fact, I don’t.
Commonsense told teachers that corporal punishment was ineffective with the vast majority of girls. They could see that by observation and to how often behaviour improved or deteriorated after it was used. Commonsense may have also told teachers it was doing some harm, because they could see that in short term and medium term reactions.
It required research to be done to quantify that harm, and work out more precisely what form it was taking.
What you said was “They also knew that it worked far less effectively with girls, and was more likely to do harm. Nowadays, we do actually have published research that backs this up, but with this as in many other cases, experienced teachers at the chalk face didn’t need research to tell them what commonsense already had. so I took the term “commonsense” to refer to both parts of that.
Policies of not using corporal punishment were in place a lot earlier than the 1960s in some places, and weren’t in place until after that (if at all) in others. I don’t know why you’ve picked on the 1960s here as some point of relevance to this issue. Policies of not punishing girls, in my view, if they existed, were rare enough as to have very little relevance to anything.
I used the 1960s as an example because that was the era I was at school and it was also well before the time of those studies you claim CP show is harmful to girls but not boys. From talking to other women of about the same age as I, it’s clear that, in many schools, girls were treated far more leniently than boys – regardless of how bad their behaviour.
We were discussing the situation decades ago, not just the last few years.
Yes, we are. So? I really don’t understand what point you are making here. You seem to be focusing on particular dates at different times for reasons that I’m sure make sense to you, but don’t make any sense to me. It might help if you explained why you focus on a particular time.
Simply because polices in place before the studies were done, couldn’t have been based on those studies. I was at school in the 1960s and, as far as I know, the possibility of long term harm from CP wasn’t considered then. As you acknowledge, researchers during the 1970s and early 1980s said CP was harmful for both sexes.
Sorry – but that doesn’t make any sense to me. You are claiming the cane was a ‘standard punishment’ and used ‘frequently’ in a school where ‘In many schools, I could have smoked; played truant; swore at teachers; carved my name on desks; wandered where and when I wanted; in general do as I please – all without fear of getting the cane.’
The two claims are not compatible. If the cane wasn’t being used with girls, then it wasn’t a standard punishment in the school as a whole. If it was the normal punishment for boys, then yes, it could be referred to as a standard punishment for boys, but not for the school as a whole. If there was no standard punishment for girls in that environment, then there’s a major problem – but the problem there is ‘no standard punishment at all’ not ‘no use of the cane’.
You’re right, it doesn’t make sense but that was often how things were in many schools. The cane would be used for all sorts of offences – anything from forgetting gym kit to smoking and truancy – but only on boys. It was often considered the mandatory punishment for such things as smoking and truancy but, again, only on boys. As a girl, I could have done whatever I liked, and told any teacher who challenged me where to go, without fear of being caned for it. The cane ceased to be a punishment for smoking etc. and became a punishment for doing almost wrong whilst a boy.
Yes, it can be said that the caning was for the offence committed. If the offence had not been committed, the caning would not have occurred.
If that one offender had been the same sex as the other offenders, that caning would not have occurred either. In that example, the determinant was the sex of the offender, not the offence itself.
As a percentage of total claims, it’s quite a lot – especially as only women suffer discrimination.
Now, you are just making things up. Men can certainly suffer discrimination. It’s just up to them to decide for themselves when that is the case. It’s not up to anybody else to make that decision for them.
Yes, I was being bit sarcastic there. The fact is, whenever sex discrimination is mentioned, it’s almost invariably presumed a woman is the victim. Not only are men victims of sex discrimination too, a lot of them are speaking up about it. When they do, I’ll support them.
I really don’t think there was a time when we had research data that said males were more likely to commit suicide than women and we also didn’t have data on which factors did and didn’t have an influence on suicide. What you are saying here might make sense if there was some appreciable gap, but there really isn’t.
Until quite recently, there was very little research into either the prevalence or causes of suicide. The old coroners verdict of ‘suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed’ was all there was. Suicides were assumed to be caused by ‘insanity’, and ‘insanity’ was very poorly understood. And when research did begin, nearly all of it was into men who’d served in combat, and if a psychological cause was suspected, it was assumed to have been caused by something of that nature.
I’d have to go through a lot of journals to prove precise dates – but I know when I was doing my initial psychology training in the 1960s, we already knew that childhood corporal punishment had a negative correlation with suicide in men, because I remember quite a bit of discussion as to various theories as to why that might be so – and at that time, it was also coming to be believed that suicide was more common among women than among men (“Men kill other people, women kill themselves”). This was a rejection of earlier ideas, ideas which have become mainstream again over time. A common enough cycle in trendy psychology.
I’m not sure if the term “commonsense” has a different meaning for you (I suspect Australian English and (real wink.gif)English have a few differences) but, here, it often refers to what the ordinary person believes – no matter how illogical when examined.
We’d use ‘common knowledge’ for that here, which is quite a bit different from common sense. Australian English and British English do have appreciable differences, but I find English colleagues seem to know what I mean when I use the term.
I agree but we draw conclusions from the available data. I believe those studies were done quite a bit later than the time we were discussing so, at that time, the additional data wasn’t available
I am really unclear on what time you think we were discussing. I was talking about a period surrounding the mid 20th century, extending at least twenty years, if not thirty either side of it – so 1920-1980, or 1930-1970, with some flexibility on either sides of those – perhaps more earlier than later. The period where most teachers had at least some knowledge of formal pedagogy (and so were generally competent) but before theoretical knowledge became the be all and end all of educational focus.
What you said was “They also knew that it worked far less effectively with girls, and was more likely to do harm. Nowadays, we do actually have published research that backs this up, but with this as in many other cases, experienced teachers at the chalk face didn’t need research to tell them what commonsense already had. so I took the term “commonsense” to refer to both parts of that.
And you are correct to – but I said “likely to do harm”, not “cause psychological problems” which is what you presented me as having said. They’re not the same thing – well, psychological problems are a subset of harm, but they are only a small part of it.
Teachers knew through commonsense that using corporal punishment with girls lead to a high probability of resentment by the girls, a high probability of increased misbehaviour, a high probability of decreased academic performance – all sorts of things like that. There are plenty of things written in older books on teaching that shows they knew this. They didn’t generally know that there was actual a heightened risk of psychological damage (in comparison to boys).
I used the 1960s as an example because that was the era I was at school and it was also well before the time of those studies you claim CP show is harmful to girls but not boys. From talking to other women of about the same age as I, it’s clear that, in many schools, girls were treated far more leniently than boys – regardless of how bad their behaviour.
Well, first of all, the 1960s are not well before the time of the studies that indicate corporal punishment causes issues with girls in a different ratio to with boys. The Highfield study from the 1950s shows evidence of this, and there’s a lot studies from the 1970s that do. With Highfield, it didn’t attract much attention because that study also showed corporal punishment was being used much less with girls and they seem to have assumed that cancelled out any risk, and with the studies of the 1970s, it was generally concealed because they only reported mixed figures, but the data was there. I refer to later studies, simply because they are clearer and more explicit.
Simply because polices in place before the studies were done, couldn’t have been based on those studies. I was at school in the 1960s and, as far as I know, the possibility of long term harm from CP wasn’t considered then. As you acknowledge, researchers during the 1970s and early 1980s said CP was harmful for both sexes.
I can assure you that the possibilty of long term harm from corporal punishment was most definitely being considered by teachers in the 1960s – and a lot earlier in fact. There were groups calling for the abolition of corporal punishment from British schools from the end of the Second World War onwards. That’s why the Highfield study was commissioned.
During the 1960s, most teachers still supported it – but perhaps one in five didn’t, and many of those were very vocal in expressing their opinions on the subject. I was actually seen at my school as an abolitionist myself – I was, in fact, just opposed to the careless and excessive use, but I had the evidence and expert opinions at my fingertips.
As for researchers during the 1970s and 1980s, the most prominent researchers were saying corporal punishment was harmful to both sexes, yes. The reason they were prominent is because those opposed to it made them prominent. They weren’t the only researchers even then, but in the post-hippy (and in America, post Brown) era, the ‘progressives’ were willing and able to get just about anything they wanted. There was no more career limiting label for teachers in most places than ‘conservative’. And it helped to ruin schools. Most of the failed educational experiments of the 1970s and 1980s have been abandoned – abolition of corporal punishment is one of the relatively small numbers of exceptions – probably because it was one of the few that had to be legislated.
Yes, it can be said that the caning was for the offence committed. If the offence had not been committed, the caning would not have occurred.
If that one offender had been the same sex as the other offenders, that caning would not have occurred either. In that example, the determinant was the sex of the offender, not the offence itself.
The primary factor is still the offence. Gender only became relevant to the punishment after the offence was committed.
Yes, I was being bit sarcastic there. The fact is, whenever sex discrimination is mentioned, it’s almost invariably presumed a woman is the victim. Not only are men victims of sex discrimination too, a lot of them are speaking up about it. When they do, I’ll support them.
And so you should – but will you also support them when they say they don’t care. That’s the question .
I really don’t think there was a time when we had research data that said males were more likely to commit suicide than women and we also didn’t have data on which factors did and didn’t have an influence on suicide. What you are saying here might make sense if there was some appreciable gap, but there really isn’t.
If you didn’t have data on which factors had an influence on suicide, how could it be known that there was a negative correlation between childhood CP and suicide in men? Was suicide really more common in women or was that just supposition?
Currently I believe the figures for the UK are about three male suicides to one female.
We’d use ‘common knowledge’ for that here, which is quite a bit different from common sense. Australian English and British English do have appreciable differences, but I find English colleagues seem to know what I mean when I use the term.
So-called “commonsense”, as I understand the term, isn’t usually based on research data. I think we’re using slightly different definitions of the word. I don’t know if that’s due to the differences in English in our respective countries or if it varies across each country.
And you are correct to – but I said “likely to do harm”, not “cause psychological problems” which is what you presented me as having said. They’re not the same thing – well, psychological problems are a subset of harm, but they are only a small part of it.
Teachers knew through commonsense that using corporal punishment with girls lead to a high probability of resentment by the girls, a high probability of increased misbehaviour, a high probability of decreased academic performance – all sorts of things like that. There are plenty of things written in older books on teaching that shows they knew this. They didn’t generally know that there was actual a heightened risk of psychological damage (in comparison to boys).
Sorry I misinterpreted “likely to do harm”. I would consider all the above “psychological effects” (as opposed to physical).
With Highfield, it didn’t attract much attention because that study also showed corporal punishment was being used much less with girls and they seem to have assumed that cancelled out any risk, and with the studies of the 1970s, it was generally concealed because they only reported mixed figures, but the data was there. I refer to later studies, simply because they are clearer and more explicit.
If the data was concealed, was it actually considered when the studies were done?
I can assure you that the possibilty of long term harm from corporal punishment was most definitely being considered by teachers in the 1960s – and a lot earlier in fact. There were groups calling for the abolition of corporal punishment from British schools from the end of the Second World War onwards. That’s why the Highfield study was commissioned.
Calling for abolition suggest they thought it harmed boys too.
If that one offender had been the same sex as the other offenders, that caning would not have occurred either. In that example, the determinant was the sex of the offender, not the offence itself.
The primary factor is still the offence.
That, alone, was not the determinant. It it were, the girls would have been caned too. For the offence to be the primary factor, it would have to become “comitting [offence] whilst a boy.
Not only are men victims of sex discrimination too, a lot of them are speaking up about it. When they do, I’ll support them.
And so you should – but will you also support them when they say they don’t care. That’s the question.
There not much to support in that case. Should every man be denied a right just be cause other men don’t want to exercise that right?
Local TV is currently running yet another reality TV program on medical emergencies, this time from Dr. Dominum’s Australia. It features ambulances, paramedics and hospitals and both minor and major incidents. We follow patients from start to finish. Most but not all cases have good outcomes. It is unclear how informed consent has been obtained and what editing has occurred.
What is relevance is the difference between male and female patients and their relatives and the way they cope with acute illness and injury. The males and females are much like Dr Dominum’s descriptions and in accord with my own personal experience. I have yet to meet anyone similar to those described by Jenny and none such feature in the TV program.
Males and females are different.
What is relevance is the difference between male and female patients and their relatives and the way they cope with acute illness and injury.
I don’t watch much TV so I don’t know which program you’re referring to. How do men and women differ in how they cope with injury and illness? As I seem to alternate between being a “typical woman” and an “unusual girl”, I’m not sure how I’m expected to react if I suffer a serious injury. I know how I did react to various injuries and illnesses – quite calmly. Did I get it right or is that a male reaction? I’ve heard of men calmly coping with horrific injuries, like severed limbs, but another poster has stated he’s seen women calmly coping with serious injuries.