Yet another Hacker News

Denmark set to allow return of 'physical force' in school

55 points janisz 2 hours ago 31 comments

feverzsj 1 hour ago | parent

> Starting in August 2027, they will be allowed to 'hold a student, keep them in place, or take them to another room' if the student disrupts the class.

Far from what I imagined as 'physical force'.

ketzu 1 hour ago | parent

Primed by discussions of Americans on corporal punishment of children, I expected much much worse.

bigstrat2003 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah, using "physical force" in the headline feels extremely dishonest on the part of the publication.

d1sxeyes 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah. The UK for example already allows use of 'reasonable force' to prevent a pupil from committing a criminal offense, prevent personal injury or damage to property, and most ambiguously, to 'maintain good order and discipline in the classroom', which sounds a lot like this.

This headline implies misleadingly that teachers in Denmark are reintroducing the cane or something.

ifwinterco 1 hour ago | parent

In reality though you can easily lose your job in the UK over stuff like this if a kid/parent complains so teachers are afraid to use any force at all.

What the law says on paper is one thing, who the school administration will believe and back up is another

password54321 55 minutes ago | parent

Even as much as a nudge can be escalated to safeguarding, which can lead to an investigation where people can say anything about you, which can lead you to getting sacked if they found a 'safeguarding breach', which can lead to a TRA panel (they get over a 1000 referrals per year), which can lead to a suspension and ends you up on the public government website with your full name (your life is ruined).

Notice none of the steps need to even amount to a legal assault. Just what your school and the Dfe thinks goes against "safeguarding" which is broad. God forbid if you are a man.

advenn 15 minutes ago | parent

well, i expected more from that title

christkv 1 hour ago | parent

I never had a problem with students having rights. I have a problem with those rights not coming with responsibilities and proper sanctions when those are violated. There should be zero tolerance of students using violence either against the teachers or other students. They should be moved to a reform school immediately.

joha4270 1 hour ago | parent

Alas, those classes was wound down a decade ago to save money, that is I mean be more inclusive.

t0duf0du 1 hour ago | parent

Dude in India, it was fairly common for teachers to whoop asses. There were some teachers (the good ones) whose punishment included doing squats or running around the field but there were some monsters who would horribly hit students, me in the 9th grade was beaten so bad that it started from the first row of bench and ended at the end of the last bench, the fucking monster did not even stop after me being cornered.

watt 54 minutes ago | parent

Famously, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein beat a pupil unconscious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidbauer_incident

satisfice 42 minutes ago | parent

Ludwig Hittgenstein, they used to call him. (But only in their private language.)

jan_m_savage 16 minutes ago | parent

no wonder what he wrote is shite. i couldn't progress beyond a few pages, the man is so full of himself.

And I say this as someone who can comfortably read Kant in (the original no less).

justforfunhere 46 minutes ago | parent

As a fellow Indian growing up in 90s, I feel you. I had my fair share of beatings from teachers in school.

There were cases where parents who found it challenging to control their kids, would encourage teachers to use physical force on them. Parents deemed it was school's responsibility to instill discipline in their children.

As far as I can recall, use of violence to control kids was pretty common back in the day, both at home and at school. I don't see that happening nowadays, though.

Pinegulf 1 hour ago | parent

Sometimes only words don't work. That's why we have police, guards and armies.

The guiding idea should be "minimum necessary force used". Sometimes the this includes physical force.

yturijea 59 minutes ago | parent

From Denmark. between 99 and 02 then I was 7-10 it was not uncommon for certain trouble makers to be placed in rooms, or in a broom closet or similar, until the class was up.

And there certainly was elements of "holding students" for my entire period of elementary school, as certain groups of kids are just insane hurting each other.

But glad for the teachers they get tools to control a situation as police is not likely to be available to come to every school all the time. and hope the teachers are not getting hurt in the process, as some kids can be quite violent.

Generally teachers have suffered from increased scrutiny from all directions in Denmark for the last 8 years, which have caused a lot of people to leave the career and choose another career. This, same as rest of the world I imagine has mostly been due to the parents not taking responsibility of their kids, and the kids have been uncontrollable and the parents have always taken the kids side in any argument where a kid was not succeeding in school. Which in the 90's and 00's was much less frequent.

rusk 40 minutes ago | parent

> not uncommon for certain trouble makers to be placed in rooms, or in a broom closet

That is shocking to me and I went to school in the 80s. Sounds like there was good cause but the pendulum swung too far. Now it’s coming back and things are settling.

It’s funny because you normally think of the Nordics as being so far ahead in things like this but I guess we all have our blind spots.

InsideOutSanta 24 minutes ago | parent

The broom closet seems a bit creepy as a punishment. But my primary school teachers in the 80s used to lock me in the school library as "punishment", which turned out to be the wrong incentive.

terespuwash 46 minutes ago | parent

If a kid isn't dangerous the answer is support not physical force.

rusk 38 minutes ago | parent

If a child’s actions are ultimately going to get them hurt in life restraint is support.

tjmc 43 minutes ago | parent

From someone who's watched Robocop a few too many times, that's a disturbing headline.

red_admiral 27 minutes ago | parent

What the article actually says: the threshold for "force" rises from "student is actively endangering someone" to "student is being disruptive" (throwing food around the classroom is given as an example).

There is no mention of force as a punishment (such as spanking), and force means things like holding a student's hand firmly to stop them throwing food. It's not whacking them with a nightstick.

Gareth321 6 minutes ago | parent

As others have pointed out, this is just allowing teachers to physically restrain kids as a last resort. This should never have been removed in the first place. It's a testament to how the pendulum swung MUCH too far in the direction of permissive parenting/teaching. Contrary to the belief in these (often academic) circles, children are not perfectly rational. It is not always possible to talk kids out of hysterical or violent episodes. Especially when there are exacerbating cognitive, behavioural, and cultural problems. Some kids need time out, and sometimes they need to be physically put there to prevent disruption for the whole class (or much worse). Unfortunately teachers all over the West have been systematically disempowered from doing this over decades. Many schools now have zero contact policies, and this has resulted in pupils harming other students in front of teachers, while teachers stood back for fear of losing their jobs, lawsuits, or even potential prosecution.

I think the bottom line is teachers need to once again be empowered to control their classrooms. At minimum this means giving them the authority to remove students from the class - whether by force or otherwise. They must be able to expel violent students. We need to radically dismantle the "no child left behind" bureaucracy which has placed violent and special needs children into regular classrooms.