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

feverzsj

> 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'.

christkv

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.

t0duf0du

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.

Pinegulf

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

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.

terespuwash

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

tjmc

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

red_admiral

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

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.

Aquitard

My partner is a special needs childcare worker. Children under her care are approximately between 6 - 10 years and on the spectrum. She constantly deals with kids attempting to elope. It's a constant struggle when regulations prevent them from grabbing the child to take them back to daycare in fear of losing her jobs. She can't abandon other kids nor abandon this kid.

HelloUsername

"Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school" 06.may.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48032968 665 comments

bumperhazard

Reminds me of this Korean show called 'Teach You A Lesson' that came out recently. An ex-military guy is given full immunity to go to schools and "discipline" students (he's basically having violent, over-the-top fights with students). Based on Wikipedia, looks like it lead to a good amount of controversy in Korea.

egeozcan

If a teacher had to hold my kid as a last resort, instead of being mad at the teacher, I'd be motivated to do better on teaching my kid how to behave, and apologize from the teacher. You also need to restrain kids sometimes (could be often, if for example they are in the spectrum), because they have trouble regulating their emotions and they can hit others, and even themselves in crisis situations. However, you should explain them later, why that was necessary. The teachers not being allowed to do that is mind-boggling to me. What do they do now, bring their parents with a helicopter?

comrade1234

The nuns used to slap our palms with a ruler and that hasn't led to any weird fetishes or anything like that...

d--b

Taking the occasion here to talk about my case (the article itself is not worthy of any attention). I am a parent with two young kids. My older one is difficult. He has had behavioral problems since very early on. Looking at the current set of "disorders", he checks all the boxes for OCD. I am putting "disorder" in quotes, because I don't consider it an illness to be defiant. It's annoying AF, but in the wild he'd be just another ape. Btw, there is no "cure" either, the "treatment" is to help parents dealing with it. So my kid does talk back to teachers. He does hit his friends. He probably steals. He probably lies. I dont know the full extent. Day in, day out we hear: - kids these days are treated like kings - their parents let them do whatever they want - kids hit their teachers and nothing happens - schools level plummet cause kids are making a mess - it wasn't like this in my days and so on and so forth As the parent of my kids, I can assure you that we've never been permissive or lax with them, and neither have been their grand parents, or their teachers. The older one getting under our skins easily, we did use quite a lot of "force" in trying to stop him as the article puts it. I think there might have been a time when those children were meant to be "broken", as in beaten so much so you suck the life out of them. My father got whipped, not sure he came out much wiser for it. So yeah, maybe there was a time when the "bad seeds were rooted out" and life was better for everyone else. Luckily, many professionals are aware of this, his teachers understand how it works. The people we've seen were very helpful. My personal experience is that: it's not permissivity, it's physically wired in the brain. If kids overall have more problems than they used to, look not for parenting problems, look for environmental problems. Maybe it's the ecology, maybe it's increased overall stress. I don't know. Just don't blame it on parents. Most of us try our best.