Blaming what Cho did...on media?

[flawofhumanity]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

Don't you find it a little disheartening, other forum readers, that "Parents who treat their children as intelligent reasonable people, and actually discuss and explain themselves instead of just hitting you when you do something wrong" makes them "A snobby asshole who thinks they're better than everyone"?

Arrogance is sometimes a price to pay for intelligence, but the same holds for ignorance or stupidity.

Anyways, I think that "positive" and "negative" reinforcement both have their place. For example, I think positive is the best for the long-term, as devonin has claimed many times. However, if you are in the middle of a restaurant and your child is bothering other people, it may be better to go with the quick fix and give him a nice spanking to ensure it doesn't bother other people for at LEAST the rest of the time he's there.

Now, I'm not claiming that negative reinforcement is GOOD, just a necessary evil. I'm a firm believer of "Your rights end when the next person's begins," which leads to the mentality that a spanking/other physical punishment is in order when your child is bothering another person. As devonin said, this DOES NOT reinforce morals, which means you should couple it with positive reinforcement when he does do something that helps someone else.

Summary: In a perfect world, positive reinforcement would be the only one needed, but sometimes a quick fix is necessary.

[tsugomaru]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

There are many different type of kids and as such, there are also many ways to raise a kid, saying that there is one singular answer, such as God, spanking a kid, or not spanking them at all is plain ignorant. Although one way may work for many, it may not always work for all. Some kids need the spanking, some kids don't. Not only that, there are so many other influential factors we have to consider such as the society and culture the kid grew up in.

That being said, even though the media could be influential on Cho's actions, there are clearly more than one force at work. Blaming everything on the media is just plain and stupid.

~Tsugomaru

[Squeek]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

My thoughts (just read the quoted material).

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/vbz/showpost.php?p=1025934&postcount=55

[ToshX]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

I figured I'd throw this in, since we're talking about it.

When I was growing up, I wasn't really disciplined physically very much. I mean of course there were times when I was, but in the end, it ended up making me more angry and making me want to do the opposite of what my parents asked for. My parents even tried "emotionally" disciplining me. It turned out terrible, to say the very least. Being yelled at all of the time just made me go a little crazy(but I guess it would be more effective on most people, I just don't really give in at all if I'm against something enough). But, although they will never realize it, the only way they're going to accomplish anything with me is if they:

1) Tell me nicely not to do something(unless I do it repeatedly or something, as in don't blow up on me for messing up once).
2) Give me the rare request I may ask for. I don't ask for anything unreasonable. Just peace of mind while at the house and to be left alone at times.

If they do those things, I am MUCH more willing to help them out on whatever they want, and I'm just nicer to them in general. I also will listen to what they have to say if they do those simple things.

But will they ever learn to do that? No, they sure as hell won't. So I'm going to raise my kids differently, in the way I wanted it to be(as long as they are reasonable). I'm sure she thought the same way, though, because her parents were probably worse.

[Wlfwnd91]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

Ok, time to break this apart piece by piece so maybe you understand a little bit?

God IS the answer. If you truly are a Christian, God-loving person, then you understand that you don't not do something just because God said not to. The Bible does not tell you to blindly follow him like it's some cult. A true Christian does right because he/she knows it is wrong and that God also looks down upon it. Honestly, yes, there are people who say they're religous and just blindly follow God, but the true believers do right because of many reasons other than "God said it was wrong."

So, what you're saying is that only true believers in God have the intelligence to say "Hey, that's wrong and that's right."? Because, that's what I'm hearing. At first you say that God is the answer and all that jazz, then you say that God has nothing to do with people knowing what's right or wrong? Make up your mind. Is God relavent in this or not? You really need to decide that.

Now, unto the rest of what you said. When you don't spank your kid and you expect him to just do right because that it is right, then this is giving him the thought that he/she can do whatever they want because they won't get punished. Sure, you tell your kid not to do it because that's not what they would want. But what if, and I am using extreme circumstances (that are occuring much more often), this kid wants to die? Telling him to do what he wants done unto him, well you're teaching him that he can kill as many people as he wants because it is what he would want done unto him.

This one is fun. I agree that spanking a child can keep them from committing certain acts (At a certain age keep in mind. If my mom tried spanking me now it'd just be stupid. I'm 16 by the way.), and may SOMETIMES be needed. As someone mentioned, possibly in a restaurant when the child is running around ragged and needs to be shutup. But, what positive reinforcement is, is rewarding for doing good, which is the EXACT SAME (also the exact opposite, funny how that works?) as punishing for doing bad, and since you claim to believe in God, you should believe that good conquers evil? Using that logic, positive reinforcement should be stronger in your eyes, and has been proven to be overall more effective in the long run. Saying positive reinforcement doesn't work, when negative punishment does is like saying night can exist without day.

I am a kid and I know how one thinks. If you are a parent and you tell your kid he can do whatever he wants, but he will be spanked if it is wrong, especially when the parents aren't pansies, then you are MUCH less likely to misbehave. On the other hand, if my parents told me that I can do whatever I want and they won't phisically hurt me, then who cares about a phone lost for a week. Who cares if I don't get to come out of my room. I have everything in here anyways.

I'm 16 and I know how a kid thinks too. They think they know everything when they have no idea what they're talking about, and that's all you're doing. Running your...fingers.. without any evidence to support your points other than "It was better back in the old days!". In all honesty, things weren't any more or any less dangerous, people just didn't make as big a deal out of it as they do now. Parents mouths got bigger, so they now scream louder, that's all that happened. It all boils down to parenting. What happened in the old days was parents were smart enough to keep guns away from their kids! Now, parents sit their kid in front of the tv and then let them run loose, and that's why there have been more shootings.

Spanking a kid and teaching him there will be punishments for all actions may give them the mindset that "I don't want to do this because I'm afraid I'll get caught," is a better mindset than "I can do whatever I want because even if I do get caught, the punishments won't be that bad anyways."

Honestly, I had a lot more to say as I was reading the quote I have, but as I wrote on, I kind of lost what I was going to say.

And taking a kid out to bowling when he brings home an A will give them the mindset of "Hey, I did good and I got rewarded for it, so I'll try and do better now." which is a better mindset then "****... I need to bring home a passing grade or my parents will beat the **** out of me!" and THAT'S when kids snap. Do you have any idea how many adults these days are seriously traumatized from their childhood beatings? Think before you say anything, or don't say anything at all.

That's all for me

EDIT: Example of positive reinforcement working. I dropped out of school 3 years ago (Yea at 13) because a few bad grades caused my parents to flip and yell at me, making me angry and wanting to just piss them off more. Now, I decided to start school again. It was a tough choice, because I'm so used to sitting at home and sleeping all day, but because my dad has grown up a little he's become a lot cooler. He tells me every day how proud he is of me, and that is one of the reasons why I attend school every day, because I love coming home to a phone call and having my dad ask how my day was and then before saying bye he goes "I'm really proud of you, keep it up."

He didn't give me anything, he didn't bribe me, he just gives me simple words of confidence and faith in me, and that was enough for me to start instilling values of discipline and work ethic within myself.

[ToshX]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

EDIT: Example of positive reinforcement working. I dropped out of school 3 years ago (Yea at 13) because a few bad grades caused my parents to flip and yell at me, making me angry and wanting to just piss them off more.

This happened to me as well at a certain age, but I really just wanted it because I wanted a break from all of the crap they gave me.

My parents bribed me money to go back and I refused it. I told them I'd go back when I was ready to do so.

[Equs]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

Dealing strictly with the video...

I love how we have a few psychos and then suddenly the entire country is generalized as not having any morals. As if God would somehow fix these people, as if everyone has behaved perfectly in the past when everyone was religious XD

This problem has genetic and social roots, neither of which cause the problem itself. Genetically, there is no doubt Cho was predisposed to psychotic behavior and antisocial personality. From here society compliments the disorder, and as someone else said either enables or disables him to go ahead and do these kinds of things. Let's face it; it's ridiculously easy to get a gun in the states and these people end up all over the media after what they've done. So, not only is it fairly easy to go out and shoot people, there is an incentive to do so which can very easily give a psycho just enough to push them over the edge.

This wasn't any different in the past either. Violence has just manifested itself in a different way and we are all publically aware of now. To say that there was significantly less violence in the past per person I would highly doubt and I see no evidence to support this.

Putting God back into the schools isn't going to change anything because it really isn't the problem. Putting God back into the schools won't change the fact that not everyone is born equal, and that people are going to do bad things no matter what the social norms because there is always some sort of enabler. I do think it is possible to reduce the level of violence we are publically aware of...but in general violent acts have always been high in number. I'm pretty sure someone is murdered violently every few seconds somewhere in the world...we just seem to be going through some sort of violence for the media attention phase where people are directing their acts of violence towards things that will get them lots of media attention.


Edit: After a bit of searching I found some interesting results. United states has only the 24th highest level of per person violent crimes in the world. Keeping in mind that the United States is already one of the most religious countries in the world, there are a lot of other very religious countries near the top of the list. Interesting, that. So much for the God hypothesis. The rate is also 4 times higher in the US than in Canada. Why? Our cultures are virtually identical, so there goes the completely medias fault hypothesis. Gun laws? :S

Also, the violent crime rate in the US has about 0.0043% of the population committing murders. Far from 'noone having any morals' if you ask me. The number of people comitting violent crimes is not high at all...the difference being media attention and how violent the crimes actually end up being. Japan though, is at only 0.0005%, so there is room for improvement.

[psychopete]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

This video...just...retarded.

This is not stemmed from God being taken out of schools. It's about parents being unable to control their kids and what they do. Schools may be unable to discipline their students, but parents are able to teach them right from wrong at an early age. And the thing about beating children being taken out of schools...of course it warps who they are (I was beaten as a kid and put into a foster home for a bit). But this is just a result of emotional issues Cho had, not the media.

[Relambrien]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

This is a long post. Most of it pertains to my own experiences with positive and negative re-enforcement. I recommend reading the whole thing, as reading only a select few paragraphs will probably leave you with a limited or incorrect understanding.

I have been given a mixed blessing in my parents. One of them, my mother, rarely if ever punishes me, and only forces restrictions on me if something bad is happening to me as a result of my actions. My father, however, will never do anything for me. If I don't do everything he says the instant he says it, he will grab me, drag me on the floor to my room, shut the door, and shut off the breaker switch to my room. It has been like this my entire life, all 15 years of it.

As I was growing up, I began to listen to my parents differently. I always listened to what my mother said or asked me to do, provided she gave a valid reason for it, which she always did. As for my father, I would do what he said, but despise and loathe every second of it. I would do only enough to finish it, and try to make it as shoddy as possible.

My mother, from an early age, praised me for my extremely high grades, and gave me small rewards (a cookie, a dollar, etc, this was when I was in third grade after all) for it. She also explained that by having good grades, graduating, and going to college, I can have a fulfilling career making a comfortable salary. As such, I was motivated to do well in school, both to please my mother and to obtain the sort of rewards my mother said doing well in school would give me. To this day, I have never gotten anything except straight A's on my report cards. I currently have a 4.04 cumulative GPA, with a 4.125 every marking period this year.

My father, however, would not give any sort of reward. If he told me to do something, and I did it (out of fear), he would not give me any sort of recognition for its completion. If I didn't do it, he would punish me in the ways described previously. As such, my interests began to diverge from his. He loves sports; I loathe them. He's a very "outdoors" person; I am a total nerd. He and I both like computers, but my reason for liking them came in the form of my 6th grade computer teacher and my natural affinity for using them. Given the choice, I would not do anything my father told me to do. If my mother asked me to do the same thing, however, I would do it.

The same goes for what my parents ask me not to do. When I was a few years younger, my father would tell me things like, "Don't install this CD game on this computer" or "Don't play your video games until you do your homework." Instead of obeying those wishes, I merely circumvented them. I installed that CD game in a different directory and made the files hidden (yes, I could do that much at the time). I brought my homework to my room, locked my door, and played my video games before doing my homework. To this day, I do my homework very late because I know I can and not suffer anything for it. And I mean anything. I'm no more tired, my grades don't suffer, nothing.

Because my mother treated me, and still treats me, with respect, I listen to her. Even though there are things I don't want to do, and she probably couldn't punish me if she wanted to, I still do it. Why? Because I respect her. She treats me as an equal human being, though I am only her teenage son.

On the other hand, I avoid doing anything my father asks me to do. He does not respect me, and never has. He has never once said, "I'm proud of you." He always considers what is best for himself first, and never does anything for me without expecting me to do something for him first. I despise my father. His methods of discipline were more abusive, as was his overall treatment of me.

So I can say from experience that positive re-enforcement is infinitely better than negative re-enforcement. There are situations, of course, where something physical is required to quickly convey a point that you shouldn't do something, such as incorrigible behavior in public. However, when coupled with a majority of positive re-enforcement, this can be made highly effective. For instance, when I was about ten years old, my family went to a restaurant similar to Applebee's. There was a bald person the table across from me, so I pointed and said loudly "Look, that man has no hair!" My mother, who rarely, if ever, did anything physical to me, hit me on the shoulder fairly hard and gave me an angry look. I was immediately mortified, but I never thought my mother was abusing me. Instead, I thought, "Wow, if she's hitting me, I must really be doing something horrible...what did I do?" After some more thinking, I realized that by yelling out about the bald man, I had embarrassed him and my parents.

So if you use negative re-enforcement only when necessary amidst a vast majority of positive re-enforcement, the result is extremely favorable. Instead of not repeating the action out of fear, the child realizes that something must be really wrong if he is being physically disciplined. This stimulates thought, and if the child still can't figure it out, he will ask his parents why they hit him. If they respect the child, they will explain the offense in detail, and why it is wrong. If the child still doesn't understand, the parents can then say, "In that case, you'll just have to trust us." Since the child is respected and treated well, he will have no reason not to trust his parents, and not repeat the action because he trusts that it is wrong. He may not know why, but he knows that it is.

This is opposed to being negatively disciplined, where the child does not necessarily know that something is wrong if his parents always physically discipline him. All he knows is that his parents don't want him doing something, and they will punish him if he does. A lack of understanding of the offense then leads to the belief that his parents are just trying to hurt him, and a negative effect occurs on the child's psyche and self-esteem.

...My posts are way too long...

[ToshX]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

No, it's fine, I enjoyed reading them.

But yes, another thing that I hate is that I was always punished harder than I should've been, and look where it brought me. I'm sure it's hard to tell on the internet, but it brought me to a terrible place.

However, it also showed me that I need to discipline myself and that, if anyone's gonna make a change, it's gonna be me. Self-dependency is a way of saying it, I guess. And that's a nice thing to have, but not at the cost of being emotionally ruined.

[Wlfwnd91]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

No, it's fine, I enjoyed reading them.

But yes, another thing that I hate is that I was always punished harder than I should've been, and look where it brought me. I'm sure it's hard to tell on the internet, but it brought me to a terrible place.

However, it also showed me that I need to discipline myself and that, if anyone's gonna make a change, it's gonna be me. Self-dependency is a way of saying it, I guess. And that's a nice thing to have, but not at the cost of being emotionally ruined.

I agree. As a result of my parents constantly punishing me and putting me down constantly for small mistakes I ended up rebelling against them and then realizing that if I don't make a change for me then it's not going to be a real change. But, I don't know if the same things apply to you, but I was emotionally torn apart for years and years of my life, and though I'm stronger now, there's a lot of parts of me that are very closed off and I have major trust issues lol.

[Pippin667]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

I blame the community and his parents for what he did, you could only push one person so far before they get violent ideas. I support Cho as a human being that just got pushed over the edge, not what he did. Cho called himself a martyr because he did something to try and show the world his suffering and tip my bandana to anyone who has a message that strong. Killing people was going too far, but even though he did it that doesnt me his message shouldnt be heard.

[devonin]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

I blame the community and his parents for what he did, you could only push one person so far before they get violent ideas.

Completely? Or do you still blame him for deciding when he'd had enough, and deciding what to do about it?

[ToshX]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

I agree. As a result of my parents constantly punishing me and putting me down constantly for small mistakes I ended up rebelling against them and then realizing that if I don't make a change for me then it's not going to be a real change. But, I don't know if the same things apply to you, but I was emotionally torn apart for years and years of my life, and though I'm stronger now, there's a lot of parts of me that are very closed off and I have major trust issues lol.

Actually, that's how I am as well.

I blame the community and his parents for what he did, you could only push one person so far before they get violent ideas. I support Cho as a human being that just got pushed over the edge, not what he did. Cho called himself a martyr because he did something to try and show the world his suffering and tip my bandana to anyone who has a message that strong. Killing people was going too far, but even though he did it that doesnt me his message shouldnt be heard.

Yeah, you have to give the guy some credit for wanting to prove a point so badly that he was willing to do anything. I mean yeah, it was a bad thing, and we all wish it didn't happen. But if he felt that strongly about it, he certainly must've meant it much more than most people do about their things.

Completely? Or do you still blame him for deciding when he'd had enough, and deciding what to do about it?

In some situations, it feels like someone has no other choice, that they were pushed too far. They just can't tolerate stuff any longer. They've probably been bothered all of their life and forced to stand it, but they just can't do that crap anymore.

[devonin]

Re: Blaming what Cho did...on media?

In some situations, it feels like someone has no other choice, that they were pushed too far. They just can't tolerate stuff any longer. They've probably been bothered all of their life and forced to stand it, but they just can't do that crap anymore.

In such situations, how is murder even remotely an acceptable option no matter -how- hard you've been pushed? If life is so intolerable, do yourself a favour and just end your life. I have no sympathy for people who will claim that life is too horrible to stand, yet have the wherewithal to go murder 30 innocent people instead of just suiciding.