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Ball And Chain To Force Children To Study
Posted by
samzenpus
on Mon May 18, 2009 01:15 PM
from the school-chain-gang dept.
from the school-chain-gang dept.
You haven't tried everything to get your kids to study until you've tried the Study Ball. The Study Ball is a 21-pound prison-style device that locks onto your child's leg and only unlocks after a predetermined amount of study time has passed. The homework manacles can't be locked for more than four hours, and come with a safety key. The product website states, "Quite often, students who are having problems concentrating tend to get up every ten minutes to watch TV, talk on the phone, take something out of the fridge, and a long list of other distractions. Were they to dedicate all this wasted time to studying, they would optimise their performance and have more free time available. Study Ball helps you study more and more efficiently." Stop Teasing Your Brother Pepper Spray coming soon.
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Laughably Medieval (Score:4, Insightful)
This should work exactly as well as physically abusing your child when he or she does something wrong. That way when they are faced with conflict later in life, they follow in your steps and resort to violence.
Oh, by the way, 9.5 kg (21 pounds)!? What kid is that going to inhibit? I was walking up and down fields picking up rocks heavier than that by the time I was in grade school! If that stops your kid from moving, you've got other parenting problems to worry about
Were they to dedicate all this wasted time to studying, they would optimise their performance and have more free time available.
Not always true. Read this article [slashdot.org].
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't the biological alternative, "parents", also trigger such an effect?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Funny)
Is it just me, or does the attached digital timer make it look like something Wile E. Coyote would blow himself up with while falling off of a cliff?
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:4, Insightful)
Make the act of studying have a negative association with it in the child's mind. That way when they depend on themselves to learn things later in life, they'll be reminded of your horrible freedom inhibiting imprisonment technique.
Actually, this is why I still resent my 3rd grade teacher, one of only two people in my life that I still hold some sort of grudge against. Not only did she practice collective punishment for the actions of a single student, but her favored form of punishment was extra homework, and she didn't assign homework on the weekends because she didn't want to "ruin" our weekends.
It was the first time in my childhood that I was introduced to the idea that homework wasn't fun. What a great life lesson, huh? I wonder what kinds of things I might have accomplished later in life if I hadn't had the joy of studying drained out of me at that age.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:4, Insightful)
Collective punishment is a bad thing. But in a large way teachers are forced to do this because they are backed into a corner. There is simply no way to punish a problem child â" the best thing you can do is to phone their parents. But the sad fact is that the parents did not raise the child with discipline and that is why it is the teachers' problem.
Some teachers try to do the collective punishment so that the other kids resent the guilty kid. This is extremely bad and it can completely alienate an already problemed child.
In my experience children usually form strong relationships with a strict but fair teacher. They quickly see a strict teacher as a father figure. Maybe this is just in my country where most people often grow up without a father figure.
I wonder what kinds of things I might have accomplished later in life if I hadn't had the joy of studying drained out of me at that age.
The right way is to have negative reinforcement at the very bottom and positive reinforcement above that. It is sad when I see people who screwed up their life and limited their opportunities just because they couldn't be bothered to do their homework.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience children usually form strong relationships with a strict but fair teacher.
I think I've heard of that - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Straight out of the Stainless Steel Rat books (Score:3, Interesting)
The sons Harry Harrison's famous sci-fi super-criminal, the "Stainless Steel Rat," were sent to the harshest military academy in known space, because no other institution would be able to get them to do even a little of their studying. Apparently, the boys did do their studies because the instructors kept recapturing them and chaining them to their desk. As a side effect, they also became expert lockpicks.
http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Stainless-Steel-Harry-Harrison/dp/0441004229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8& [amazon.com]
If I may... (Score:5, Informative)
Let me try and describe this device [curiosite.com] as if it were a topic of an article at Telegraph.co.uk.
Gun Camera to make people stop killing
To end all gun violence once and for all, guns will be replaced with gun cameras.
Your boss asks you to do the impossible, your mom tortures you to get you to clean up your room, your friends stand you up, your girlfriend cheats on you... instead of taking out your aggression on the first innocent victim you find, we suggest you get one of these 100% harmless guns.
It'll take a picture each time you press the trigger.
Aimat is a very basic, utterly unsophisticated photo camera. It was designed by Franziska Dierschke, a German student at the Bauhaus Academy in Weimar.
Two years ago, she presented it at Desifnmai, a design conference held in Berlin, but it's only now started catching on over the Internet.
It's a pinhole camera, the kind anyone can make at home because they don't require any sort of extensive understanding of photography.
These cameras produce an image using light that passes through a tiny hole.
Any sort of container can be used to make a pinhole camera; all you have to do is drill a hole in it.
And what better way to "shoot" your photos than straight out of a gun?
This camera has no focus, viewfinder, or lenses and makes very interesting photos, with a darkened frame around them like you get with the Lomo.
A camera/toy that will help you reduce tension and also have fun running after your girlfriend, your mother, your boss, and your friends.
Why am I mentioning this?
Because they (Telegraph.co.uk) found the Study Ball [curiosite.com] at that same site.
IT IS A JOKE ITEM!
Not actually intended as a study device.
You know... like the Periodic Table Shower Curtain. [thinkgeek.com]
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Insightful)
Utter BS. I was physically punished when I did not do well in school by my mother in the beginning until I became an A student. Later in life I graduated college Magna cum laude and did my Ph.D.
The older I get the more thankful I get to my mother for those lessons.
You can claim other negative effects of corporal punishment later in life, but that particular effect you wrote about is complete nonsense.
Ah, the magna cum laude doctor cites an anecdote of their own personal experience and considers my point rendered complete nonsense. I bow to your supreme intelligence, my lord.
So I assume you beat your child when he or she does poorly at school?
Nowhere did I say that corporal punishment leads to violence 100% of the time or that it has no positive effects. You could be a straight A student and still physically attack your opponents. Not that child psychology is a solid science but I think studies support my argument [psychiatryonline.org] (there's more than just that [google.com]).
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Funny)
I've never met a person who was a PHD, or who had straight A's that didn't have a personality disorder of some kind. Something has to be wrong with anyone who would be willing to put up with that much bs for that many years for almost no reason at all. It says something about your priorities.
So? I've never met a person who didn't have a personality disorder of some sort.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Funny)
So? I've never met a person who didn't have a personality disorder of some sort.
Hm, interesting. So if personality disorders are, as a class, normal, and a "disorder" is by definition something functioning abnormally, then would this not mean that psychologists should recognize Lack of Personality Disorder Disorder?
Treatment for this disorder would be quite straightforward, though the ethics of giving someone Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to cure their Lack of Personality Disorder Disorder are questionable.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, if you watch Better Off Ted, I think the character Ted is supposed to show someone completely lacking of any personality disorders. Part of the show's charm is how totally unrealistic he is.
I suspect a psychiatrist could find something wrong with his unusually cheerful demeanor and prescribe something right away.
Parent
Well, there's the Lack of Personality Disorder (Score:5, Funny)
These are the people commonly referred to as Engineers.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Insightful)
It's so true. A big part of getting to know someone isn't figuring out whether they're fucked up in the head, but how.
That goes double for getting to know yourself.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Funny)
*posted from my cave*
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:4, Funny)
So? I've never met a person who didn't have a personality disorder of some sort.
Mmmm, try leaving slashdot
I have. The disorders are worse.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:4, Informative)
First you get " Bull S#!^"
then you get "More of the Same"
and finally it's "Piled higher & Deeper" !
always wondered about double majors...
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Insightful)
In this debate people always assume corporal punishment means beating the daylight out of your kids.
I`m also in the same boat as mapkinase. If I didn't do homework (my parents never demanded I get straight A's .. but I had to at least be putting in reasonable effort) I'd get punished. As it turned out, this method worked very effectively.. and I did very well in school.. and now have a great job/life.
And despite what various extremist think-of-the-children types will say.. I`m not some seething bottle of rage who has flashbacks of getting yelled at and attacks people at random as a result.
The problem is that people try to think of kids as little adults when they are in fact just kids. You can't always reason with a kid.. because they don't have the same ability to weigh options that adults do (I know when I was a kid I sure didn't). A little negative re-enforcement (do something wrong.. get punished) is sometimes the best way.
And I truly believe that kids today have more problems as a result of being treated as fragile ornaments who will be screwed up for the rest of their life if you even look at them in a menacing way.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Interesting)
And despite what various extremist think-of-the-children types will say.. I`m not some seething bottle of rage who has flashbacks of getting yelled at and attacks people at random as a result.
Yeah. I got spanked as a kid -- there's a difference between "spanking" and "beating" -- and honestly all my worst memories and issues regarding my parents are from when they hurt me emotionally, not physically. Some of those spanking straightened me out faster than anything else could have when I really needed to be straightened out, yet I got over the physical pain almost immediately. On the other hand things my parents might say, not even in the context of discipline, stuck in my craw for years.
Now of course there are parents that go to far and beat their kids too hard or too often and it loses all meaning and simply becomes abuse.
Outside of that extreme, I'm much more horrified by the parents who use guilt and passive-aggression to "discipline" their kids than the ones who spank their ass and then say what's done is done.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
More... (Score:4, Insightful)
You raise the critical point there: "spanking" vs. "beating." As I've written on these very pages before, a spanking--which is what I occasionally got--is primarily a correction ritual. The pain is instantaneous and fades in a few minutes. It lets you know Mom and Dad are serious about this one.
The effectiveness is completely destroyed if it's employed all the time. It becomes normal, and fosters resentment of the parents. And I'm not even going to comment on actual beatings, which I remember friends in grade school talking about--things that leave marks, slaps on the face or head, hitting with implements... Sorry, that is child abuse, and yes, those kids all grew up to be fucked up.
It's all about the kind of world model you give your kids. Being rational and consistent with the discipline of your kids, leaving some kind of physical punishment only for the worst or most dangerous infractions, sets up a world model that is very close to that of the adult world--there are a lot of negative consequences that you don't want for behaving incorrectly, and if you behave really incorrectly, you will really, really regret it.
The world model set up by parents who fly off the handle and beat children, out of anger, and as a normal course of events is this: You are at the mercy of capricious and unjust forces who will smite you whenever they feel like it. This either makes kids pull into themselves and try to avoid doing anything that might result in a beating, or it makes them say "fuck it" and do whatever occurs to them because it won't alter the consequences one bit. The latter is especially difficult when they get into the real world where punishments are ramped. Getting a drunk driving ticket sucks, yeah, but it's better than getting beaten, and who cares anyway. The lower-level punishments, which seem really bad and dire to someone who has a correct world model in their head, mean nothing to someone who is used to being hit all the time.
This is, I think, the problem with any of these discussions. What is the operational definition of corporal punishment? Just like the parent, I barely even remember being spanked, but things my parents have said have had a much, much worse impact on me that the silly little spankings ever did.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Insightful)
People that pamper their children are doing them a disservice. Don't get me wrong - You should absolutely love and care for your kids, but part of that is teaching them some self control.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Insightful)
Branding all corporal punishment as "abuse" is totally moronic. The ills our society suffers today are due more to permissiveness and lack of responsibility than any imagined affects of "abuse". There are any number of individuals in history who suffered genuine abuse, who went on to become famous. Does Alexander Graham ring any bells?
The individual who can use corporal punishment as an effective teaching tool is far superior to either the child abuser, OR the child "protector". Both the abuser and the overly protective idiot harm the child.
The magna cum laude you mock has most definitely put things into perspective, and found that a swat on the ass now and then is beneficial for irresponsible children. Prove him wrong, if you can.
Parent
Re:Laughably Medieval (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow... physical punishment works, yes?
Ok, there is the argument that you can reason with kids yes? So hence we must use physical punishment...
So here is an argument saying the physical punishment is actually very wrong. DOGS...
Can you reason with a dog? I don't think so... Dogs have the intelligence of about 1 year old. Dogs do react to discipline, much more than a human actually.
And the thing is how do you train a dog? By beating it? Sure it will listen to you, but out of fear. Will a beaten dog protect you? Not likely.
A dog is trained by non-contact discipline and paying attention to the needs of the dog. When a dog is made part of the "pack" it actually becomes a protector of the pack.
If people paid a bit more attention to this maybe people would understand that physical punishment is a weak response to not being able to deal with the situation.
BTW I was physically punished quite a bit, but it did nothing to change my habits. It only made more sneaky...
Parent
Off the cuff (Score:5, Funny)
I was raised on the cuffs, and my scholastic performance was excellent, thank you very much.
Parent
Phew! (Score:5, Funny)
For a moment there I thought you were talking about the old trouble and strife!
ADD/ADHD (Score:4, Insightful)
And it is quite apparent by the nature of the device, that it was either designed to - or would strongly appeal to be used in such cases.
Re:ADD/ADHD (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who has followed the career of the Yes Men [wikipedia.org], I sense a merry blend of social satire and commentary in this product announcement.
Parent
I could use this... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I could use this... (Score:4, Funny)
If it weren't for the mention of a Cisco cert, I would have been puzzled by the placement of squirrels before girlfriend...
Parent
Re:I could use this... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
The House is on Fire!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Everybody RUN!
1 hours later...
Fireman: WTF do you mean your child had a ball and chain strapped to their leg?!
Retarded Parent: It was to help them study, and it was easily heavy enough for them to lift.
Fireman: But it got stuck under the table because of the panic and now your child is a crispy critter.
Policeman: Sir, please put your hands behind your back.
Heh, no I'm not some liberal pansy that doesn't believe in doing things that are harsh. I just don't care for stupid. If my kids dont' study I beat them with the ball and chain, not strap them to it!
Little do they know... (Score:5, Funny)
What?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What?! (Score:4, Informative)
Surely making the subject fun, interesting would be a better way of encouraging students?
Not really, no. I have a friend who used to teach at the middle school level. She was a good teacher, but there are just a lot of kids who don't care about education, are raised by parents who don't care about education, or come from subcultures that don't care about education. Generally, all three are in play, enforcing one another. There's nothing to be done from the outside about that, and the kids who do break out of the vicious cycle do so mainly through their own efforts, and a few who are just flat out intelligent enough to never get trapped by it. She helped the ones she could.
The ball and chain won't help, and it's only use is in being totally and completely hilarious.
Parent
Where's the foot icon? (Score:4, Funny)
It just needs a slight modification is all!
For any kid stuck with this (Score:5, Funny)
Use your pickaxe to dig a pit in the floor, drag the ball into the pit, and push a boulder into the pit.
Oh, wait, real life doesn't work quite like Nethack.
Price: 75 Pounds?? (Score:4, Informative)
TFA said it costs 75 pounds. Not only would you be a retarded parent for torturing your kid and making him associate studying with confinement, but you would be retarded because even if you wanted to such a stupid thing, you could do it for much, much cheaper.
Whats with parents? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whats with parents? (Score:5, Funny)
With or without the ball and chain?
I'm confused here.
Parent
Will no one say it? (Score:5, Funny)
fun, fun fun (Score:3, Insightful)
Shoot, I'll pick up a couple just for weekend fun in my dungeon.
I hate kids :-) (Score:4, Funny)
I wholeheartedly endorse this product.
Pay kids to go to school. Really. (Score:5, Interesting)
America is the richest nation on earth, with the most riches available for those who can pay for them. So:
Introduce an educational pay scale for students, starting aged 8, with remuneration based on performance and attendance. The scale is designed to ensure you are at least financially independent from your parents by the time you leave college, provided you have managed your education well enough: hounded out bad teachers, rejected time-wasting crap like sports, ensured you have plenty of teaching in things like mechanical engineering, bio-tech and accounting. You'll be able to afford the finest recreational sex, electronics and politicians by the time you are 20 -as long as you keep up the good grades and attendance. At that point, you should not only want to get a high-paying job in order to keep you in the style to which you have become accustomed, but be able to so so.
America then becomes the world's most highly-educated nation, and the world's most successful economy, in one generation.
Best of all, it would probably cost the country about the same as it does to pay for recreational "incentives" like balls on a chain.
This can't possibly end well (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bathroom breaks? (Score:5, Funny)
Luckily it comes with a matching chamberpot.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
As evidenced by your post, no.
HA!
Re:C'mon Fess up. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most parenting techniques these days are stupid. It's about spineless parents who can't say no to a child.
My Dad used to spank me with a belt if I acted up too much. But situations like studying, I'd just start losing all privileges until I was bored out of my mind. Give that a few months and you'll study just to be entertained.
When he did spank us, he'd send us to our rooms until he could calm down and think about it. Usually 1/2 hourish later he'd have us come in and talk about what we'd done. Then he'd have us pick a belt. His belts were arranged by thickness and hardness. If you picked too pansy of a belt then he'd make you get this thick huge rhine-stone covered cowboy belt that hurt like crazy. If you picked a heavier belt, you'd usually get off with less punishment.
Man, I didn't realize my dad was doing psychological warfare until I was twenty.
Oddly enough, I think he did the best he could, and the fact that he's never hit us while angry or unfairly made me really respect that form of punishment.
It wouldn't work for every kid, and I hope I'll never need any kind of punishment for my future kids like that, but for me it was probably the only punishment they could do. (ADD incarnate)
Parent