This article examines the educational response to bullying in Singapore, contrasting traditional disciplinary methods like caning with modern approaches like counseling and intervention.

For six months, Adriana Lim Escano’s teenage son went to school and said nothing. He had tried to do the right thing – stepping in when a group of boys bullied a classmate – and paid for it with half a year of misery, name-calling and social isolation. His mother only found out when another parent called to say her son had voiced suicidal thoughts to a friend. The school’s response, when it finally came, was a talking-to from the discipline committee. No suspensions. No meaningful...