A major part of the problem with bullies is the school system. I'm old enough to remember the tail end of the "Old" school system as the "professionals" were taking it over. Back in the days when there were many small one or two room schools scattered all over the place. Then the professionals took over started consolidating all these schools. They build huge schools and also bought a fleet of buses to haul the kids to them. All of this was to make the schools more "efficient." If the truth be known they elevated the cost and reduced the effectiveness in my opinion. I'd like to see the cost records - which are always kept secret.
I could walk to school in 15 minutes at the one room local school. When we were consolidated it took most of an hour to get to school in the morning and another hour to go home. Big improvment huh? And now the County had to hire a driver and buy and operate a bus. The second big improvment.
When you congregate large numbers of kids in one school you introduce factions - you've seen them. Racial cliques, gangs, and all kinds of factions all exclusive and at war with each other. Bullies in the old system were not a problem - I only remember one instance in grade two at the one room school house. People all knew each other and took care of each other. There weren't enough of any one kind to create a clique.
When I finally was forced to enter the consolidated school system I lost my identity and closeness to the teacher. I was just number 776 of 1289 and had no rapport with the teachers at all - the personal touch was gone in the mass production consolidation scheme. As a result I went from being a streight A student in the old system to a D student under consolidation. I had totally lost interest in school.
Also, In the one room school there was a unique situation at hand. The teacher would teach each class separately. And so as a second grade student I was learning grade 3-4-5-6 material simply by listening to her instruct the older classes. By the time I was finishing grade three, the teacher wanted to advance me to grade 5. She didn't solely because I had started at age 5. I believe these things are a major, major factor that was overlooked by the professionals. Probably an unintended negative consequence of good intentions.
This where home schooling is effective and has shown to have better results. I know the teachers unions don't like this kind of talk - why should they - we are meddling with their premium lifstyle. And if you don't believe this compare a teachers wages and benefits between that of a unipn Government teacher and that of a private Christian school teacher.
We need a change. If I had to do it over again we would home school. Home school duplicates the advantages of the old school system only it is a couple of steps better because of the ratio of students to teacher. And we haven't even mentioned that the Government schools are dominated by secular humanists, which are actively engaged in the elimination of Christianity from the nation.
Larry II