Bullying is such a detrimental thing to experience. It has lifelong consequences. It's good to see that schools in the US are taking it more seriously than they used to. In the past the attitude from adults seemed to be that experiencing bullying would make you tougher. Now we know better.
I know that I personally still suffer the effects of bullying some 40 to 50 years later - for example, I tend to withdraw from any conflict/confrontation in the work setting misinterpreting even constructive conflict/criticism as being directed at me personally. When I was a kid playing with other kids I tended to withdraw and disappear even in situations where there was no bullying because I came to expect it would happen. And I see that I withdraw similarly in the workplace. In that sense the bullying from many years ago has negatively impacted my career and mental health (anxiety, panic attacks and a bit of paranoia as I'm always expecting the worst from other people).
> It's good to see that schools in the US are taking it more seriously than they used to.
It's nothing but lip service. Bullying is largely the result of several quite obvious system design flaws. 30 kids to one adult is going to result in a Lord of the Flies culture, and that culture will get worse as you scale to additional 30+ classrooms.
Further, actually paying attention to the emotional state of a child and nurturing it carefully at the times it needs that would be hard to pull off in a group of _five_ kids.
But at all costs, we need every mom and dad in the country working all the time to maximize the size of our economy (and help the rich keep getting richer). We need conforming, beaten down worker bees who've been trained to drag out of bed and go where dictated all day long to fill all the jobs that keep the economy humming.
So any changes in the favor of nurturing kids reasonably (not even optimally, just reasonably) just aren't in the cards. But we can make some nice posters about it.
I know that I personally still suffer the effects of bullying some 40 to 50 years later - for example, I tend to withdraw from any conflict/confrontation in the work setting misinterpreting even constructive conflict/criticism as being directed at me personally. When I was a kid playing with other kids I tended to withdraw and disappear even in situations where there was no bullying because I came to expect it would happen. And I see that I withdraw similarly in the workplace. In that sense the bullying from many years ago has negatively impacted my career and mental health (anxiety, panic attacks and a bit of paranoia as I'm always expecting the worst from other people).