Violence and self defense are two different things. This has been known forever, and yet, it appears the ancient warrior codes and chivalric honor is completely lost on modern civilization when it comes to children. In the old world, a bully could be subdued and rightfully punished. The resisting victim would be encouraged to go on resisting, standing up for him or herself. A victim that lay on the floor and received his beating would be encouraged to put his foot down should his aggressor come back with another round. In the new world, the victim is expected to lay there and absorb the beating, and wait desperately for an adult to intervene. Then they bully's needs are equally considered. If the victim doesn't resist, they are praised. If they fight back, they are punished too, perhaps with offender sentencing even. Both are considered victims, despite the fact that bullies and delinquents are often different things.
This new scheme has all the best intentions. It seeks to sympathize with the bully's plight (the very thing that shouldn't be reinforced), and it seeks to be a neutral overseer in the dispute, but only drives itself more partisan with its insistence that every act of aggression has a definitive victim and abuser. In this way, a child may be harassed by another student for weeks and months only to be dealt the swift hand of justice the moment he or she retaliates--only because the child refused to bring their problem to the ear of an adult who was most likely just going to do nothing about it anyways, or the equivalent of nothing. Is a "stern talking to" really going to set a bully straight? The bully's actions are not considered acceptable by no means, and are said to be the work of a "traumatized soul"--a soul that has to be "pampered" and provided "attention" so that it may somehow find alternative means to express itself, or so goes the theory. The so-called neutral overseers then coddle that soul rather than educate it, with the effect of only emboldening it.
The problem here is that this scheme rigidly applies the theory that children are utterly morally perfect and pure and incapable of handling their lives in all aspects, that only adults have the ability to intervene in children's squabbles (with their self-agrandised "higher wisdom), and that children's transgressions are solely a result of contamination from an outside aggressor. Therefore, even the victim isn't off the hook. To keep the victim from being "contaminated" by the bully, he or she must also be reprogrammed, along with his or her peers. They are given non-violent alternatives that basically amount to self-limiting victimization strategies (society having totally lost grasp of the difference). They are told to either submit to an adult's intervention or submit to the bully's. To a kid, there is very little to distinguish one from the other.
The victims need to know that the adults are in their sparring corner, and if the child comes to an adult requesting assistance to deal with a bully, then that request ought to be honored and non-violent solutions hashed out. Ultimately though, unless the situation is absolutely too hazardous, the child should be encouraged to be the one carrying out the solution, whatever is appropriate. We can all agree that children should not be taught to throw weight around needlessly and act out violently without provocation, and that in all possible circumstances they should find the least violent path possible, but there are one or two occasions where a child seems more than entitled to give another kid a good punch in the mouth. Not all bullying is the same and requires aggressive responses, but some do.
If all non-violent options fail, and the bully is still persistent, the victim really ought to be granted carte blanche to defend themselves, knowing of course, that such action will cause them disciplinary action too. If that's the price for finally subduing the bully (standing up for themselves), then it's well worth it. They ought to be encouraged to greet their disciplinary action with their head held high. Someone ought to shake their hand as they are banished to their room, to a detention hall, or wherever they are going. If, as the theory goes, the bully is simply acting out an inner sense of inferiority by choosing to dominate others, wouldn't it be wise not to give him submissive bodies in order to dominate? Empower the victims, even as they step up to receive their own discipline. The moment a bully lashes out at another student is the last point in time when they ought to be "attended to," such an action should have probably happened long before it reached that point.
And speaking of ignoring bullies until they lash out, let us not forget that girls are just as vicious, just as aggressive, if not always physically, but verbally. Boys bare the bunt of the adult attention when it comes to bullying because physical violence is always more visceral (and adults have a hard-on for all things viscerally arresting at an ignorance of all else), but girls who are relentlessly harassing other children verbally don't deserve to be ignored just because what they do may not result in "bloody noses" and "black eyes."
What we shouldn't be agreeing to is that violence can be eradicated in children if we all just join hands, victim and abuser alike, under the guidance of an adult, declare peace and assume that all is settled. Such claptrap is born out of the adult's shortsightedness, their ego, their feelings of superiority over kids (as if they are in any way the ultimate arbiters of morality that all children must just beg at the feet of), and their desire to be useful. It is nurtured by inaccurate ideas concerning the inhuman "purity" of children and their general shock that children can be just as destructive and downright evil as they themselves are. Bullies are nature's way of holding a mirror up to the adult world and reflecting its image onto a "manageable" size. When an adult sees themselves in a child, more often then not, it's because the child is a bully.
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