And she added that he dreaded school so much that he would break into nervous fits on Monday mornings. Besides, no child should be forced to endure such torture. Educators who don't stop that sort of thing are failing in their most fundamental obligation, to protect those in their charge. And bullying not only ruins individual lives and retards learning, it also sows the seeds of general school disorder and rebellion. Just as it is foolish to maintain allegiance to a government that fails to protect its citizens, so it is senseless for students to cooperate with educators who permit their victimization by bullies.
Most kids know that and act accordingly.
And when inmates are victimized at least there is the modest consolation that most of them did nasty things to get themselves into this predicament. In the case of school children, however, innocents are sentenced to daily misery just because they have the misfortune of living in a neighborhood served by a bully dominated school. In the November 1988 Readers Digest , for instance, former Secretary of Education William Bennett praises a principal who took over a troubled inner-city Washington, D. C. school. Hitler's SS used bully boy inmates, called Kapos, to maintain order there. Frankly,even a former Secretary of Education should be able to see how extraordinarily cruel and stupid such a policy is.