The problem is that schools are not toughening kids through self discipline, but coddling their sensibilities. For example, instead of telling a student who bullies other students to stop it and actually enforce school as a place of learning, kids who are getting bullied won’t be able to concentrate on their work and pass. Schools are being treated like social netowrking centers, country clubs. It’s not about learning, it’s about who you know and students act accordingly. If a student knows that in order to pass, all he has to do is study hard, then he’ll study and not torment his peers. But, if he’s taught that he has to know the right people and keep the right people, he’ll become cutthroat in how he gains the favor of the person he needs to know and keeping it. Keeping that favor usually means keeping down and destroying other people who might be competition for said favor.
Schools are also being run by administrators living in denial or determined to not get their hands dirty dealing with the bullies. Too many adults in authority don’t, they want someone else to do it. Which is why kids who get bullied either do it and get punished, or suffer. Or the kid does it, gets punished, but the cowardly administrator secretly thanks them.
Your post is perfectly reasonable. That’s nothing the Democrat Party and the teachers’ unions are going to find reasonable, though. Those are the kinds of people who believe that promoting pot usage and gangster rap will encourage children to come to school. I have little faith that the necessary reforms will be enacted without toppling the entire rotten edifice of public schooling, however.
I realize that the rest of my post will be controversial, but I would also argue that public humiliation of bullies and others who contribute towards a wanton school environment would be a useful method to keep them from harassing the rest of the students. Does a kid get Fs in the class? Okay, but he has to attend a 6-hour-a-week seminar with a tutor. Does a kid bring pornography magazines to class? Well, the administrator seizes them in front of the class, fines the kid for bringing lewdness into the classroom, and suspends the child for a good month. Does a child severely injure another child? Okay, but the administrator gets to publicly flog you and expel you. Instilling respect towards authority should be our top priority, and I’ve found that public humiliation is a useful method to keep children from failing and rescinding into criminal activity. The free market recognizes the importance of maintaining order; the public schools don’t, and never will.