Today’s paper reported on another young school girl who committed suicide, allegedly as a result of school bullying.

I don’t know if the claim is true; I don’t know what the statistics are. But from my personal experience, school bullying is much more tolerated here, in the UK, than in other countries I’ve been.

I have three kids going to three different schools, and this is the fourth country we’ve lived in since they started their schooling. We’ve always lived in similar type of suburbs, and sent our kids to similar types of schools. By all means, my three kids have encountered (fortunately, not first hand) more bullying here than in any of their previous schools.

But the scarier thing is not the bullying itself, but the total inability of the schools stuff to discipline the bullies. Despite the fact that a single bully can make life hell for all other students, school stuff is not given any means whatsoever to handle bullies.

As one of the teachers said: “I don’t know why we need to sacrifice entire classes of good student for some hypothetical ideal of giving everyone equal opportunity. It simply doesn’t work.”

If you learn at schools that bullying doesn’t have a price, can we really complain about the level of violence in our streets?

Is the horrendous crime level in out street on anyone’s agenda?