Why School Teachers Ignore Bullying Amongst Their Students

Sometimes a social pathology becomes so pervasive that most people start normalizing it. Bullying at school, especially in N. America, is a good example of a pathological behavior pattern that has been normalized. I have long believed that bullying at school is a product of compulsory institutionalized schools, which came into being within the last century or so. Of late, we hear a bit more about bullying that we used to- primarily because of bullying related student suicides, homicides and documentaries. However this post is not about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of bullying, but about something even more troubling.

Why do teachers ignore bullying amongst their students?

Given that teachers are the adults supervising children in school, are they not responsible for the welfare of all children under their supervision? at least theoretically? So why don’t they show much desire, initiative or even willingness to do something about bullying? What stops them, or more importantly- why don’t they seem to care?

The conventional answers to this question include a variety of reasons ranging from school policy and various laws, lack of time, lack of resources, inadequate pay and supposed concerns about bureaucratic nightmares etc. But are these excuses valid? Why don’t these same reasons affect the ability of schools to implement various zero-tolerance policies, install and staff metal detectors at suburban schools, implement intrusive lunch policies etc?

I believe that the reason behind their apparent inability to significantly reduce bullying amongst their students is linked to the real nature of the relationship between teachers and their students in institutionalized school systems. Others have previously noted that schools are rather similar to prisons and factories. I will take that analogy one step further.

Schools are functionally similar to concentration camps for children. The relationship between students and teachers is therefore equivalent to that between concentration camp inmates and their guards and overseers.

Like concentration camps, schools are run for the benefit of their employees (teachers etc) and business benefiting from their existence. They are not run for the benefit of their inmates.. I mean students. The inmates exist to help the employees justify their continued pay. While that does sometime necessitate the pretense of caring for the inmates, all such acts are for show and profit. Schools as an institution have no reason for providing their students decent education, supervision or food. They only provide the bare minimum of the above to avoid public outrage, shutdown and potential loss of income for the employees. Business also profit from schools, either directly by selling useless or substandard crap to students and schools or indirectly by abusing.. I mean employing or further exploiting (universities) the purposefully damaged products of the system.

The whole system is an engine which burns fuel (childhood) to make money for people who pretend to care about the fuel.

Now some of you might be stupid enough to believe that privatizing schools would magically change this situation. It won’t.. because privatization does not change the incentives or basic framework. If anything, privatization will fuck things even more. It really boils down to why we supposedly require institutionalized schooling.

The motivation behind institutionalized schooling has always been the destruction of free thought and imposition of tyranny. It is about creating damaged, uniform adults who will slave away at boring jobs to enrich a few. The scam worked well for many decades.. and then effective contraception happened. Today the combination of women in the workplace, contraception, decreased structural ability to profit from simple worker enslavement has put a real damper on their business model.

It is no coincidence that schools have responded to a decrease in growth rate of their fuel.. I mean children, by making it more expensive and complicated to educate each child- thereby wringing out more money per unit of fuel.. I mean child.

I am aware that this post was about why teachers ignore bullying amongst their students. As you can see, that or any other issue concerning child welfare is just not relevant to their business model.

What do you think? Comments?