As long as you encourage the silence of the victim, as opposed to putting the focus on the bully, bullying will be indirectly rewarded. I see a great parallel within broader society, where the powerless are pushed aside and only the wealthy are listened to and rewarded.

When I was taken out of school and homeschooled for a year and a half, I learned that a lot of people’s preconceived notions about “human nature” in children were untrue. I was part of a homeschooling community, and I learned that individuality can be respected, unreasonable peer pressure can be nonexistent, and children are perfectly capable of developing their own support systems within groups of friends. Unfortunately, this is impossible in public schools, as that environment isn’t conducive to individuality.

Furthermore, you also end up with adults who have not learned to deal with their own issues and need to run to someone with more power to help them.

So I think there a delicate balance between never saying anything about bad stuff that happens to you and always running back to the authorities.