Great take. Have never thought about it from that framing before

Make Bullying Great Again I'm not talking about extreme examples of it but a little teasing and bullying I think does help.

I raised chickens a few years back. The weak one always got pecked to death by the rest of them. When the weak one died, a new weak one was appointed by the chickens and the cycle continued. The pecking order is some deep biology built on millions of years of natural selection. I dont think the schools have a chance of stopping that train.

There is definitely functional bullying. But there’s also dysfunctional bullying. To take the school example, there’s an intrinsic cruelty from groups of well adjusted kids that is probably useful. Then there’s unfettered abuse from unfortunate kids who are themselves abused, and this is almost certainly dysfunctional and destructive to the system as a whole. Weeding out the healthy bullying from the pathological is the nuance we actually need.