Perhaps you should be advocating that approach pelican, if the school staff are failing in their duty. I found it worked very well.

Due to my father's work I went to 17 schools. As a perpetual new boy, & small when I was younger, I found myself being picked by the bully at every new school. The teachers never intervened, ever.

After one bad bashing, dad found out, & taught me to fight. As he had been his divisional champion during the war, I was well taught. After that, within a couple of days at a new school, I would sort out the bully who picked on me, & then have no further trouble, until the next school.

Later by high school, I had been taught to be a good enough footballer, & cricketer to make the school teams. Somehow then the bullying just stopped. Perhaps I had a confidence, lacking when I was younger, that deterred the bully, before it started.

What ever it was, I have not had to raise a hand to anyone since I was about 12 years old.

However I still remember what it was like. I particularly hated the third or fourth string bully, who had to give you a whack, when the top bully had finished

"The teachers never intervened, ever. "

I think this is still the case in many schools, and this is negligence by the teachers, and under risk management legislation, they can be convicted and tried in a court for this.

The system of blaming the parents is a part of an excuse system, so that teachers can do as little as possible, while getting as much as they can from the taxpayer.

Children get up to all sorts of mischief, and I have found that even 18 year olds (or older) need parental guidance to some extent, and leaving younger children unsupervised in playgrounds is negligence.

The scenario of retaliating only when provoked was a very simple model that my Dad gave to me when I was a child. The old school model was quite often to teach the kid to defend himself, so boxing lessons from Dad was my defence mechanism. It worked for me. Suddenly and perhaps sadly the bullies focussed their attention on the next poor soul. The problem isn't a new one, it's simply more visible and publicised than ever before IMO. Our overly PC culture almost prevents teachers from having the authority to pull bullies aside and give them a good talking to about their behaviour. Parents themselves abdicate responsibility by thinking that it's the teachers job to keep the kids under control when they're at school. Discipline is the unpopular word that is missing in both of these areas.
This behaviour will only stop when teachers and parents combine and send a clear, consistent message to ALL the bullies that this kind of behaviour is not going to be tollerated either at school or at home.

Radar "Parents themselves abdicate responsibility by thinking that it's the teachers job to keep the kids under control when they're at school."

From teachers I've had discussions with the problem is more that parents don't think that it's the teachers job to keep their kid under control. Many strongly resent and work against discipline of their child.

R0bert

Radar,
It is "the teachers job to keep the kids under control when they're at school".

The teachers need not worry about the parents.

The teachers need to worry about probable prosecution and litigation if the children are being placed at risk.

Some information on negligence in schools and teacher responsibility,

"There are two aspects to negligence in schools.
1 The negligence of teachers to students.
Teachers have a duty of care to students to
provide adequate supervision. This may occur in
the playground, on the sports field, in the
classroom or on an excursion. Under the doctrine
of vicarious liability the school authority may be
liable to pay the plaintiff for the negligence of
teachers. It does not however, negate the
personal liability of the teacher.

2 The negligence of school authorities.
Negligence of school authorities may arise where
the grounds or equipment are unsafe and a
student is injured. School authorities have a nondelegable
duty to students to ensure that
reasonable care is taken for the safety of children
at school.

Now for the important part

To be successful in an action of negligence the
plaintiff must prove all elements of negligence
according to the civil standard of proof, which is,
on the balance of probabilities. This means the
plaintiff must satisfy the court that his or her
version of the events is more probable than not.
The plaintiff must first prove that he or she was
owed a duty of care. It would be extremely
difficult for a defendant to successfully argue
that a student was not owed a duty of care.
Secondly, that a breach of duty care or the
required standard of care was not met and finally
that the injury was caused by the breach of duty.

THE VERY IMPORTANT PART WITHIN THE IMPORTANT PART WAS

"It would be extremely difficult for a defendant to successfully argue
that a student was not owed a duty of care."\

http://ajte.education.ecu.edu.au/ISSUES/PDF/251/Newnham.pdf

If any teacher or principal decides to blame parents, and not take responsibility for correct supervision of children at their school, they should get all that solicitors can throw at them.