I just realized something extremely sobering right now.

I was talking to my partner and I recalled a very painful memory of mine from high school — when I was a sophomore, my English teacher had this unreasonable rule that you needed to have all the necessary books with you for the day, and if you didn’t, you had to go to your locker to get them. It didn’t matter how far it was, and coming back after the bell was automatic detention. As it was, one day I forgot my lit anthology and I was sent to my locker — on the polar opposite end of the school. I literally sprinted across the school in a frenzied panic, but I didn’t make it in time and the bell rang as I was coming up the hall to the classroom.

It was the first time I’d ever gotten detention in a decade of schooling, and I was an extreme perfectionist. I thought that getting detention would be a black mark on my record, prevent me from getting into college, etc. I instantly started sobbing uncontrollably and having an anxiety attack as I went down to the principal’s office. The administrators took pity on me, as I was quite the sorry sight, and said that they’d let me slide just this once. But once I got back to the classroom I was met by a roomful of dirty looks. Nearly everyone assumed I’d started crying on purpose to get off the hook, and the entire rest of the semester I was the subject of cruel gossip and general disdain as a result of this.

And because of that, I’ve finally been able to put my finger on why I often find anti-bullying campaigns at schools so hollow: bullying is endemic in the system. Not only are teachers ignorant of the cruelty enacted on their students, often they’re complicit in it by enacting unjust rules. When a culture of fear and punishment is fostered in a classroom, it encourages harassment of those who (naturally and instinctively) react to it strongly and severely, knowing it’s wrong but powerless to combat it. And cutthroat competition to get elusive As fosters the kind of ruthlessness that makes mocking those who don’t make the grade just another facet of the culture.

Bullying cannot be destroyed until the public school system as we know it is destroyed, razed and rebuilt from the ground up with justice, understanding and kindness as its pillars.