School Bullying. Columbine.

We're doing a series this week in The Star about name calling and bullying in schools. I've got the experience a small, good, smart, new kid with glasses gets coming up through the grades.

I remember one day getting pushed around some in 5th grade. I told the teacher. The substitute teacher told me to "eat your Wheaties."

Now is the classroom a place where educators teach and enforce rules of civility, where physical violence is avoided, where abuse is punished and where a student can learn in peace?

Or is it "Lord of The Flies," where, as Benjamin Franklin quothe, "Might shites on The back of reason," students are left to their own devices to remedy their grievances, victims don't have the recourse of law and fist leads to fists?

I remember in middle school seeing a friend of mine get his face bashed into a lunchroom table by a bully. My buddy, small, smart, nice, hadn't done anything wrong... he was just sitting there.

Maybe the kid came from a bad home. Maybe he had emotional problems. Maybe I don't care. If he's going to come to school and spread his ruination to others he can go in a special school, a Gulag, a cage.... he isn't getting fixed assaulting my friend from behind and he's just breaking others.

My high school gym class was a joke. "Here's a basketball, play amongst yourselves," "Walk in circles"....

I was playing hacky-sack with some of my friends one day -- more physical activity than the standing around most kids were doing, certainly more exercise than the teachers were getting sitting in the corner on their fat a... -- when a couple rubes decided to come give us some trouble....

About ten of us.

Two of them.

One of them got the hint.

Ten. One. The "Encircle. Exterminate." tactic that served Patriot forces at the Battle of Kings Mountain served it's deterrent purpose in this case. But it shouldn't have needed to. Teachers, adults, should have been in charge.

If kids were mature enough to handle themselves they wouldn't be needing the educations their in school to receive, would they?

Heavens, if adults where mature enough we wouldn't need cops. But we do. It's human nature.

Now let's say you had a couple kids who got pushed around in elementary school.

And middle school.

And in Columbine High School they couldn't walk down the hall without getting pushed into lockers. Did some teacher at some point tell them to "eat their Wheaties?"

Such random violence is inexcusable, abhorrent and disgusting on every imaginable level. But it doesn't surprise me. I studied anthropology. When you take millions of adolescent Homo sapiens and stress them drastically over the course of years, a few are going to snap.

It's human nature.

But we're not just brute animals, governed only by our base biology. We've developed beyond "The Lord of The Flies" to have systems of culture, of law, of classroom rules enforced by leaders to help things run reasonably smoothly.

We can do better. Parents can start off with better parenting. I don't know child-rearing from the adult's perspective, but from a yung'un's eye view, knowing the kid I was, parenting can't be easy, so maybe be cautious about jumping into parenthood before you're prepared. And ready or not, once you've got them, they're yours.

Back at school, that substitute of mine needs to be taken down a few notches. That middle school bully needs to be disciplined flat. That gym teacher needs to get off her a....

If we don't change things, things won't change.