Mid 30s, same, and my k-12 experience wasn't even bad. I wasn't really bullied. I was popular enough, and moved between a few different friend groups, some of them semi-cool (though one of the nerdier groups was my "home"). School's just that traumatic, I guess.
I worry about that for my kids. Unlike an adult, if you're in an environment that's making your life hell (and normal school life is friggin' intolerable, from an adult perspective, without awful-yet-common levels of bullying or social bullshit happening), you don't have any real way to get out except to wait. Assholes can't be "fired". Hell, someone might commit battery and be back in the seat next to you before long, let alone lesser crimes. You can't really get transferred, with any certainty. You can't quit and go somewhere else, and anyway the environments are so screwed up you'd probably end up somewhere that's still bad, even if it's better. You can't even do much to avoid the jerks. The school work itself's a mess even in the best case, and wastes huge amounts of time—any bright kid's gonna notice and find it, at best, very annoying. You're not even being paid.
Keeping the kids indoors all Winter while the sun's out (recess is nearly dead around here, even at the good schools, and they avoid going outside anyway if it's even a little shitty) is dooming tons of them to short-sightedness (insufficient bright sunlight during formative years, turns out that's the main thing that does it), SAD, and probably contributing to obesity. It sucks.
Children live in a more violent environment than adults do. As an adult I have never been physically assaulted, yet in school I was assaulted all the time.
If an adult were to be assaulted by a random stranger, there's a good chance the "bully" would get beaten up (or in America, shot). Any adult stupid enough to randomly assault other adults is likely to spend a long time as a ward of the state, until they learn not to do that anymore.
We should teach our children that they have a right to defend themselves and a duty to defend other kids who are being bullied at school.
If you have the option of a Sudbury school nearby, you may want to look into that for your kids. The students and staff run the school jointly and students get down to the business of living life instead of doing bs work. Students are part of an accepting and just community which gives them all a compassionate and tempered view towards others. The price is giving up the gold stars (academic metrics of success) and simply accepting that a child has an inherent drive to find a successful path in life if given the opportunity to pursue it in a supportive environment.
The community as a whole is responsible for deciding on the rules and what to do when they are violated, including possible expulsion (student) / firing (staff) though, being a community, such things happen only as very last resorts. Everyone gets to tell their side of the story and the community decides as best it can with no one in a position of needing to do a knee-jerk response to cover themselves. Compassion and limits coexist.
Conversely, I was bullied relentlessly for years. It warped my perceptions so badly that for years into my adulthood I couldn’t exactly identify when it finally ceased. Public school has to be the worst way we could teach little humans how to behave to one another without just going lord of the flies.
I’ll never fully move past it. That stuff is permanent to some extent.
It makes you wonder how much of this is school, per se, and how much of it is just growing up. Home-schooled kids removed from that environment, for example, tend to have worse outcomes, partly because even while school can be stressful, not socializing routinely with same-aged peers is worse.
I call BS on the parent comment's perspective. Some evidence:
"Homeschooled kids have the same access to online learning, friendships, and extracurricular activities as the typical public school student — but without many of the drawbacks, like standardized lesson plans and bullying."[1]
"Regarding socialization, Taylor's results would mean that very few home-schooling children are socially deprived. He states that critics who speak out against homeschooling on the basis of social deprivation are actually addressing an area which favors homeschoolers." [2]
I do not think that sitting alone during breaks and only talking during the other 6 hours when you raise your hand to answer a question that a teacher asks really counts as socialization.
I worry about that for my kids. Unlike an adult, if you're in an environment that's making your life hell (and normal school life is friggin' intolerable, from an adult perspective, without awful-yet-common levels of bullying or social bullshit happening), you don't have any real way to get out except to wait. Assholes can't be "fired". Hell, someone might commit battery and be back in the seat next to you before long, let alone lesser crimes. You can't really get transferred, with any certainty. You can't quit and go somewhere else, and anyway the environments are so screwed up you'd probably end up somewhere that's still bad, even if it's better. You can't even do much to avoid the jerks. The school work itself's a mess even in the best case, and wastes huge amounts of time—any bright kid's gonna notice and find it, at best, very annoying. You're not even being paid.
Keeping the kids indoors all Winter while the sun's out (recess is nearly dead around here, even at the good schools, and they avoid going outside anyway if it's even a little shitty) is dooming tons of them to short-sightedness (insufficient bright sunlight during formative years, turns out that's the main thing that does it), SAD, and probably contributing to obesity. It sucks.