The funny outcome of this is that I realized I should've just beat him back, I would've faced no penalty because he wouldn't have reported it and he would've realized I wasn't a target.
I do feel like SROs (police officers in schools) are much more common today than they were when I was in high school, but I am not sure treating school kids like adults always works out great either.
Consider that this is what they actually wanted you to do. They are a school and wanted to teach you to deal with the problems in your life yourself. In other words, they were trying to teach you to be an adult.
If the "authorities" don't take it seriously, you have to "protect yourself".
If the threat is by a larger/stronger person or people, you even the odds with....
This is why there is juvenile courts and juvenile justice. These "kids" are about to be adults. At some point you have to make the transition. Physically and intellectually they are already able to inflict just as much damage as most grown adults. A third grader who decides to go on a killing spree is probably not going to get very far, but a 16 year old is incredibly dangerous.
Whether 16 year old teenagers should be held to higher standards than children who just learned to spell their own name is not a question: doing so is a necessity both for their own development and those they interact with.
Clearly you didn’t go to American schools! If you complain, the teachers do nothing (not wanting to get involved or get hurt - teachers being hurt by students isn’t uncommon [1]) and the bullies bully you harder. If you fight back, the school administration gets YOU into trouble only. Ask me how I know.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=teacher+beaten+by+student
Great question to ask your school administrators, especially if you're a military brat and grew up around people who have to know when and where to use their lethal force.
While that instruction is to educators, I can’t imagine that school policy would allow student victims to respond any differently, because the parents of a bully with a broken nose could sue the school.
(no, I didn't go to an American school)
Then I realized these people were ~16 years old. Maybe it was an outlier? I looked up what the typical age of school shooters in the US is: also 16-17 years old. If a lot of these are bullying victims, something is seriously wrong.
Looking back at my own time in school, people had grown out of this sort of bullying years earlier. Teachers would treat you like young adults by 16. If you engaged in this sort of extreme bullying at that age, you wouldn't get summoned to the headmaster's office to get a slap on the wrist - you'd face real consequences and might even find yourself dealing with police if not in juvenile court.
Are these kids just not growing up because they're still being treated like 9 year olds when they're almost adults?
I'd understand the occasional outlier, since even the occasional developmentally stunted "adult" engages in bullying, but it really shouldn't be a common theme. It is likely most adults still engaging in this behavior simply never were given reason to grow up before their behavioral patterns crystallized, much like the protagonists in our story at hand.