Rosemary McLeod: no place for bullies

When did we become such a nation of school bullies, and why? No doubt that's a question one Whanganui mother is pondering.
Pip Houghton-Rountree withdrew her 13-year-old son from New Plymouth Boys' High School this term after he complained to police about being tormented in a dormitory at the school.
This comes two years after the school had to review how it coped with bullying, following another serious incident.
It has evidently had some success with that, since the latest Education Review Office report found its boarders were "strongly satisfied" with hostel life.
It's good about the majority, but the minority is where the victims of bullying are found.
Since bullying is often a pack sport, the satisfaction of the majority doesn't cancel out a tormented individual's experience, as in: most kids are happy, therefore there's no problem.
Besides, this boy complained often during the first term, his mother says, and she sent many letters and made numerous visits to the school to back him up.
The mother claims a particular bully, an older student, has "destroyed" her son, and says: "I'm going to fight until something is done. My goal is to get rid of that kid and the bullying to be sorted".
The headmaster, Michael McMenamin, has been quoted as saying the school had given the boy counselling, and worked closely with Mrs Houghton-Rountree when the issue was first raised.
She tells me there was no counselling, and that she never "expressed satisfaction" with the way the issue was handled at the end of the first term, as she was said to have done.
Either way, here's the thing that gets me: the victim is often deemed to be in need of counselling, not the bully, whose behaviour can be written off as mere boyish - or girlish - high spirits.
Mrs Houghton-Rountree is at pains to point out her son was previously at a junior boarding school for two years which he loved, where he thrived, and was a prefect. He was at the high school on a scholarship, which he was keen to take up because his grandfather was an old boy.
Problems arose, his mother says, with an older boy whom she believes is still in charge of the dormitory of younger boys where the bullying happened.
In one incident, she says her son became unconscious, then had a panic attack which the school attributed to asthma. He is not an asthmatic. She says he was winded in the course of an assault.
This evidently isn't a solitary case. Mrs Houghton-Rountree spoke to me from the home of a mother who'd also withdrawn her son from the school. They told me the boys' clothing and gym gear was constantly stolen, and that another mother had to spend $1500 on replacement items.
To be fair to the school, thieving and bullying are not easy matters to deal with, and some people will always be dissatisfied.
But when you take on responsibility for other peoples' children - bullies and bullied alike - you have a duty of care and must expect to be held accountable.
There was something - though not much - to be said for the sterner school regime of the past.
At least school was a separate, distinct culture you had to navigate, with rules (often petty or inane) inflexibly adhered to.
Kids had a place where punishment was swift and logical. But bullying thrived in that culture, too, and was usually dealt with by denial. I'm not saying this has happened here, but obviously some parents are unhappy and such problems are familiar.
In an interesting development, we now have Secondary Principals Association president Patrick Walsh calling for the law to get tough on school bullies.
This follows a steady increase in the number of assaults in schools, partly because girls are competing in thuggery, apparently in the odd belief that it's a legitimate form of gender equality.
The police have been asked to deal with the Houghton-Rountree case. What happens next will indicate how effective that approach might be.