ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses bullying as usually understood - ‘an interaction,’ as someone ponderously put it, ‘in which a more dominant individual or group intentionally causes distress to a less dominant individual or group’. It also discusses the notion of conflict: between pupils, and between teachers; between pupils and teachers; and between teachers and the authorities under whom they work: local education authorities, advisers, inspectors, governors and, increasingly over the past few years, central government. The atmosphere in many schools is claustrophobic in its grassless, concrete setting. The violence and the potential for violence of both these settings is evident day by day to the children in, for example, the accidents and the dehumanising labour going on around them, and in the broken glass stuck along one of the walls. As teachers have to address the problems of their own violence, whether it is physical or emotional, in order to understand pupils’ violence.
