I broke down and watched the school bus video. Have y'all seen it? Many different things can be said about it. For myself, the school bus was an unusually happy place. Our driver was young and oh-so-fine; we are still friends to this day. And I was a popular girl in those days so I enjoyed the privilege and meager shelter such status offered.

I saw bullying on the school bus, of course. Because bullying is endemic to the institution in general, part of the daily background noise. These bullying children in the school bus video are a product of their environment.  They are one possible logical endpoint to the many years of training they've already endured. The video is so familiar, brings back such visceral memory, such normality.

Today, the truth I see on this video is a jolting reminder which gives me complicated and philosophic feelings. Had I seen it the year I graduated high school, I would have laughed cynically. Cold cynicism being one possible logical endpoint to the many years of training I had endured.

The normalcy of systemic bullying should be a grim indicator, a slavering canary. The institution is familial. After all, most children spend as much, if not more, waking time in school than they do at home. Bullying is as rooted in the common dysfunction of our school family as any generational family dysfunction. Just as daily, plain, and unconsciously tolerated and taught as any family dysfunction. Like any family, the institution has its goodness and of course its complicated. But what is broken is profoundly ill.

There is no other place in society, save perhaps jail, where bullying is so blithely normal and common.