Built to Break: How School Culture Manufactures Bullies and Silences the Rest

Aditya Dhaka, 6:06 pm

It doesn't always begin with a black eye. Sometimes, the greatest tragedy wears a grin. That, perhaps, is the true genius of school bullying—its ability to pass itself off as “just a joke,” “just a phase,” “just kids being kids” Bacche hai chorr do, aage se nahi karenge. Alas! These phrases are the wrapping paper in which real damage is gifted, year after year, from one batch of students to the next. Behind the echo of morning bells and teacher roll calls lies an unspoken rule book—one that teaches us how to laugh when others fall and stay silent when they bleed. It is not a system designed to fail; it is a system designed to forget who failed.

            Take any ordinary school corridor. To the untrained eye, it’s tiled floors and bulletin boards. But look closer, and you’ll see the battlefield: whispers sharp as switchblades, stares used as currency, reputations built and razed in the span of a lunch break. Some kids learn math. Some kids learn how to shrink. I was one of the latter. 

No fists were thrown, of course. Wrenched reputations don’t leave bruises the nurse can see. And the teachers? Oh, they do try. They furrow brows. They promise to “look into it.” But eventually they decide that harmony matters more than truth, and that, my friend, is how bullies win—not because they’re strong, but because the adults are tired.

Let’s talk, for a moment, about the normalisation of bullying—that dazzling societal sleight of hand where cruelty is repackaged as culture. The joke at the back of the class, the group chat snickers, the mocking nicknames that stick longer than grades ever do. And what’s worse, we’ve all bought in. We’ve been told that those who crumble “just need to toughen up.” That resilience is proven by enduring pain, not avoiding it. That dignity is a luxury, and if you’re too loud about your suffering, you must be faking it.

In most classrooms, silence is golden—until it’s weaponised. I learned this when people started treating me like a punchline carved into a chalkboard. There was no clear moment of betrayal, no dramatic crescendo. Just a slow, steady corrosion of belonging. The whispers got sharper, the stares more calculating. You begin to notice how people say your name like it tastes bad. How even eye contact becomes currency you can't afford. And when it’s over, you’re not sure what’s been taken from you: just that something has.

One need not invent statistics to prove a point. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (India), over 11,000 cases of student suicides were reported in 2021 alone. That’s 30 children a day, and yet the word bullying rarely makes it into the final report. Because that would mean holding the system accountable—and accountability, like empathy, is in short supply in the institutions that raise us.

Perhaps this is where I should insert a polite anecdote about how I “learned from the experience” or “came out stronger.” But let me not insult your intelligence. Growth is not a moral obligation. Not every wound has a golden lining. What I learned was that bullies do not operate in isolation. They thrive because the system—our schools, our silence, our need to belong—feeds them. They are manufactured, printed out of assembly lines of insecurity, ego, and unchecked power.

And yet, the system isn’t merely broken—it’s efficient. It runs like clockwork, producing generations who learn to either dominate or disappear. Every apology handed to a victim is offset by the unspoken shrug: “Well, what else did you expect?”

Somewhere between calling out two classmates’, and receiving threats, I realised that truth doesn’t protect you. People don't want the truth. They want a convenient aggressor, someone they can exile without paperwork. The rest? They just want the period to end, the bell to ring, the drama to die.

The truth is, bullying culture is not just a school problem. It is a mirror of the society we’re building. Where people in power choose comfort over correction. Where silence is safer than solidarity. And where those who try to speak—those who refuse to laugh when it’s not funny—are the ones who end up isolated.

So what now?

Do we keep telling students to “ignore it”? To “focus on studies”? To “be mature”? Or do we finally unlearn the apathy that protects abusers and shames the abused? Maybe we begin by listening. Not just nodding along, but actually listening—to the tremor in a classmate’s voice, to the silence after the bell, to the jokes that sting more than they amuse.

Maybe we stop asking “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” and start asking “Why did they think they could get away with it?”

And maybe—just maybe—we stop mistaking survival for healing.

If tragedy had a stage, our school corridors and virtual classrooms set the scene—and too often, the fallout is treated as a punchline. A haunting 2021 UNESCO report records 246 million children suffering school-related violence globally, and in India more than six in ten students aged 12–18 report being bullied. Even so, 80% never lodge a complaint, because survival isn't encouraged, it's expected. And the bureaucracy responds with plaque-worthy posters and annual “anti-bullying weeks” that exist in theory, not in tension. Systematically, students die—but do their voices matter if they’re not pristine?

When India’s Prime Minister chose to mock a student’s grammar in her suicide note, the audience didn't gasp—they laughed. The official was busy belittling innocence, reducing grief to a literacy test. This is more than tone-deaf—it’s weaponised ignorance. The government’s giggles shouted. Grammar matters more than grief? Is this correct?

In Kerala, 14-year-old Mihir Ahammed took his life after weeks of ragging. His mother says classmates even shared memes mocking his death. The school dismissed it as “boys will be boys.” In Gurgaon, 17-year-old Manav Singh fell from a balcony, pushed to despair by classmates spreading false Instagram accusations. Even his own brother had to petition the National Human Rights Commission to get the school’s investigation going. Their silence spoke louder than our slogans.

In Kota coaching hubs, a grim annual ritual unfolds: more than 25 student deaths by suicide, each one a broken soul in the pressure cooker of entrance exams. On Reddit, survivors don’t mourn—they vent: “Don't think JEE is the end. It's just the crayons breaking you.” The comment section isn’t tears but trauma turned sardonic coping—a digital underworld of survivors.

A DPS Faridabad Class 10 student ended her life after relentless bullying over her sexuality. Teachers only sympathised after her diary leaked—not when she asked for help. Her death note read less like a manifesto and more like a final act of invisibility: “They said I’m less, until I became less.”

And even when the bar is so low, schools boast “no tolerance” signs, yet life beneath them tells another story—one where bullies remain untouched, victims vanish discreetly, and institutions comfort themselves with inaction. It's India's greatest tragedy that her schools poison the environment with casual cruelty: that her Prime minister laughs at grammatical errors in suicide notes; that her people mock the suffering, erase the cries. And then we ask why nothing changes. Because this culture isn’t broken—it’s functioning perfectly for those who benefit from silence.

Perhaps now it’s time to ask: if we can joke about the death of a child, if we can blame the victim for imperfect grammar, what chance do we give genuine change? If schools are built to break us, maybe only those who refuse repair will ever survive.

Ah, schools — temples of learning by day, factories of silence by night. You’d think a place that gives homework on Hamlet would understand what it means when a child says, “I’m not okay.” But alas, the show must go on — unless, of course, the child dies. Then we get candle marches and pastel Instagram stories about mental health.

Let’s put the sugar aside for a moment. In India alone, more than 2,300 students die by suicide every year. Many of them leave behind notes; not essays, not letters; just raw scraps of pain. One 14-year-old wrote, “It hurts to exist.” Another, grammatically imperfect but gut-wrenchingly clear, said: “I want this to stop now please I can’t tell teacher she say I’m drama.”

And what did we do? We laughed. Literally.

A Prime Minister- a leader of 1.4 billion people- once mocked a student’s suicide note for its English errors. A nation that can barely fund mental health services found time to turn a child’s last words into a punchline. If satire isn’t already dead, it certainly skipped town that day.

Meanwhile, schools- the very institutions that should have wrapped these kids in safety- are busy printing zero tolerance pamphlets while tolerating everything that doesn’t make the newspapers. We have Child Welfare Committees, anonymous complaint boxes, weekly mental health talks — and yet, if you scratch just below the surface, you’ll find rot. The kind of rot that tells a bullied kid, “You should just ignore them,” or worse, “Maybe you’re too sensitive.”

I know, because I’ve been there. When I raised a concern — about something as basic as being ganged up on for speaking the truth — it didn’t result in a conversation, it invited punishment. Suddenly I was the “instigator.” Not the boys who came near my house and threatened me. Not the silence from teachers. Me. 

A 2022 NCERT survey found that over 50% of Indian school students have experienced bullying, and nearly 30% didn’t report it — not because they didn’t want to, but because they knew it wouldn’t matter. We’ve made trauma procedural. File a complaint. Get a meeting. Wait. Wait. Forget it.

Schools aren't failing to act — they're succeeding in exactly what they were built for: control, not care. And until we admit that, we’ll keep burying children under polished tiles and recycled slogans. The point is: this is a system that teaches obedience over empathy, silence over resistance, and image over integrity. It is built to break the ones who don't bend.

So what do we do now? We’ve cried, screamed, pointed fingers, and turned over graves for answers. But rage isn’t reform. We can’t shout the system into submission. We have to unmake it, piece by piece, rule by rule.

We begin, perhaps, with a confession. That school isn’t always safe, that children don’t just get bullied — they get abandoned. We admit that our institutions are not “broken,” they’re functioning exactly as designed: indifferent to emotion, allergic to accountability, and obsessed with performance — academic, behavioral, reputational.

We begin by asking: Why does a child need to be in ruins for adults to take them seriously? Why is “he’s just being dramatic” still said after thousands have taken their lives? Why are schools more equipped to discipline a uniform violation than to de-escalate a mental health crisis?

And if we’re honest — truly honest — we already know what real change requires.

It requires policy, yes — mandatory anti-bullying frameworks, trained mental health professionals in every school, transparent grievance redressal mechanisms. But more than that, it requires courage. From teachers, to say, “This child is not a threat, he’s a warning sign.”From parents to say “My child might be the bully.” From students, to say, “I saw it happen, and I won’t stay quiet.”

And it requires memory.

Because when a 15-year-old dies by suicide after months of bullying and no one is held accountable, the world forgets in a week. But the survivors — the ones who were called “liars,” “attention-seekers,” “overreactors” — they never forget. And neither should we.

Don’t just teach empathy — model it. Don’t just install complaint boxes — read them. Don’t just react to death — prevent it.

As for the child who spoke out — who named names, who refused to fold — and was told to stay silent? He’s still here. Still writing. Still watching.

And to all those who stood by while the silence grew heavy: you may not have said the words, but the echo was yours. We don’t need a system that teaches children to be “resilient.” We need one that doesn’t test their ability to endure cruelty in the first place.

Let that be the world we build.

Some stories don’t scream. They sit in silence, flinch at roll calls, fake laughter in corridors, and spend nights asking search engines if the law could save them. My own story was not a headline. No fists. No bruises. Just a quiet collapse in a classroom that knew how to laugh, just not how to listen.

It wasn’t traditional bullying. It was worse—the kind that comes wearing uniforms, smiling in groups, and laughing at jokes you never told. I once made a comment about two classmates, because I thought it was harmless—childish curiosity. It spiraled. The whispers grew louder than my voice. I was suddenly "the problem.” No one wanted to understand the mistake, only magnify it.

I was sent into a panic, asking online if I could have the CWC, NHRC, NCWCD involved. That’s how panicked I was. A teenager googling laws to understand how much trouble words could bring. Wasn’t this supposed to be school?

But this is what we’ve allowed school to become: a place where you’re told to be yourself, then punished for it. Where a boy (me) becomes shameful, while a teacher making a child cry becomes ‘discipline.’ A system where everyone has something to say after the suicide note is written.

And maybe that’s why I’m writing this — not because I want sympathy, but because I’m tired of being another silent footnote.

I’m not alone. The data speaks louder than we ever did.

And again according to the National Crime Records Bureau, over 11,000 students died by suicide in India in 2021 — that's more than 30 children every day. How many of those were mocked for crying? For stuttering? For dressing “wrong”? How many left this world with their names forgotten but their notebooks scribbled with apologies?

We remember Satish, who was thrashed by classmates and left bleeding in a bathroom in Rajasthan. We remember 14-year-old Divyanshi from Uttar Pradesh. We remember the girl from Tamil Nadu who left behind a note detailing the harassment she faced for months—ignored every single time. Or atleast I do remember.

And then, as if to mock it all, we remember the Prime Minister laughing on national television at a suicide note written by a student — over a grammatical error. As if the tragedy was not that a child died, but that he misplaced a verb. What do you call this, if not institutional cruelty dressed in tailored suits?

This isn’t just about broken children. It’s about the culture that breaks them, then walks away pretending to be shocked.

This is not just a post. It’s a record. A reckoning. For every student who sat silently through the cruelty, and every one who spoke up — and got crushed for it.

Maybe no one listened when I was searching for answers at 2 a.m., panicking over whether school rumours would ruin my life. But now, I want this to be heard.

To every institution, every classroom, every adult who says “kids will be kids” (Bacche hai, abhi chote hai, koi baat nahi) — Then so will consequences be consequences.

If we can't protect them, the least we can do is listen.

Let this not end in silence. Have a good one.