It does depend a lot on the school. The school my kids went to last year, they have a reputation for bullying and now I know why...the school administration does nothing about it, until it gets way out of hand. Hopefully, they won't wind up with a kid either committing suicide or bringing a gun to school and killing others...but if they do they will have blood on their hands as well.
This year, it's different. One of my daughter's best friends turned on her (I don't know why girls do this, but they do) and started in. But, my daughter and a few other girls went to the school counselor, and it stopped. The girl even apologized to my daughter, but we're not exactly letting them go back to being friends...too much going on with that girl.
As far as not returning evil for evil...with the bullying both of my kids have endured, so far none of it has been physical, so there have been no physical responses necessary. For the verbal abuse as well as the undermining of friendships, we've helped them learn how to overcome without returning evil for evil. My son had to endure a lot of racism on the part of the 70+ year old bus driver at last year's school, and he's learned to handle that as well. It was hard, very hard, but they both learned from it.
But, I don't find any value in allowing kids to pummel and even seriously injure another child, and that child having to child stand there (or lie there if knocked down) "taking it". Once physical violence is introduced, it becomes a matter of self-defense, not "evil for evil"...unless one considers all self-defense evil and I know that there are some here who do consider all forms of self-defense evil. However, I don't, nor does my husband. I do not believe that the Scriptures teach us that self-defense, when one is being violently attacked is "evil". (And yes, I am quite familiar with Matthew 5:39).
