> Teach conflict resolution skills to young children.
This is pretty huge. A lot of my experience growing up in California during the 90s was "tell an adult" and "zero tolerance" coming down from school administrators. This is useful at a very young age, but it neglects to equip the children with agency for when the adults aren't around. You can't tell an adult when you're on the school bus and conflict breaks out. You can't tell an adult when you're out on a soccer trip and people are getting rowdy in the locker room. The bystander effect is very strong in school aged children because we neglect to introduce them to their inherent agency in conflict.
There is also a degree of antifragility that parents could teach as well. Your emotions aren't reality. What people say about you isn't either. Again, these should come from parents.
In the child world, sometimes you tell the adults, but they don't do anything, and the abuse continues. That's at least my experience with bullying in primary school. "Conflict resolution" and such virtue-signalling buzzwords don't work against violent bullies.
Sometimes the only resolution for a conflict is murder. Even in non stand your ground states.
I do not think you understand conflict resolution and should probably study it a bit before speaking so authoritatively. The basic gist of it is to identify the root cause of contention and identify the best practical solution. Most people bad at managing conflict fail to correctly identify the cause and empathize with the opposing view. Keep in mind - you do not need to agree with a perspective to understand it and failure to understand the other party is a responsibility shared jointly regardless of righteousness.
How would you attempt “conflict resolution” with primary school bullies?
Sometimes the only resolution to violence is (threat of) superior violence. If you’re a child and a group of kids attacks you, that’s “adults resolving the situation”. Anything else is a failure of the schooling system.
It's telling that you seemingly only think of extreme cases when it comes to conflict resolution, and not all the mundane conflicts kids get into, eg arguing over who gets to play with a toy, arguing over who's whose friend etc, teasing that doesn't rise to the level of bullying, or kids interacting with/being watched by someone who is both meaningfully older than themselves and is also too young for the kid to acknowledge them as having authority (eg an older cousin), or teenagers arguing over/teasing over crushes etc.
These are all things kids need to have the freedom to learn to resolve without a parent just jumping in all the time.
Such conflict resolution can come handy in adulthood for things like dealing with angry/complaining customers, miscommunications causing arguments, professional disagreements etc. I've seen so many people who are completely unable to do conflict resolution of any sort, everyone's always walking on eggshells around them knowing that any conflict is going to end up blowing up into full "Karen"-esque argument.
The role of law enforcement is rarely about direct intervention to stop criminal behavior (or in your example, violent bullying). They investigate and, potentially, punish criminal behavior that has happened in the past. They act as a deterrent to crime, but also to vigilante justice.
Conflict resolution provides the potential victim with agency to intervene in a situation on their own behalf. Of course, this doesn't preclude the option of calling the police. Why not expand someone's options for keeping safe?
We deal with a lot more conflict than you're accounting for.
Someone can be shouting at a waiter at a restaurant and people around will try to deascalate and help or consolate the waiter.
Af short fight breaks ? People close enough to the participants will act, and bystanders might stay as witnesses to not make it a "he said she said" situation etc.
In general people aren't playing heroes but will do a ton of small and cumulative effort to make tensed situations not expand further into chaos.
Not to mention, easy to find some killed by the very police they themselves called.
Aderrien Murry, 11, called 911 for help at his home in Indianola, Miss., last weekend. But after police arrived, an officer shot him in the chest. The boy is recovering, but his family is asking for answers — and they want the officer involved to be fired.
A Los Angeles county sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a 27-year-old woman who had called 911 to report that she was under attack by a former boyfriend, police officials and lawyers for the victim’s family said on Thursday. Records show the deputy had killed another person in similar circumstances three years ago.
You clearly have no experience with what you're talking about.
In the low income neighborhoods near me, in which my sister lives (of her own free will, despite other options) due to chronic cognitive issues, the police are visiting constantly. People in low income neighborhoods call the police all the time. Surveys show that most low income people in dangerous neighborhoods are in favor of more, better policing, not less.
I recall trying once, it got to the principal level. Nothing happened. The kids got a talking to by the principal, but their parents did not care. Child bullies have parents who do not care what their kids do.
Fighting back works - against a single bully. If there is more than one, they will make the fight unfair. After all, it is about dominance and not proving yourself.
Bullies eventually usually grow out of it. That is the fix in my experience.
A friend of mine stepped in once and was prosecuted for injuring one of the attackers. Took 4 month of uncertainty before he ended up with a medal and an apology but he was this close to ending in prison for it instead.
This is pretty huge. A lot of my experience growing up in California during the 90s was "tell an adult" and "zero tolerance" coming down from school administrators. This is useful at a very young age, but it neglects to equip the children with agency for when the adults aren't around. You can't tell an adult when you're on the school bus and conflict breaks out. You can't tell an adult when you're out on a soccer trip and people are getting rowdy in the locker room. The bystander effect is very strong in school aged children because we neglect to introduce them to their inherent agency in conflict.
There is also a degree of antifragility that parents could teach as well. Your emotions aren't reality. What people say about you isn't either. Again, these should come from parents.