Bullying in schools

One of my granddaughters just showed me a paper she has written as an assignment in her writing class.  It is on bullying in schools, and presents a sobering picture, backed up by studies, of how pervasive this problem is in our schools.

Of course, schools in general are doing very little about the problem -- as little as they can get away with without being sued by parents.  I guess the idea is that bullying is just something that kids do, and kids need to get used to it -- get "hardened up" against such abuse.  And in any case, teachers and administrators feel they don't have the time to attend to such problems unless they get really out of hand (like after a suicide!).

Now what struck me is that among adults, such bullying in the form of sexual or racial harassment, or threatening behavior, is against the law in the workplace in this country.  Companies can lose lawsuits for millions if they don't maintain a safe, non-threatening workplace, or if they don't intervene promptly and aggressively against inappropriate behavior.

So why is it that we protect adults by law from such behavior, but don't feel it necessary to protect our much more vulnerable kids from such behavior?