I suspect that some patterns of bullying in schools - including what sounds like the sort that was in operation here - aren't so much something that schools tolerate, they are essentially a version of the systems of organisation and motivation that the schools rely on and propagate.

And that is the way the schools operate because that is the way that society is assumed to operate, and the schools are geared to turning out the kind of citizens they are supposed to turn out, square pegs for square holes.

My impression is that the pressure towards conformity towards being "regular" in the American sense, is stronger now than it ever has been.