The best days of your life?

I'm reading quite a good book just now; "A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil" by Christopher Brookmyre. It's a crime novel but a lot of it takes place in flashbacks to the main characters' schooldays. I have never read anything by Brookmyre before but I'm impressed and will read more of his novels. One of the things that has struck me in his description of school life is what a jungle it seems. I certainly remember being frightened of all of the staff and some of the pupils at my school. Some of my fellow pupils were really terrifying and would thump you or knock you down. And it was a girls' school! I tried to keep out of their way as much as possible. Probably worse was the cruel teasing of people whose parents were less well off than others; school trips were awful because my home made clothes (nothing wrong with them by the way) would be laughed at loud and long. No wonder I'm such a fan of school uniform - it was a welcome leveller for me. All this got easier as I got older and had my own wee group of friends - the same lovely girls that I still meet up with about twice a year. Libby of course was my friend since Primary 1, and the others probably from late primary. We were not the cool crowd (just as well because life didn't turn out so well for some of the cool crowd!) but we were happy with our friendship. Although school life was tough it probably helped me to form my own opinions about bullying and snobbery, and I hope that has made me a better teacher. I wonder whether school life is similar for pupils now or whether all the anti-bullying policies have made things a bit better. I tend to think that most secondary school pupils nowadays seem more confident than I was, but I'm not sure that's true. In fact I expect that it's still a scary time of life.