Violent confrontation has consequences, even in school. At the very least, it attracts significant attention from authority which nobody wants. So it changes the bullying risk/reward calculation, at least for "conventional" bullying for "fun" (if they're after your phone/money/etc, you will need to put up more resistance to counteract the higher "reward").
If you get into a proper fight you will lose, however most bullying is verbal and even bullies have no interest in escalating it to physical violence if it risks yielding consequences (if not for the violence itself, but their other behavior, that might otherwise fly under the radar). So merely showing the intent to fight back will make them move onto another target.
Yes, this is completely different from gangs and I'm not talking about those. If your school has a gang problem, this advice won't help you. However below "gangs" there will generally be a clique of people that may engage in occasional verbal bullying (because it's fun for them and/or bolsters their social status) but otherwise generally do well in school and have no interest in jeopardizing that standing - therefore violence will not be in their best interest, regardless of whether they'll actually win the physical fight.
> You can't avoid bullies at school. If your plan is to defend yourself, then you better be able and willing to dish out extreme violence when warranted because that's what it's going to take
You can't avoid 100% of them. You can avoid 90% of them by being stronger/more difficult than the other targets.
> So merely showing the intent to fight back will make them move onto another target.
This is magical thinking. "If I do A, he will do B" as if it were a cosmic law. No such deal exists! Bully has a whole alphabet of responses to choose from, including taking you up on your challenge.
You need to take a hard look at what you're suggesting here. You're describing people who are verbally violent. You're telling people that the way to get them to stop is by using physical violence. You're escalating the situation. You're doing this on the assumption that verbally violent people are not willing to go further. This is false. The problem with violent people is there's always someone willing to go further than you.
What you're actually doing is telling kids to make a threat display. Like a thug displaying his gun to intimidate the other person into backing down. This is an effective deterrent but you better be able and willing to follow up on that threat if necessary. If you do this, all bets are off. There is no guarantee that your opponent will back down. It's also possible that your threat will be perceived as a challenge to his masculity, especially if you do it in front of his peers. He'll think he'll have no choice but to take you on because he'll lose face if he doesn't.
If you're going to do this, you better be able to quickly incapacitate your opponent. I don't mean punching his face once and walking away victorious. I mean literally breaking his jaw and then following up with more attacks until he's unconscious on the floor. Then you better hope that this display of extreme violence was enough to intimidate any other bullies hanging around or you'll have to do the same thing to them before they gang up on you. If at any point your confidence in your ability to do this ever wavers, you should not attempt it.
If you get into a proper fight you will lose, however most bullying is verbal and even bullies have no interest in escalating it to physical violence if it risks yielding consequences (if not for the violence itself, but their other behavior, that might otherwise fly under the radar). So merely showing the intent to fight back will make them move onto another target.
Yes, this is completely different from gangs and I'm not talking about those. If your school has a gang problem, this advice won't help you. However below "gangs" there will generally be a clique of people that may engage in occasional verbal bullying (because it's fun for them and/or bolsters their social status) but otherwise generally do well in school and have no interest in jeopardizing that standing - therefore violence will not be in their best interest, regardless of whether they'll actually win the physical fight.
> You can't avoid bullies at school. If your plan is to defend yourself, then you better be able and willing to dish out extreme violence when warranted because that's what it's going to take
You can't avoid 100% of them. You can avoid 90% of them by being stronger/more difficult than the other targets.