The truth is kids get bullied because adults don't care and look the other way. If an adults hit another adult the police will get involved. When an adult hits a kid or a kid hits a another kid they've got practically no recourse. It's just grossly unfair, and there is no solution. So you tell them that. And you repeat that if they don't go to school they won't be able to get into higher education, which in turn won't allow them to get a good job. So their current situation sucks but the alternatives they have are even worse. It's a truthful description of a shitty situation.
Adults don't have to have a solution to everything. But kids should expect us to talk to them in a forthright manner. Spare them one-liners like "you'll understand when you get older" and other condescending nonsense.
Isn't it wrong to say there's no solution? Wouldn't it be better to tell them about the game, to learn about it (because that's what school is for) and try to better their situation for themselves?
When kids are stuck in school until their twenties or so with basically no money or independence then most of them are going to be pretty unhappy. As a kid you're trapped in a way most adults are not (except those trapped by poor health or poverty). Changes can be made to improve the situation of an individual kid, but the nature of the situation doesn't change: children have fewer rights and freedoms than adults, in daily life and by law.
The irony in your post is that the vast majority of adults are also trapped with basically no money or independence. You're given just enough as a wage slave. Perhaps the problem isn't in schools, but how we structure society today.
Adults don't have to have a solution to everything. But kids should expect us to talk to them in a forthright manner. Spare them one-liners like "you'll understand when you get older" and other condescending nonsense.