Isn't anyone concerned about C?

if there's no way to tell exactly what was correct, and the principal had his suspicions, all the kids should have been punished the same.

should have been; now it will never be.

Lesson to A that about the general inequity of life; and to say away from B. Permanently.

yes, there is concern for C. C is fine. ...btw A wrote a long apology to C and included a cartoon of C being an awesome superhero (without any prompting). The principal passed it on.

I so fucking wish A would learn the "stay away from B" lesson, but the more your parents tell you not to do something... Romeo and Juliet anyone?

I get that, but he's still pretty young. He needs to learn now that some "friends" are not worth keeping.

are "lumps" good or bad in this context?

Part of life ,
You Play You PAY !

You won't get any disagreement from me on that, but it isn't an easy lesson to teach......

So stay in the classroom at recess?

By railing against the system shafting him, rather than saying, 'you let B fuck you again and you're paying for it', your not helping him learn that lesson.

what Bruce said. school administration and systems will NEVER be fair, and it's useless to fight them (imo). It's more important to learn the lessons about people, and learn how to protect oneself from the assholes of life. It's the peer pressure thing--one of the most insidious battles all kids must fight.

So stay in the classroom at recess?

No , face yer fears head on
Win or Loose ,

Are we men or Mice ???

Another lesson that your kid mayhave learned (and which you can help him learn) is that by telling the truth and admitting his part in the incident he was only given a very mild punishment. His honesty bought a good deal more leniency than had he lied and still been found out.

As unfair as it is (and it's the kind of unfairness that gets under your skin and itches terribly) that kidB wasn't punished, it almost doesn't matter: your kid (kidA) allowed himself, for whatever reason, to be drawn into a situation where he did hit kid C. That was wrong; he clearly recognises that it was wrong; he has gone out of his way to make amends.

In rationalising it to him, it might be worth pointing out that whilst he (an honest and mostly well-behaved kid) has ended up being punished and Kid B hasn't: in fact the kid who has been treated most unfairly is KidB. By not punishing him, and allowing him to get away with that behaviour; the school and headteacher have taught him a dangerous lesson. By the time he comes a cropper properly, it will most likely be for something serious, and the consequences will hit him like a freight train.

Given that part of the school's job is to socialise kids and allow them to move comfortably through society, the response of the school to misbehaviour is just one more set of lessons. Your kid was given that lesson. Kid B was not. Better to learn those lessons now whilst the potential consequences are small, than continue through school without learning those lessons and then have to learn them in a much bigger and potentially damaging way later on.

As a final aside: it also could feed into the lesson that actually, what other people do is way less important than what you yourself do. Why would you care about the other kid, after all? What matters to you is what your kid is doing; what lessons he is learning. In much the same way as parents don't care that kids E, F, G and H all have brand new i-phones to take to school, or that kids E, F and H told kid A to do something: if kids E,F and H told ya to jump off a cliff would ya?

The only thing your kid can control is his own behaviour and responses. Ultimately responsibility for our own actions cannot rest with the crowd, it has rest with ourselves.

Well, I think we probably all know what my opinion will be, but...

In a calm voice with no witnesses A should let B know the new rules. You've screwed me for the last time. If you come near me or abuse another one of our classmates while I'm around I will leave you dripping blood in a pool of your own vomit, and if you are dumb enough to think about touching me or even saying my name I'll eat your fucking heart. Then A must be smart enough to go about his daily life completely ignoring B unless he breaks the rules.

Sometimes violence or the threat of violence is the answer.

I'm really surprised that the lunch supervisor's report isn't given more weight. Could you have the principal's supervisor look into the matter?