The bullying you describe is everywhere in life and not just in schools. I was disapointed to see as I grew older that it didn't change, the backstabbing etc never changed. People need to be trained to deal with it. If someone is bullying it is mostl likely becuase they are being bullied by someone else. A bad bad circle.
We had an incident of bullying here recently that was horrible.
Here is a link to one story on it, it wasn't very nice what happened.