Fighting back worked a hell of a lot better than anything the "responsible" adults could ever suggest. School teachers, councilors, my mother, etc, all gave useless advice. My dad told me to fight back. When I finally listened to him, that's when the bullying stopped. I lost that fight, but won the war so to speak.

Telling kids not to fight back is a terrible cowardly thing to do, the adults who do that are either oblivious idealists or are just cynically covering their own ass because they don't want to get in trouble for encouraging a confrontation.

As a kid, yes. As an adult protecting your kid, also yes. As a way to discourage bullies from bullying? Unless you are willing to escalate to jail, no. And even then it isn't that you have dissuaded them, it is that you are physically restraining them.

We can pretty reliably do better than that now. And yes, schoolyard bullying is way down from what it used to be. (A fact somewhat hidden by our calling out milder forms of bullying.)

I'm glad your dad told you to fight back. It's good for a child's development to stick up for themselves, using violence as a last resort if needed.

Sure, if you fight back, the bully is less likely to pick on you. They’ll just pick on the next weakest kid instead.