The Bully Project

I cried as I was sitting there, eyes glued to the cinema screen. I was watching "The Bully Project" surrounded by my own pupils as well as those of other schools.

We had been specially invited to come and see the screening of this documentary by the American director Lee Hirsch. Hirsch, himself a victim of bullying at school, had for two years been filming the ugly, brutal reality that never seems to go away. Eighteen million kids in America are bullied each year, the "Bully Project" home page claims, and, without any statistics to support my own claims, I will add: and quite possibly numerous thousands here in Norway as well.

What makes this documentary so harrowing, so compelling, is the knowledge that what you're seeing actually has taken place. The evidence is overwhelming. Kids are caught on tape in the very acts of sabotaging other kids' sense of security and well-being. Thugs the age of my own son exhibit unbelievable insensitivity and perversity in pestering, domineering and tyrannising their peers. And the crime scene is the school bus or the school corridor.

Unintentionally or on purpose, school management or staff and busdrivers are characterized as mysteriously ignorant of the bullying or sensationally incompetent in dealing with what clearly goes on in broad daylight. As the threats escalate and one victim's safety is clearly at risk, the filmmaker at one point has to cease filming and instead alert the responsible grown-ups as to what actually transpires in the war zone called a school bus.

Some of the victims portrayed in this documentary are no longer alive. Two teen suicides are reported and parents and family of those who couldn't handle it anymore are allowed to express, and explain, the pain and grief ensuing the tragic deaths of an 11 year old and a 17-year old. Other victims of bullying that we meet in the film eventually fare much better, but in all cases there's a lingering, prevalent sense of uncertainty at the end: how traumatized have these kids really become? Can they truly ever recover from the terrible ordeals they have experienced?

I have known first-hand the destructive potential of kids bullying kids. And that's why "The Bully Project" motivates me to do all I can to stop it from happening at the school where I work. I know now more how much damage a naked fist and a poisonous tongue can cause.