This look at the effects of bullying comes from director Lee Hirsch, who presents the story of a handful of kids who suffered at the hands of classmates being cruel to them, amidst communities and school administrations unable and/or unwilling to step in. As we watch these kids suffer from not fitting in with the rest of the crowd, while there are certainly failings within the school system, the problems are more reflective of the community and their tolerance of anything different. The kids featured in the documentary are all sweet kids, each with some attribute that engendered ridicule from their peers. Watching them be abused is hard to watch, as the normal instinct should be to want to step in. Making it worse is seeing their complaints fall upon deaf ears.
Hirsch's verité style of filming in most scenes is a perfect way to capture this issue; by letting the audience position themselves as to what side they would rather be on, also causing the movie to never fail to provoke a strong reaction. It opens by recounting
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It ruins people’s lives, and this makes it a huge concern for us as a worldwide community. I feel that as someone who hasn’t been bullied I can’t have a complete understanding on bullying, therefore letting media and close friends determine and position me to view the bullying issue as a negative problem that must stop. Bully is an important film that can be used to show students the importance of anti-bullying, and that prevention of the issue is so much better than becoming a bully. The film has strongly influenced and confirmed all my ideas and attitudes towards bullying, and I feel as if I have come away from the documentary positioned even more towards acting on the issue. I view bullying as a problem for us as a society, and I support the idea of anti-bullying
As shown as a real issue within high school through television’s Freaks and Geeks, bullying is something that needs to be understood and dealt with. In an age with more resources for bullies to use, the consequences are too severe not to do anything about it. Bullying is now stretching beyond the school hallways and has invaded students in their own homes. There needs to be more awareness on what the actual effects of bullying are and that bullied victims are not alone.
When the word bullying is brought up, one always pictures in his or her mind a big angry boy, who picks on other small helpless children. What some don’t realize is that bullying comes hand in hand with popularity, likeability, and peer acceptance. Children are heavily influenced by other kids his or her age, as the old saying goes, “But mom Jimmy gets to stay up past 10, why can’t I?” According to Miranda Witvliet, to understand children’s peer group affiliation, you need to be able to examine children naturally occurring groups resemble each other on bullying, likeability, and perceived popularity. To be accepted by a popular group of kids, others would follow in his or her footsteps and will bully others, even if the child knew it were wrong. Schools around the country have constructed anti-bullying campaigns and have programs setup to teach students, teachers, and family members what to do to prevent bullying. In an article by Jennifer Dignan, she explains how Stomp Out Bullying and The National Center for Bullying Prevention are two organizations working to put an end to the epidemic. To help prevent bullying people need to understand how the victims and the bullies are affected by other peers.
Bullying has become a major problem facing the United States today. The American Psychological Association reports that roughly 40% to 80% of children are involved in bullying on some level during their time in school. (APA, 2014) The magnitude of the problem can be observed in the statistics. In the United States, a total of 4,080,879 children between the ages of five and 18 have been the victims of bullying compared to 3,892,199 who have reported that they have engaged in bullying someone else. Additionally, 851,755 said that they have been both the victim and the bully. That's a whopping 8,824,833 people in the United States that have been involved in bullying behavior on one level or another. (High, B., 2000 Census)
The poem “To This Day” by Shane Koyczan, and the animated film that accompanies it, brings to light a depressing truth about the effects bullying can have on a child’s future, while also showing that it has become an accepted normality in today’s society. The video inspired by the poem conveys imagery that is deep in meaning, widely understood, and strongly supportive of the poems intent allowing it to connect with the audience in a fluid fashion. The combination of the poem and film help to provide an insight to how bullying can scar people’s lives regardless of outer appearances, and why we should do more to educate schools and families on bully prevention.
According to nobullying.com, nearly 160,000 thousand students stay at home every day because they are afraid that they might be bullied. With the growing technological advances, bullying can take place anywhere ranging from school, the bus, or even through the screen of cellphones. Bully, an awe-inspiring film seeks to create awareness to the most problematic conflict that adolescents face in this country. The documentary explicitly captures five families with children who struggle with bullies. Through the use of pathos, tone, ethos, comical relief, figurative language, and rhetorical implications, the audience is left with a very gruesome impression of injustice, and a lamentable experience of bullying.
The documentary film Bully (2011) – directed by Lee Hirsh – takes the viewer into the lives of five families that live in various, predominantly remote, towns across the United States. All families presented have been affected by bullying, either because their child was at the time being bullied by peers at school or the child committed suicide due to continuous bullying. The film also profiles an assistant principle, Kim Lockwood, whose indiscreetness makes the viewer...
Over the last decade, bullying has really been a worldwide issue. Bullying is affecting children all over the world and has grown into a huge epidemic. According to the National Education Association, “160,000 kids stay home from school each day to ...
Bullying has been a part of schooling for as long as children have been congregating. To some it seems like a natural, though uncomfortable, part of life and school experience, while to others it can mean terrifying experiences which spoiled and characterized otherwise happy years in school. Dan Olweus, a pioneer in bully behavior research documented that 2.7 million children are affected as victims, and that 2.1 children act as bullies (Fried, 1997, as cited in Aluedse, 2006). With bullying cited as the reason for violent, gun-related crime in the past few years, school districts as well as national governments have put anti-bullying policies in place. Bullying is a complicated phenomenon, involving more than one child demanding lunch money from a smaller child. It is a worldwide epidemic hitting schools everywhere. Virtually everyone has seen or experienced bullying. With technological advances, bullying is even hitting the internet. Parents, teachers, students and governments agencies alike are attempting to put a stop to bullying practices.
In a CNN study by Chuck Hadad he states “That bullying is pervasive even though the schools have anti-bullying programs from kindergarten through 12th grade, assemblies throughout the year, and a peer-to-peer program where older students talk to younger students about the dangers of bullying” (Hadad). Robert Faris, a sociologist found that bullies and victims are generally the same person. Whe...
Everyone has been bullied or encountered someone being bullied at some point of their life. Whether it would be physically or verbally both can be exceedingly traumatizing and can have a long-term psychological influence on children’s development. Majority people may define bullying in a more physical term; nevertheless that’s not always the case. The act of bullying can occur in several ways and in reality affect the individual in the same way. Bullying is generally defined as repeated, negative, and harmful actions focused at target throughout a course of time, exhibiting a sense of power difference between the bully and the victim (Olweus, 1993; Limber & Mihalic, 1999 as cited from Douglas J. Boyle, 2005). A survey was conducted in the United States estimating that over six million children, about 30% in grade six through ten have experienced frequent bullying in a school environment (Nansel, 2001 as cited from Douglas J. Boyle, 2005). Many people might debate that bullying is something that every child goes through and is simply a part of growing up, although there are several damaging consequences that happens to the child’s brain. Bullying causes the child to feel upset, isolated, frightened, anxious, and depressed. They feel like they reason they are being picked on is because there is something wrong with them and may even lose their confidence feel unsafe going to school (Frenette, 2013 as cited from Douglas J. Boyle, 2005) Anthropologically, sociologically, or psychologically, bullying can be analyzed through different perspectives and several questions can be asked based on the topic:
On the afternoon of April 9, 2010 I found myself in a meeting with Kerri Evans, the assistant principal of Pleasant Ridge Middle School, and my son Nicholas. I was there because my son had become a victim of verbal abuse. It was shocking to learn that bullying has become such an epidemic in our school system. “Nearly 1 in 3 students is involved in bullying” (Hertzog, 2010). In a perfect world there would be no bullying. Kids wouldn’t get shoved into lockers, and they wouldn’t be beat up in the hallway. Students wouldn’t talk about another student behind their back because of their shape, size, race, or religion. In a perfect world this wouldn’t happen, but at that moment in our imperfect world it was happening to my son. The question is, why does it happen and what can we do to stop it? “According to a 2009 federal survey of school crime and safety, 32 percent of middle and high school students said they'd been victimized during the academic year, compared with 14 percent in 2001” (Tyre, 2010). Bullying was making its way into my home and affecting my life. It was then that I realized that bullying was a problem that needed to stop. Bullying in schools is escalating and becoming a bigger and bigger issue, and we must take action to eliminate it.
Bullying is something that is not something new and is actually something that society continues to face. Over the years, bullying has been looked at as being so ordinary in schools that it is continuously overlooked as an emanate threat to students and has been lowered to a belief that bullying is a part of the developmental stage that most young children will experience then overcome (Allebeck, 2005, p. 129). Not everyone gets over the extreme hurt that can come as an effect from bullying, for both the bully and the victim. Because of this, we now see bullying affecting places such as the workplace, social events and even the home. The issue of bullying is not only experienced in schools, but the school environment is one of the best places
Bullying of students in school is an abuse that affects and produces a number of negative experiences on the victim. It is proven that those students who bully do so merely because they see themselves superior than those being bullied. They use this as a tactic to make juniors fear them and show them that they are not equal in any way. Some will even bully as a revenge of the bullying they suffered in the past. I have been bullied before and I know some of the effects it could have on a person. Bullying is a serious cause of many issues and has effects that may be long lasting.
In recent times bullying has become a national issue, notwithstanding the fact that it has been in existence for many years. Traditionally, bullying has been seen as horseplay, but with the increase of harassment in schools and suicides; parents and schools are now forced to take action to prevent bullying in schools. Bullying is an unwanted, aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance which has the potential to be repeated over time. Strategies to prevent bullying in schools are grouped into identifying the causes of bullying, creating policies and rules, building a safe environment and educating students and staff.
“"If bullying is every single mean thing that happens, then there's nothing we can do to stop it," says Emily Bazelon, author of Sticks and Stones.” (pg. 8).