The Bullying Test

To determine if bullying is a problem or not in Canadian Schools, we took a trip to Penticton, B.C. to conduct a test on the premises of Princess Margaret Secondary School. We traveled to this city of approximately 35000 people to see how students would react to a scene of bullying right in front of them. We got 2 teenagers to set up a fake act of bullying. At around 11 AM on a Tuesday morning, 1 student started to shove another student, with one student purposely acting as the aggressor and the other acting as the victim. A boy walked around the corner, and noticed the bullying taking place in the middle of a hallway. The boy looked at the 2 other students fighting, gave an almost puzzled look, and continued on to walk down the hall. Directly after we noticed that the boy did not do anything and just kept on walking, we interviewed him. We asked him why he didn't try to stop the bullying or at least tell the bully to stop. He responded, "What? That was bullying? I thought one boy was just     having a better time playing than the other boy. I've never seen bullying before, so I was confused as to what was happening." We asked the boy if the next time he saw bullying occur he would do something about it he replied, "Of course! Now that I know what it is!" We conducted one more test to see what another student would do in the same situation, and the results were different. When he saw the bullying take place, he immediately jumped between the bully and the victim and told the bully to stop. We asked the boy why he followed through with his actions. "Well I used to live in a different town where bullying was alot more common. I knew what to do because I've been in that situation before, being a victim. The reason I moved to Penticton actually, was because I heard that bullying is practically non-existent here. And that was the first time I've seen bullying happen since I moved, so that must be true." The results from these tests have shown us that some high schools may have bullying, but at Princess Margaret it's a complete non-issue.