It Should Be Required Viewing for All High School Students

It sure seems like an age old problem, kids making fun of other kids. Today’s episode of Oprah Winfrey dealt with this problem, and while she is far from the first talk show host to address this issue, she certainly did it in a whole new interesting, proactive way.

Oprah featured this issue and showcased a new way of getting kids to open up about their feelings as they gain support from the others at school, sometimes the same people that may have been teasing them or otherwise making them feel badly to begin with. I watched this finding the whole topic interesting, especially as the parent of a high schooler that does get teased, and as an adult that was teased myself. By the end of the show, I had tears streaming down my face.

On behalf of Oprah’s show, Lisa Ling traveled to an average high school and participated in a “challenge” with 64 of the students at the school. The challenge is a program begun by Rich and Yvonne Dutra-St. John. The start by asking kids to “walk the line,” something similar to something done in the film Freedom Writers. Yvonne tells the kids to “walk the line,” cross of to a different area of the gym, if they have ever been teased in school, and everyone takes the walk. She asks them if they have ever suffered physical abuse from a person that had told them they loved them. She asks the girls if they have ever suffered from guys making cat calls at them. Only one person crosses the link when she asks if anyone has ever been made fun of for being an Arab-American.

What comes out of this is great dialogue. On girl cries when asked about being hurt by people that have told her they love her, and talks about her family hurting her, although they love her, but a teacher that day hugged her and said she loved her, and it was the one time in her life she felt the most loved. An openly gay student gets up and talks about being called names and being spit on, and another uses the opportunity to come out to her classmates. A burly football student is reduced to sobs as he makes apologies to an African-American on the football team for calling him names. He feels so badly now and hugs him, and after that, all the other African-Americans come up and hug him as well. Other students talk about being called “the N word,” which Oprah is shocked by, as that still goes on in high schools today.

In another way of inviting discussion, the students form into smaller groups, with people they know well, don’t know at all, etc. The students have an opening line of, “If you knew me, you would know …” and then need to fill in the blanks. One guy labels himself “the popular guy,” then admits that it wasn’t always so, as he used to be “the fat kid,” and he still hurts from being called that. Another boy talks about being “the rich kid,” but says it’s not even true, as his dad left the family when he was 14, just walked out and didn’t come back. His mother then dealt with ovarian cancer, and became sick. The real reason he quit the football team was because he had to take care of her, putting her to bed, feeding her, etc. He’s scared of where his life is going and cries himself to sleep every night.

I think this should be a required assembly in all high schools, and I think they should all be required to watch the program in action on The Oprah Winfrey Show. I can’t tell you how it would have changed my outlook as a teenager to not feel so alone, to know that every single person at school was hurting, not just me. And that’s what the whole idea of this is, to make kids feel not so alone. They learn a little sign language in this program, holding their thumb, forefinger, and pinky up in a salute, with the idea that it means, “I have your back.” Every kid should know that there is a whole school that has his back.

For more information on the program, visit The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Have something to say about this issue. Come talk about it in the Sofa Chip forums.