There are two kinds of bullying: physical and emotional. Physical bullying includes hitting, punching, and fighting. Emotional bullying includes gossip, shutting someone out, name-calling, and cyberbullying (bullying that happens online).

Bullying has one purpose: to exclude—or leave out—someone from a group. When someone is bullied, he or she is made to feel unwelcome and unwanted. Sometimes witnesses to bullying don't intervene—stop the bullying—because they are afraid they will be bullied and excluded, too. This could happen in a school, neighborhood, camp, on a sports team, or anywhere else.

In this lesson, you will explore bullying as a failure of democracy, which is the political system we have that guarantees everyone equal rights. You will also think about how young people can support or fail to support democracy.