People watching can be a harmless past time or a fractured kaleidoscopic view of how society truly functions. You could watch the jaunty jock strolling through a hall, or the flamboyant girl dressed in glitter and gold. Maybe you see the bully expunging some nerd’s self-esteem. School is meant to be an educational utopia, yet occasionally classrooms are havens for ridicule and hate.

The best place to judge someone’s character is in a classroom when they are surrounded by people that have nothing in common with them. Watching how a person reacts to and treats the timorous kid in the back or the geeky kid who has never had a girlfriend/boyfriend is a measure by which a person’s integrity can be accurately analyzed. Do they take the time to find out who the kid really is or do they judge him/her by their looks, or maybe their skewed, defensive behavior?


Whoever instigates the bullying usually acts ostentatiously and relies on others to join in on the fractious behavior creating schisms within the classroom. They may feel the need to hide their own weaknesses by tearing down another person whom they see as weaker than themselves. The outcast that no one wants to talk to because they is different.

A person can be judged fairly by how they act in an environment such as this, whether or not they join in on the ridiculing and whether or not they defend the victim. How they react to an anathema such as the ones described above.