Alright class, now that the smoke cleared from the Canadian Teacher’s Federation’s call to ban Rockstar games’ Bully: Scholarship Edition—a censorious cry amplified by an amalgamation of international teacher’s union—it’s time to hand these critics a failing grade for not doing their homework.

"What it does is it encourages kids to target other kids, to be a bully with other kids," claimed CTF spokesperson Emily Noble.

Of course, that’s not at all what Bully is about. Sure, there are schoolyard fisticuffs, a few Indian burns, some stink bombs and many a wedgie. But just as when it was first released on Playstation 2 in 2006, the ultimate goal of the game is get the school’s various cliques—the nerds, the preps, the greasers, jocks, townies and bullies—to just get along. So you’ll be protecting D&D geeks, returning a fat girl’s stolen chocolate and stopping sociopathic bully Gary’s plan to rule the school.

That is, when you’re not attending class—playing word scramble, rhythm-based music games, dodge ball and dissecting frogs a la Trauma Centre—or stuck mowing the lawn during detention, starting a food fight in the cafeteria and even kissing other boys (in fact, 360 completists will require 20 same-sex makeout sessions to get the "over the rainbow” achievement).

One thing the critics got right is that it is, essentially, GTA: High School, at least in its open-world sandbox setting and familiar mission-based structure (it even uses the San Andreas game engine). You play 15-year-old delinquent Jimmy Hopkins, a literal redheaded stepchild whose negligent mom is off on a yearlong honeymoon, dumping him at Bullworth Academy where the school motto is Canis Canim Edit, or “dog eat dog.” The new “Scholarship Edition” features 8 new missions, 4 new classes, multiplayer minigames, plus motion-sensitive controls for the Wii version, which, by the way, looks distractingly jaggy blown up to HDTV size. The 360 version looks prettier, but there’s a glitchy bug Rockstar has not been able to properly patch yet. 

Still, these technical difficulties don’t take away from one of the strongest satires in gaming history. Bully is clearly influenced by Catcher in the Rye and Breakfast Club so maybe what truly upset the teachers was Rockstar's anti-authoritarian attitude. It's no coincidence so many of the game’s adult characters—from the pervert gym teacher and drunk English prof to the dismissive headmaster—are similar to Breakfast Club’s corrupt and insufferable Principle Vernon.