Through socio-cultural analysis of the discourse of bullying, the present article aims to show that moral learning is less about teaching children the difference between right and wrong and more about making available to them what Tappan and Wertsch describe as the mediational means to engage in their own moral learning. Bullying is explained in Bakhtinian terms as a form of "authoritative discourse". Both moral education and manipulative adolescent bullying are presented as, in a broad sense, forms of political practice. The same 13-year-old girl was recorded as she talked with peer "counsellors" about her own bullying and then a fortnight later in the course of directing and featuring in a tutor-group video which aimed to introduce younger pupils to their new school. Through the inter-animation of social voices, new moral ideas are appropriated by the participants. In a succession of "zones of proximal development", students support and "scaffold" each other's thinking in their progression towards changed levels of moral awareness.