School bullying, a notion victim of its success

Everyone agreed: it's better to talk too much about bullying than not enough, and it's better for children to speak out than to stay silent.

The notion of school bullying was almost unknown to the general public around fifteen years ago, estimate the school specialists and field workers interviewed. We then spoke more readily of “school violence”, where the logic of the “scapegoat” was only one phenomenon among others, often poorly analyzed, or minimized as being a personal matter between two children, and not of a collective phenomenon.

Since Emmanuel Macron's first five-year term, several suicides of young victims have been highly publicized – from Evaëlle, in 2019, to Nicolas, in 2023 -, with families each time pointing out failings in national education. School bullying was enshrined in law in 2019; it became an offense in 2022. National education launched the Phare program to improve the management of harassment in each college. Gabriel Attal, Minister of National Education in the fall of 2023, chose to personalize this fight, when he was in office on Rue de Grenelle and then after his departure: November 6, the eve of the National Day for the Fight against bullying at school, the former prime minister announced the launch of his own association, Face Face.

Undeniably, this subject has established itself in the political and media spheres as a real societal problem, and the word has entered the language of families and students. At the risk of taking up all the space? In the field, staff responsible for school violence – in particular senior education advisors (CPE) – regret that the term is used to describe situations of unease that do not fall under it, which complicates their work. remediation.

“I spent four hours of work on it”

“The other day, a mother arrived at the lodge, very angry, asking to be receivedreports, for example, Cédric Bart, CPE in a college in Pas-de-Calais and academic secretary of the SE-UNSA union. She tells me that her daughter is being harassed and asks that the two students be received together. » As the protocol advises against confronting the children, the CPE receives the victim separately, then the other student, before understanding that the dispute between the two young girls is an isolated event. “In the meantime, the mother had written to the academy inspectorate and initiated the whole procedure. I spent four hours working on it.”summarizes Cédric Bart.

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