Bullying, a notion that is a victim of its success

Everyone agreed: It’s better to talk too much about bullying than too little, and it’s better for kids to talk than to be silent.

The concept of bullying was almost unknown to the general public about fifteen years ago, according to the school specialists and field workers interviewed. Then we speak more easily of “school violence”, where the logic of the “scapegoat” was nothing more than one phenomenon among others, often poorly analyzed or minimized as a personal issue between two children, and not 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 -, and families increasingly point out the deficiencies of national education. Bullying was enshrined in law in 2019; it became a crime in 2022. National education launched the Phare program to improve bullying management at each university. 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: on November 6, the eve of the National Day to fight against school bullying. , the former prime minister announced the launch of his own association, Face Face.

Without a doubt, this issue has been consolidated in the political and media sphere as a true social problem, and the word has entered the language of families and students. At the risk of taking up all the space? On the ground, staff responsible for school violence, particularly senior education advisers (CPE), regret that the term is used to describe situations of discomfort that do not fall within their scope, which complicates their work.

“I dedicated four hours of work to it”

“The other day a very angry mother came to the shelter, asking to be welcomed.reports, for example, Cédric Bart, CPE of a university in Pas-de-Calais and academic secretary of the SE-UNSA union. She tells me that her daughter is being harassed and asks that they be received together. » As protocol advises against confronting children, the CPE receives the victim separately and then the other student, before understanding that the dispute between the two young women is an isolated event. “Meanwhile, the mother wrote to the academy inspectorate and started the whole procedure. “I spent four hours working on it.”summarizes Cédric Bart.

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