The prevalence of school bullying (a deliberate, repeated act of verbal, physical or relational/social aggression occurring in a situation of inequality, including cyberbullying) is high in France (10 %) as well as in other countries like the United States (more than 40 % of school children have experienced harassment at some point in their school cursus). This frequency varies by country, source of observation, school, class, and age of children. Self-questionnaires where children have to self-identify as harassing or being harassed involve a clear bias of underevaluation (even for harassed children who can feel ashamed to report explicitly harassment). The method of peer nomination of who, according to each child, has harassed or has been harassed in recent months out of all children in a class, based on mean results, is the most objective method. However, it depends on the participation rate and is not easy to implement, as some professionals consider it to be based on a denunciatory system. The fight against school bullying is a priority with regard to its possible psychological, physical and educational effects on the harassed child/adolescent, but also on the harassing child/adolescent and the spectators. In addition, the consequences of harassment are amplified in our societies by social networks with the use of SMS and Internet on mobile phones and computers. The feeling of being pursued, not only by the harassing youth but also in the eyes of the spectators is no longer limited today to the walls of the school but is also found in other environments where the harassed child/adolescent could previously recuperate from harassement (home, places of extracurricular activity, etc.). Combating school bullying requires breaking the silence and understanding its mechanisms by questioning the roles and functions of all the actors. Bullying appears to be a question of place, a place to show leadership and power but also to gain popularity for the harassing child/adolescent, a place to maintain in the group for the spectators, and a place to defend or to be established for the harassed youth. The presence of spectators, essential to the existence and maintenance of school bullying, distinguishes it from abuse; without spectators, the show cannot take place. There are indeed various actors in harassment, all of them having a major role (roles of stalker, harassed and spectator), and without which the group dynamic could not continue. It opens new perspectives of intervention based on collective responsibility but also individual responsibility, knowing that if only one spectator opposes him/herself to school bullying, harassment can stop. A part focused on each of these protagonists is presented and discussed in this article. However, there is no typology that could be reported here regarding the harassed person, the harassing one or the spectator. A model linking the various protagonists of harassment is presented and proposes that interventions take place simultaneously on these different levels, by focusing on each actor separately but also jointly in the group concerned by school bullying using discussion and role-playing. This work focuses on the ability of cognitive empathy (ability to understand the emotions of others), apparently preserved even in harassing children, and more precisely on the transition from cognitive empathy to emotional empathy (ability to experience the emotions that others feel by putting oneself in their place). If one of the fundamentals of harassment relies on an issue of place, as hypothesized, role-playing and simulation games that consist of “putting oneself in the place of the other” can be powerful mobilizers to combat harassment by allowing a change in points of view, perspectives, positions, relational modalities and behaviors. It is also important to extend interventions to larger groups representing institutions (family, school, society) with their systems of rules and laws that guarantee ethics and protect the individual within institutions. Finally, it is necessary to be aware of the possible risk of antiharassment measures, to create or reinforce an identity of harasser, harassed and/or spectator. For this reason, neither the harassed child/adolescent is designated in this article as “the victim”, nor the harassing child/adolescent as “the author”. The substantives (and not adjectives), the victim and the author, suggest the existence of a permanent identity persisting even outside the context of harassment and defining the individual. Similarly, the proposal of a specialized consultation in psychology and child psychiatry for harassed or harassing children/adolescents does not seem appropriate with regard to this identity issue. This underlines the importance of antibullying interventions to help build spaces for thinking where all individuals can express their feelings and experience the feelings of others, in a secure framework based on human values and clear rules, respected both at an individual and collective level, and supported by fair institutions.
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Jan 1, 2023
Rachel A Caravella + 2
Open Access