The government has come up with an interministerial plan against bullying at school. Among the measures, empathy courses inspired by the Danish “Fri for Mobberi” model.
Announced following the suicide of Lindsay, a 13-year-old child, an interministerial plan against bullying at school must be presented by the government this Wednesday, September 27. The desire to develop empathy courses should be included in the program among the measures announced by Elisabeth Borne.
A test trial has been carried out since 2022 in Ile-de-France. Around thirty nursery schools in the Ile-de-France region have adopted this measure to combat school bullying. The Minister of National Education, Gabriel Attal, even went to Denmark last week to follow the Danish method in this area.
The Danish example
The Scandinavian kingdom has developed an empathy course model for around twenty years. It’s called “Fri for Mobberi” (freedom from harassment). According to 20 minutes, “it is aimed at children aged 0 to 9 and is provided in 60% of nursery schools and 45% of elementary schools”. The aim of this course is to make students aware of the words of others.
Concretely, empathy courses turn out to be workshops where schoolchildren experience behavioral situations in the form of games. “It is essential that adults are present to guide children and show them what strategy to adopt in situations that could escalate,” explained to World Charlotte Helbo Lund, a Danish school advisor specializing in bullying.
In Denmark, school bullying has seen a significant decline in twenty-five years according to the World. In 1998, a third of students aged 11 and a fifth of those aged 15 reported being victims. By 2020, this figure had fallen to less than one in ten. Likewise, the number of students who admitted to bullying other children fell by almost half, from 50% to 3%.
Empathy courses in France
What would this empathy course consist of? The French teachers would be trained for 6 hours before leading an empathy course program. They would then have a range of workshops available. These workshops are designed to help students develop their ability to understand and connect with others.
“The goal is to get them to discuss everyday situations so that they can find the solution to a problem themselves and look at the world with someone else’s eyes,” said Margot Neuvialle, “Living together-Fri for Mobberi” coordinator for the Education League at 20 Minutes.
Another game is regularly offered: posters representing emotions (anger, sadness, joy, fear, etc.) are displayed. The teacher then evokes a situation such as: “Hector takes the ball from Maya” and asks the children to position themselves in front of the poster representing the emotion experienced by Maya in this situation.
“However, we see that children do not place themselves in front of the same poster. It is a way for them to realize that everyone does not react in the same way to events,” commented Margot Neuvialle. This workshop allows students to understand that everyone reacts differently to events.
In France, the national education system estimates that one in ten students is affected by verbal or physical violence in the school environment. This is between 800,000 and 1,000,000 students per year according to Senate information report of 2021.