“The sphere of the establishment is overwhelmed by the mobile phone”, worries the national union of management staff of National Education

“The sphere of the establishment is largely overwhelmed by the place occupied by the mobile phone”, worries Thursday, June 1, on franceinfo, the secretary general of the national union of management staff of National Education (SNPDEN) after the suicide of Lindsay, a 13-year-old girl victim of harassment in her college of Vendin-le -Old (Pas-de-Calais). Bruno Bobkiewicz observes a “failure” in the fight against cyberbullying. “It’s a problem that we have to learn to deal with”.

>> Lindsay’s suicide: the parents filed four complaints

franceinfo: Is this suicide, as the Minister of National Education says, a “collective failure”?

Bruno Bobkiewicz: From the moment a situation leads to the suicide of a student, we cannot consider that we are successful. It is questioning. It is extremely upsetting. It is a terrible drama that the school community is obviously experiencing very badly. The term failure is appropriate. The question is whether everything that needed to be done has been done. The investigation will conclude it.

What is wrong with this type of situation?

There is already an extremely complex parameter to deal with. This is a phenomenon that has been amplified by, in particular, the place taken today by social networks. Which makes it necessary to admit that many exchanges between young people completely escape us. As proof, in the case, even though a student had been excluded from the establishment, the phenomenon continued through social networks. It is clear that the sphere of the establishment is largely overwhelmed by the place occupied by the mobile phone.

Which personnel are in charge of managing these phenomena?

Principal educational advisers (CPE) have always played a key role in terms of the interaction between young people and school life in general. Recently, since 2022, the pHARe program (to fight against bullying at school, editor’s note) aims to identify cells for listening to and welcoming the words of young people and to train teachers. There is also a lot of awareness-raising and prevention work to be done, which goes far enough beyond the framework of National Education, with associations or experts in the field, why not police services, on the issue of cyberbullying . This is a much more recent problem that we must learn to deal with.

>> “We must look at the reasons that push a student to harass,” says the head of the FCPE against school harassment

What is your reaction to the statements of the mother who believes she has been “dropped”, in particular by the principal of her college?

We can also understand that in reality it is much more nuanced and complex than that. I also hear that exclusion measures had been taken. It means that the establishment did not sit idly by. I don’t know the file but we can’t say that nothing happened.