Violence in Schools — A Global Challenge?

Debarbieux dates the moment France «discovered» school violence precisely: 12 November 1990, a Paris student march under the slogan «more security in the lycées», marred by looting. The problem existed before — sociologists were writing about it in the 1960s and 70s — but only once the media discovered it did it become an ideological theme, often tied to xenophobia and electioneering. Hence the book’s central question: is school violence a real threat, or a subject inflated — even invented — by media, politicians and «experts»?

The answer is neither yes nor no. Debarbieux treats two traps as equally dangerous: sensationalist exaggeration and the denial that says «it’s all the media». The section on school massacres is a good example: listing the bloodiest cases from Andrew Kehoe’s 1927 bombing of a Michigan school to Beslan in 2004, it shows that the vast majority of those killed in such massacres died at the hands of adults, not teenagers. The popular image of «feral youth» does not match the facts.

The book’s strongest idea is «micro-violence». In Italy 52% of pupils, and in the author’s French surveys over 73% of collège pupils and 78% of primary pupils, report being called humiliating names. Trivial in isolation, such incidents, when repeated, become an ongoing relationship between victim and aggressor — that is, bullying. Because crime statistics cannot capture this, Debarbieux argues insistently for independent victimisation surveys: official figures either inflate or ignore.

The table in the prevention chapter (from the 2004 US Surgeon General report) is the most practically useful page: skills building, positive behaviour reinforcement, classroom-management techniques, parent training and family therapy work; peer counselling, weapon-sweep programmes, boot camps and individual counselling do not. The author rejects what he calls «strongman solutions» and stresses that the school itself — its organisation, pedagogy and climate — can either increase or reduce violence.

There are weaknesses. The text is academic and at times polemical, and the Turkish translation is heavy and occasionally opaque. Most data date from the early 2000s, and cyberbullying is barely present. Still, for anyone who talks about «school violence» — especially policymakers and teachers — it is an important model of a calm, data-driven and non-ideological approach.

• Comparative data and survey results from dozens of countries
• Equally critical of right-wing populism and left-wing denial
• Evidence-based tables of what works and what does not