LETTER FROM MALMÖ
The incident took place on May 5, 2023. During recess, in a public middle school in Höör, a small town in the south of Sweden, a 16-year-old student tormented another, younger than him. Witness to the scene, Paul Carlback, teacher of Swedish and English, intervenes. The harasser laughs and pretends to call the police to report him. Then he gets up, tells the teacher that he is going to “boxer” and hits him in the chest. Paul Carlback pushes the boy against a cabinet and holds him for a few moments.
At the end of November, the student was convicted, in first instance, for “threat against a civil servant”, an offense which has protected the teaching profession since 2023. The teenager will have to pay 10,000 crowns (890 euros) in damages to his teacher. But Paul Carlback remains unemployed: in addition to reporting him to the courts – a complaint quickly dismissed – the management of his college fired him.
While the case is particularly shocking, it is far from being an exception in a country where the number of complaints filed with the Swedish Office for the Environment at Work (Arbetsmiljöverket) by teachers who are victims of threats and violence has doubled in ten years. An increase which is partly explained by the fact that Swedes no longer hesitate to raise awareness about their working conditions, observes Kristian Hansson, school specialist with Arbetsmiljöverket. But not only : “Acts of violence at school have worsened and teachers, particularly at primary and secondary schools, are at the top of the categories most affected by occupational illnesses, ahead of health personnel and employees in the transport and transport sector. logistic “he specifies.
“Terrifying figures”
Carried out by the teachers’ union, Sveriges Lärare, a survey, published last spring, reveals the extent of the scourge: 29% of middle school teachers say they have been threatened in 2021, 45% say they have found themselves in a risky situation at least once in the last two years, 58% have experienced verbal violence, 15% physical violence, 11% cyberviolence and 7% sexual harassment. “These figures are terrifying, especially as we find it difficult to assess the scale of the phenomenon, as many incidents are probably not reported”reacts the president of the union, Asa Fahlén.
All you have to do is type the words “violence” and “teacher” into any search engine to see countless testimonies scroll by. In October 2022, Caroline Andersson, a teacher at a school in Stockholm, recounted this moment that changed her career when, a few weeks earlier, a student whom she had asked to leave her class tried to strangle her. The teacher, having taken self-defense courses, managed to free herself. But the student’s words – “Damn, how weak are you.” You should practice more! » – continued to haunt her.
You have 55% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.