LETTER FROM MALMO
The incident occurred on May 5, 2023. During recess, a 16-year-old student tormented another, younger student at a public middle school in Höör, a small town in southern Sweden. Witnessing the scene, Paul Carlback, teacher of Swedish and English, intervenes. The harasser laughs and acts as if he is calling the police to report him. He then stands up, tells the teacher he's going to “box” him and punches him in the chest. Paul Carlback pushes the boy against a cupboard and holds him for a few moments.
At the end of November, the student was convicted in the first instance of “threatening a public official,” an offense that has protected the teaching profession since 2023. The teenager must pay 10,000 crowns (890 euros) in compensation to his teacher. But Paul Carlback remains unemployed: the management of his university not only reported him to court – a lawsuit was quickly dismissed – but also fired him.
While the case is particularly shocking, it is no exception in a country where the number of complaints filed with the Swedish Work Environment Agency (Arbetsmiljöverket) by teachers who have been victims of threats and violence has doubled in ten years . An increase that is partly explained by Swedes no longer hesitating to raise awareness of their working conditions, observes Kristian Hansson, school expert at Arbetsmiljöverket. But that's not all: “Acts of violence at school have increased and teachers, especially in primary and secondary schools, are at the top of the categories most affected by occupational diseases, ahead of health workers and workers in the transport and logistics sector”, he explains.
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“Terrifying numbers”
A survey published last spring by the teachers' union Sveriges Lärare shows 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 ago, 58% experienced verbal violence, 15% physical violence, 11% cyberviolence and 7% sexual harassment. “These figures are frightening, especially since we have difficulty assessing the extent of the phenomenon since many incidents probably go unreported,” reacts the union's president, Asa Fahlén.
All you have to do is type the words “violence” and “teacher” into a search engine to see countless testimonies. In October 2022, Caroline Andersson, a teacher at a school in Stockholm, recounted that career-changing moment when, a few weeks earlier, a student who had asked her to leave her class tried to strangle her. The teacher managed to free herself after taking self-defense classes. But the student’s words – “Damn how weak you are. You should practice more! » – continued to pursue her.
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