ABSTRACT
The reputation of Switzerland, at least in Europe, is that it is expensive, perfectly organised, clean and very beautiful. Violence does not belong to Switzerland's reputation. In this chapter, we show that violence, in terms of victimisation, belongs to the daily life of schoolchildren in Switzerland as well as in other countries. In fact, even if there is no agreed upon word for bullying or victimisation, the media have often reported on 'violence at school' during the last five years or so. Fairly often the type of violence described fits well with the concept of bully/victim problems in schools. The first author uses the term 'plagen' in her contacts with schoolchildren, teachers and parents. It is a common word in most Swiss dialects and corresponds roughly to 'pester' in English. The term 'mobbing' is generally used for harassment in the workplace.
We first give some information on Switzerland as a country and on the educational system, which is rather complex. Second, we report on an informal survey conducted among the directorates of education in each canton as well as centres for school psychology and adolescent psychology. Finally, we report some results from a study conducted in 1994 among adolescents in Switzerland and, in fact, also in Norway. Presenting the first results from this project, we will focus mainly on the Swiss data and use the Norwegian data only in some comparisons. First, we present the percentages of girls and boys reporting being bullied or bullying others. Second, we present data on where bullying occurs. Finally, we address the issue of differences in occurrence of bully/victim problems among different school types in Switzerland.
