Micro-violence is defined as everyday acts or remarks that, while not perceived as violence, undermine a student’s dignity and can cause lasting harm. To stop it, you must first learn to recognize it.

The 2025 back-to-school circular reaffirms the desire to “reject all forms of violence” in schools, with the ambition of “engaging and empowering all stakeholders in the educational community.” But wanting to do something is not enough to be able to do something: we also need to understand the reasons for the symptoms in order to truly treat them.

To revive collective responsibility—that of teachers, educators, parents, and students—we must raise awareness of the discourses that allow micro-violence in interpersonal relationships. It is also about knowing how to recognize and put into practice the micro-attentions that contribute to student development.

Micro-violence and Denial of Responsibility

In his experiments on submission to authority , psychologist Stanley Milgram refers to Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” and notes that most of the harm that can be done in the world does not come from a perverse or diabolical will, but from the simple denial of responsibility. Becoming alien to one’s “inner self” to become “a mere instrument for carrying out the will of others”: it is this kind of small resignation of the will that constitutes the first, innocuous step towards the harm that one can do to others.

In this respect, the stated intention cannot constitute a guarantee of harmlessness. Here we must listen and identify the clichés , those ready-made phrases that serve as ready-made thinking, which we can use to be (micro) violent:

• “It’s for your own good” or the anticipation of favorable consequences;
• “It hurts me” or accusatory inversion;
• “It’s not the end of the world” or minimization;
• “It’s the same for everyone” or trivialization;
• “Poor thing” or irony; all ways of giving up empathy, and even self-empathy, by saying to oneself: “I have no choice.”

The spectrum of defense mechanisms is broad, and it is necessary to engage in inner clarification work to (re)claim one’s responsibility. Reforming the automatic language used to give oneself a clear conscience at little cost is essential to escape the status quo. But if awareness has nothing to do here with any “good conscience” that one gives oneself, it also has nothing to do with any “bad conscience” that one should attribute to oneself, this ulcer of the soul that feeds guilt.

Well-ordered kindness begins with oneself: yes, we have (very) probably shown ourselves to be micro-violent, and there is nothing surprising in being in the “reproduction” . But the essential thing is not what has been done: it is what will be done from now on. It cannot be a question of being “perfect” (a stifling and impossible to satisfy requirement) but, more modestly, of accepting that the human being, certainly imperfect, is “perfectible” . He needs to progress, leading to being able to improve as much as to deteriorate.

Micro-attentions feed educational missions

This work on empowerment opens up a field of possibilities, already explored by many educators, through the development of micro-attentions. These signs of recognition help build bonds and support confidence and self-esteem: they value not only the student, but also (and above all) the student as a person.

During a school trip, a break (recreation), a project or in the ordinary course of a session, a remark, a smile, a look, an informal attention feeds a need for recognition and introduces a form of “play” into the rigid functioning of the institution.

Unlike micro-violence, micro-attentions are those gestures or words that make a difference, and which, in the warmth of a look or a smile, listen and support without seeking to normalize. A master’s student testifies:

“In high school, I had a biology teacher who created a wonderful bond with our class. She was interested in our background and our projects. She also helped us a lot with our choice of studies. Even today, she asks for news of her students on a Discord group. This teacher was a point of contact and a reference point for many. When we had a difficulty in high school life or in class, we could talk to her freely. She listened and offered us solutions or advice. She is one of the people who made me want to teach and create a real relationship with her class.”

Are we in the anecdotal? Perhaps… But the essential sometimes emerges at the margins, surreptitiously, unpredictably. These are the great and happy effects of small causes, generated by an attitude that allows (that dares) the encounter.

Everyone has experienced these solar educators, making them “resilience tutors” who allow the most vulnerable to “hold on.” Their agency is transferred, and makes school more than a place for (sur)life: a place where it is possible to flourish.

The paradox is that this agency is hardly supported in this highly normalizing institution that is the French school. Wouldn’t it be time, as long as we wish to give substance to the prevention of all forms of violence in schools (and elsewhere), to institutionalize micro-attentions as much as possible, in order to make them not the exception, but the rule? To make the quality of interpersonal relationships a central issue in teacher training, which until now has been focused on the content to be taught?

This is undoubtedly a paradigm shift, the very one that is supposed to bring inclusive values ​​to life , by making them something completely different from quantitative standards to be respected. To initiate it, we must free speech, not for the purpose of accusation, but to engage in dialogue, to put collective intelligence and shared responsibility back at the center.

Author Bio: Laurent Muller is a Lecturer in Educational and Training Sciences at the University of Lorraine