SCHOOL VIOLENCE IN HANOI, VIETNAM

Look them straight in the eyes, you’ll die.’ 4 The study to follow is an attempt to outline a clearer view of school violence in Vietnam: how prevalent and serious it is, how it happens

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Student violence in Hanoi, Vietnam: should we be concerned?

In March 2010, a short video clip of a fight between school girls was uploaded to the internet and immediately caught the public‟s attention The one-minute clip showed

a scene of a girl being beaten, kicked and cursed by another girl while other students stood by and watched The perpetrator even grabbed the victim by the hair and dragged her along the road The victim just cried and made no attempt to resist or run away During the mêlée, a bystander joined in kicking the victim, and another made a joke about the victim‟s shirt One of the bystanders recorded the incident on

her cell phone

Picture 1: Tran Nhan Tong High-school student fight

(snapshots taken from video clip)

The clip started

perpetrator pulling the victim‟s hair

…and beating her while other students stood and watched

The perpetrator pulled the victim along the road by the hair

She kept cursing and warning the victim, „You must behave yourself at school!‟ while pulling her hair

One of the female bystanders joined

in beating the victim A male bystander then tried to stop her and the perpetrator from continuing the fight, but other girls shouted at him and demanded that he stay away

When the boy stopped

intervening, the female bystander also stopped beating the victim The perpetrator continued the beating

Because some of the students appearing in the video clip were in school uniforms, it was not difficult for the police to find out who they were Save for the perpetrator who was a drop-out, all of the students, including both the victim and the bystanders, were 10th-grade students from Tran Nhan Tong High School It was then revealed by police1 that the videoed beating sprung from a trivial conflict between the victim and that one of the bystanders was her female classmate The victim and

1 Source: “Lộ diện 10 học sinh trong clip „đánh hội đồng”

http://vnexpress.net/gl/xa-hoi/2010/03/3ba19af5/ (Retrieved on 20th June 2012).

the girl aggressor had previously disliked each other In the morning that day, the victim jostled against the latter girl when they were in school She then asked the victim to meet her at the park by their school in the afternoon to settle accounts When the victim went to the park, it turned out that not only that girl but also her friends were there, and then one of her friends severely beat her up, one videoed the beating, and the others watched The beating was only stopped when an elderly lady happened to notice it and intervened When arrested by the police, the perpetrator, the 16-year-old drop-out student appeared quite calm She complained to the police officers: „The beating was quite light There‟re much more serious beatings

[between students] out there.‟

It was also the perpetrator who asked the student who recorded the video clip to upload it onto the internet The clip was quickly spread and received attention among not only high school students but also the adult public The latter were shocked by this video clip, and school violence immediately became a hot topic in Vietnam since then Mr Nguyen Hiep Thong, Chief of the Hanoi Department of Education and Training Secretariat, said: „I was deeply shocked when I watched this video clip It‟s unimaginable that students can fight like that.‟2 Mass media broadcast updated news on this incident for weeks An official television channel (VTV2) hosted a two-hour talk-show inviting teachers, students, and parents to discuss school violence in general and the incident in particular People nationwide, through various channels such as online forums, newspapers, and workshops, raised their voice to criticize the perpetrator for her savage attack, the bystanders for their

2 Source:

http://dantri.com.vn/c25/s25-383459/soc-voi-clip-nu-sinh-danh-dap-xe-ao-ban-tren-pho.htm

insensitivity, and also took to task the teachers of those students and the education system in Vietnam in general

Despite social outcry against the recorded beating, another student fight video clip,3this time at Le Quy Don High School, was spread on the internet just two weeks after the previous incident It was just as serious And shortly after this second video clip, another one was revealed, and then another The concern about school violence hence became increasingly pervasive among Vietnamese adults Why did these students treat each other so barbarously just over trivial conflicts? How come the bystanders calmly watched their friend get beaten up and even joked about it? Has violence become so common that students consider it as normal behaviour?

Unfortunately, very few sociological studies on student violence have been conducted in Vietnam Hence, even though many conferences and workshops were organized and many articles analysing school violence were written after the Tran Nhan Tong High-school girl fight video clip went online, the problem was subject to subjective perspectives rather than being seen on the backdrop of reliable evidence, and consequently remained a controversial matter People blamed the schools, the schools blamed the families, who in turn blamed society When adults struggled to come to grips with the intensity and the cause of school violence, many other similar video clips continued to appear Consequently, people became worried not only about school violence but also about a new generation of violent youth On many online forums, adults advised each other to stay away from teenagers for their own safety

3 Source: anh.htm

http://vtc.vn/2-242683/xa-hoi/kinh-hai-clip-nu-sinh-danh-ban-da-man-hon-vu-quynh-Picture 2: Adults advised each other to avoid confronting teens

(Comment translated: ‘Do not stare, do not glance, you had better not look at teens

since teens may confront you even if you just look at them Look them straight in the eyes, you’ll die.’) 4

The study to follow is an attempt to outline a clearer view of school violence in Vietnam: how prevalent and serious it is, how it happens, what kind of student is most likely to engage in violence, and how the community (families, schools, peers, and other stakeholders) respond to violent student behaviour This study also analyses the social factors that unwittingly encourage violent behaviours among high school students in Vietnam, focusing on the two most influential institutions with regard to teenagers – family and school

To understand these issues in greater depth, three public high schools in Hanoi were chosen as study sites One school is a prestigious school (coded as „S1‟ in this study) whose students are well-behaved and are high academic achievers One school (coded as „S3) is popularly ascribed among Hanoians, students and adults, as having

a long history of school violence and low academic performance Another school

4 Source: http://vozforums.com/showthread.php?t=2787097&page=2

(coded as „S3) is ranked in between the first two regarding both the conduct of students and their academic performance

An eight-month period of fieldwork was first conducted at S3 to observe all the dynamics of school violence from beginning to end, and also its social context: both the social factors that breed and facilitate school violence and the factors that restrain students from resorting to violence During the fieldwork, several in-depth interviews with students, teachers, the parents of students and policemen were carried out to gain deeper insight into school violence Lastly, a questionnaire survey was conducted at all three schools to collect more general and statistical information

on the status of school violence and its relationship to the designated social factors

Before clarifying the scope of this particular study, another question needs to be answered: How does school violence occur in other countries? Understanding that school violence happens in other countries would help to define the scope of this study and shed light on the issue of school violence in Vietnam Without such a comparison, it is impossible to determine whether school violence in Vietnam is normal or abnormal, and which of the aspects of school violence found in this study are common and which ones are culturally specific

The next part will provide an overview of how school violence has happened in some other countries; then presents the reasons for why this study needs to be done, what purposes this study serve; and introduces the scope of this study

2 Overview of school violence in other countries

While there a r e many studies on school violence and school bullying in Western countries, the number of studies on school violence conducted in Asia is quite limited There are some articles on school violence here and there; however, systematic investigation as the one Zhang and Messer (1994) did in China is quite rare Therefore, the picture of school violence outside Vietnam hereafter is mainly based on facts on school violence in Western countries

In the Western world, there are two directions of study: studying school violence, and studying school bullying If school violence is a key research focus in the

United States (Akiba et al 2000), researchers in European countries look at school

bullying instead It is noteworthy that even though school violence and bullying are somewhat different in nature, they are not clearly differentiated in most existing studies, leading some researchers to include bullying in their studies of school

violence (e.g Akiba et.al 2000) Sometimes the two terms “violence” and

“bullying” are used interchangeably (e.g in Benbenishty and Astor 2008)

For these two reasons, researching only literature on school violence would be not

be enough to understand the issue of school violence Without reviewing literature

on school bullying, our understanding of school violence risked being lopsided from the American point of view, and many important findings on school violence reflected in the study on school bullying could be overlooked This section therefore reviews both school bullying and violence Since these two types of aggressive behaviour are quite different in nature, hence they are studied separately

In bullying episodes, boys account for the majority of both perpetrators and victims

(Knoff 2007; Espelage and Holt 2001, Graham et.al 2007) Gender also accounts

for different types of bullying engaged in: while boys are more likely to engage in physical attacks, girls tend to use relational attacks such as social exclusion (Knoff 2007) Espelage and Holt (2001) explained that during the teenage period, toughness and aggressiveness are considered by boys as important criteria for social status, as appearance is for girls Hence, boys tend to engage in violent types of bullying as a means to gain social status and peer acceptance

The power inequality between perpetrators and victims is a distinctive feature of bullying, making it somewhat different from school violence Based on Dan Olweus‟s study of bullying, Esplage and Asidao (2001) generalise the portrait of a bully as follows:

„The typical bully is usually characterized by having a positive attitude toward violence, impulsivity, a strong need to dominate others, and little empathy for victims They are average or slightly below average in popularity, are surrounded by a small groups of peers, and are usually physically stronger than their victims (if male) They are usually motivated by a need for power, are rewarded by their aggression with both positive and negative attention from

peers and teachers, and are more likely to grow up in hostile family environment.‟ (Pp 53-54)

Knoff (2007) added that some present bullies were bullied in the past While a few

of them are socially rejected students, many others are considered popular On the contrary, bullying victims are normally less accepted and more rejected than other students Besides, victims are normally weaker than bullies, and/or dare not to oppose bullying acts (Olweus1993, Espelage and Asidao 2001) As an 8th-grade student explained:

„They are nerdy If you got someone who you know who will fight, and you have someone who won‟t do anything, who would you pick on?‟ (Cited in Esplage and Asidao 2001: 55)

But being weak is not the only criteria for the victim to be chosen Normally bullied victims are students who look or behave somewhat differently from others, no matter whether the difference is negative or positive For example, they may be viewed as too fat, or too thin; they may be thought to be too smart, or they have clothes that strike others as too beautiful (Espelage and Asidao 2001)

Although some of the victims try to resist the bullying, they often fail Espelage and Asidao (2001: 57) found that victims often face bullying with resignation: „The victims tend to accept their situation and desire to just survive school every day.‟ Commonly, victims tend to tolerate being bullied instead of calling adults for help, because they feel embarrassed, and more importantly, they do not confide in adults (Olweus 1993) „In fact, most children believe that telling an adult will result in retribution by the bully‟ (DeRossie 2007: 259)

In some cases, if a bullying victim finds opportunity, s/he will be willing to be a

bully in order to experience the feeling of being powerful (Graham et.al 2007) This

recycling may help explain why bullying is so widespread in schools

Another feature of bullying is that it often happens in groups Normally, there is a typical bullying episode in which a group of students bully one student rather facing him one-on-one Swearer and Doll (2001: 14) explain why bullying often happens in groups To them, groups help endorse and encourage aggressive acts, and weaken the sense of responsibility for the shared act of bullying The researchers also point out that in most cases perpetrators do not deny their responsibility; however, they deny that their actions are wrong

School violence

It appears that school violence has received greater attention among American researchers, since most of the existing literature on school violence is derived from

research conducted in this nation (Akiba et.al 2000) Researchers from other

countries such as Great Britain, Poland, and Canada mainly pay attention to youth violence in general or school bullying rather than to school violence (see Hoffman and Summers 2001), and literature on school violence in Asian countries is quite rare Hence, most of the information on school violence presented hereafter is mainly drawn from work done in the U.S

In general, even though most Americans believe that school violence is a serious

matter (Akiba et.al 2002, Astor et.al 2002), most of the school offenses are actually

non-violent (Toby 1983, Thompkins 2000) Besides, the rate of violent crimes, including serious incidents, has generally declined In 1992, about 0.05% of the

American student population reported being a victim of violent crimes at school This rate decreased to around 0.024% in 2004

Figure 1: Rate of student-reported nonfatal crimes against students ages 12–18 per 1,000 students, by type of crime and location: 1992–2004 (in USA)

Source: Dinkes et.al 2006: 11

While bullying usually happens in school, violent offences, as shown in the above chart, often take place outside of school This holds especially true for serious

violent crimes such as rape or homicide (Dinkes et.al 2006)

As in bullying, boys are more likely to be involved in violent offences than girls, and violence also tends to occur among younger students In 2004, the rate of American students who reported being victims of student violence among the 12–14-year-old age group is two times higher than among the 15–18 year-old group, as shown in Figure 2 below

Figure 2: Rate of student-reported nonfatal crimes against students ages 12–18 at school per 1,000 students, by type of crime and selected student

characteristics: 2004 (in USA)

Source: Dinkes et.al 2006: 12

While bullies tend to be popular in school (Esplage and Asidao 2001, Kroff 2007), violence users appear to be somewhat isolated Jordan (2002: 329) reviewed and synthesised several cases of serious school violence, including one wherein a student shot another to death, and found that the violent students have a common characteristic of being „quiet, isolated, and withdrawn.‟

Besides, if bullying recurs between two parties of unequal power status, violent confrontation is often a one-time solution for conflict, and there is no typical mode

of power status between the two sides The one whose abuse provokes a violent confrontation may be weaker than his/her victim in the fight and turns to be victim

Or, the two sides may be equal in power at the start, and then one of them may be weaker and become victim(s) Besides, it is noteworthy that the specific motivation

for students‟ resort to violence is quite varied The most common reason for students

to be involved in a violent confrontation is retribution and reputation preservation (Larson 2005), whereas the most common reason for bullies to engage in bullying is

to upgrade social status (Swearer and Doll 2001, Espelage and Asidao 2001)

However, the specific reasons for violent conflict are quite varied In his work on school violence, Larson (2005) referred to two previous studies of school violence,

one by Greene et.al and the other by Lockwood (both published in 1997), to

provide additional insight on the common reasons for student violence Greene‟s team surveyed 1,558 students from normal middle and high schools in the US, while Lockwood‟s qualitative study (1997) targeted students from two high-risk schools also in the US It is noteworthy that one third of the students in the first group (in Greene‟s survey) referred to peer influence as a reason for student fighting On the contrary, the students interviewed at high-risk schools (in Lockwood‟s qualitative study) did not mention a peer effect It seems that students at high-risk schools have

a higher level of resistance to peer influence (they fight for themselves rather than because of stimulation from peers) than their counterparts in normal schools

In summary, although school violence and school bullying have many things in common, school violence has some important differences from school bullying, especially regarding power status between two sides, the repeat manner, and the motivation of those who provoke the confrontation In addition, most of studies on school violence show that school violence is not as serious as people often think Although schools are sometimes the site of violent attacks, studies from many countries such as the USA, Poland, and United Kingdom commonly show that most

of the offenses occurring in schools are non-violent, and/or bullying is the most

common violent offense within the school grounds (Olweus 1993, Thompkins 2000, Swearer and Doll 2001, Espelage and Asidao 2001; Dinkes 2006) Generally speaking, many studies started with the concern over increasing violence in school, and then found out that school violence is not as serious a matter as people think,

and actually it has slightly but stably decreased over time (Brener et.al 1999, Thompkins 2000, Dinkes et.al 2006) It is not the actual seriousness of school

violence that makes the public believe that school violence is serious, but a „culture

of fear,‟ as Thompkins (2000) called it, which derives from intensive mass media coverage of some individual horrific school violent incidents, that promotes public fear

A question then emerges: Is the current fear of school violence in Vietnam following this path? The press and mass media in general are portraying school violence as a great threat for our children in school and a serious signal of social demoralisation among Vietnamese youth Does this vision correctly reflect the reality in Vietnamese schools or it is just a „culture of fear‟ caused by some exceptional horrific school violent incidents, as Thompkins (2000) pointed out?

The answer to this question is of great importance If school violence in Vietnam is not as serious as portrayed by the mass media, parents and the authorities can be relieved and need not undertake unnecessary moves to guard their children and improve school safety, which mostly increase the culture of fear and lessen the significant role of teachers in improving students‟ behaviour rather than reduce school violence (Adams 2000, Yogan 2000, Thompkins 2001) If, on the contrary, school violence is truly serious, intervention programmes need to be designed and

implemented as soon as possible to diminish the spread and escalation of school violence

3 Significance of this study

As reviewed in section 2, school violence has been studied in many countries This means that many different aspects of the problem have been discovered, measured, and analysed in accordance with different theoretical points of view and within different sociocultural contexts However, most research on school violence (and its close relative, school bullying) was conducted in Western countries No sociological study of school violence has been conducted in Vietnam until recently.5

This study provides the first systematic and reliable evidence on school violence in urban schools in Vietnam: how it starts, how it is organized, and what brings it about Accordingly, it provides a comprehensive treatment of the nature of school violence and its prominent trends, which in turn can serve as a factual basis for the authorities to identify proper strategies to diminish the spread of school violence and lessen its consequences The findings from this study can also serve as a reference for researchers to detect new topics not only on school violence but also youth, school, and family in Vietnam for their future research Besides, this study is also intended to facilitate comparative studies on school violence in order to identify the common denominators of school violence across different cultures, and how a specific sociocultural context may shape the distinctive development and organisation of this phenomenon

5 Recently, Paul Horton (2011) conducted research on school bullying in Hai Phong, Vietnam However, bullying is different from violence, as discussed in the previous section (1.2)

This study is also a contribution to understanding Vietnamese youth nowadays When investigating how and why students resort to violence to handle peer conflicts, this study concurrently reveals many issues confronting contemporary youth such as school life, relationship with parents, and peer relationships

There are many theories developed by Western theorists that attempt to explain school violence and apply mostly to Western sociocultural contexts Whether or not these theories work in an Asian context remains uncertain By applying some of these theories to the issue at hand, this study hopes to provide a measure of clarification

Last but not least, most existing studies on school violence employed either a qualitative or a quantitative approach Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses in describing and explaining social matters Quantitative methods are appreciated for providing reliable and generalisable information whereas their qualitative counterparts are respected for bringing out insights By combining these two approaches, this study attempts to make a comprehensive analysis of such a sensitive topic as school violence, and also to clarify the specific strengths and limitations of each approach to the specific topic of violence Accordingly, this study can provide a methodological reference for other researchers as they consider which methods they should apply for their own studies

4 Research Aims

This study pursues two main aims The first is to bring school violence in Hanoi to light: determining the prevalence and the intensity of school violence; discovering the way students use violence as a tool to deal with their peer conflicts; identifying

who are the ones inclined to engage in violence, and investigating the specific roles

of each party, including both the students involved and the authorities (i.e parents, school staff, police), in a violent episode

The second aim is to provide a meaningful explanation of why school violence occurs so often in high schools in Hanoi by examining the social conditions facilitating violent conduct and those that weaken the restraints against violence Specifically, this study focuses on the roles of the family and school as the two social institutions most influential with regard to youth Travis Hirsch‟s social control theory is applied to test how family and school bonds tend to restrain violent conduct of the students in Hanoi Edwin H Sutherland‟s differential association theory was employed to study how patterns and definitions favourable to violence have spread among students and incite them to use violence

5 Research scope

This section defines and explains the scope of this study, including what kind of school violence will be examined; what social issues related to school violence will

be investigated; who the research subjects are; and the duration of this investigation

5.1 Definition of school violence

Violence is not a clear and fixed concept It is defined not only in legislation but also

by the specific culture of a society Some behaviour might be considered as violent

in some regions but not in others Stephen Jones (2000) provided an interesting illustration for this point: the men of the Yanomano society in South Africa often severely beat their wives, but these women count this type of behaviour as a mark of

their husbands‟ devotion In other words, what we consider domestic violence may not be considered violence in another culture Besides, the definition of violence not only varies among different societies but also among different studies While some researchers consider violence as an action that causes physical harm to another person or persons, others count verbal attacks as a kind of violence Some study violence at macro levels such as political unrest or war, others at the individual

level, including domestic violence or even self-harm

The approach researchers take in explaining violence is also varied; however, they focus mostly on two areas: (1) violence as personal responses and which may be explained by behavioural, emotional, and even mental mechanisms; and (2) violence

as a social problem wherein upheavals are caused by the impact of social forces

In this study, violence is examined at the micro level as a way of response to interpersonal conflicts among high school students This approach springs from the motivation to discover the social conditions that orient individuals to choose violence over several alternatives This study therefore focuses on school violence rather than bullying, since there is no alternative for students involved in bullying behaviour For students who use violence to deal with conflicts, there are possibly many other alternative solutions apart from violence Figuring out why students resort to violence and what social factors condition this choice is the core purpose of this study

For that reason, it is vital to differentiate school violence and bullying since these two terms substantially overlap as discussed in section 1.2

School violence vs school bullying

Even though school violence and bullying are both a form of attack intended to harm, bullying is normally less overt and serious in terms of physical consequences compared to violence Yet, bullying occasionally results in very serious consequences such as the cases of Haylee Fentress and Paige Moravetz6 in the US or Alex Wildman in Australia7 who committed suicide after being bullied Serious consequences, such as death, are often not the intention of those who bully; on the contrary, such a result is intentional in some serious school violence incidents such

as the school shooting at Virginia Tech, and earlier at Columbine High School.8

Another difference between school violence and school bullying is that school violence is commonly a one-off solution while bullying recurs over time Besides, in any bullying episode, one party is more powerful than the other (Olweus 1993, Espelage and Asidao 2001, Sveinsson and Morris 2007), while such disparity does not always apply to violence episodes Violence is sometimes an impulsive response

to stimulus, whereas, as Espelage and Asidao (2001) point out, bullying is systematic and self-initiated; and bullying is observed over a wider range, from

6 Advocate.com „Girls Bullied, Carry Out Suicide Pact,‟

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/04/21/Girls_Bullied_Carry_Out_Suicide_Pact/ , retrieved in 6th June 2011

7

Saffron Howden (2010) “High-school bullying drove teen to suicide,”

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/highschool-bullying-drove-teen-to-suicide-20100617-yjuo.html , retrieved on 6th June 2011

8

Straits Times, “A glance at school shooting in recent years”: “April 16, 2007: Cho Seung Hui, 23,

fatally shoots 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, then kills himself

in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold open fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before committing suicide in the school‟s library.”

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/World/Story/STIStory_348798.html ; (retrieved on 11th March 2009)

social exclusion and name-calling to physical attacks When it takes the form of a physical attack, bullying overlaps with violence

A critical question is consequently raised: How in this study do we differentiate whether an act of violent conduct is violence rather than bullying? The key words here are: to deal with peer conflicts As mentioned above, bullying is a repeated attack by the bully to assert his/her power and social position, while violence is normally a one-off solution to a conflict Yet violence sometimes leads to another violent revenge, but the roles of the two sides are often switched: perpetrator in the previous fight becomes victim and vice versa; whereas perpetrator always remains perpetrator in bullying episodes In this study, bullying is considered to be one of the conflicts that result in violent confrontation among students It is violence, not bullying, that is the research subject of this study

Definition of school violence as used in this study

Since different conceptualisation and measurements may lead to different findings,

in this study I endeavoured to adopt the most common ways of defining and measuring school violence, which may help facilitate later comparative analysis

It should be acknowledged that there are many different ways of understanding violence Wolfgang (1976: 8) used the term „violence‟ to refer to „the infliction of physical pain or injury on persons or property and shall generally mean crimes of violence (homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults, vandalism, riots) whether or not reported and known to the police.‟ With this definition, Wolfgang narrowed the term

„violence‟ into only the interpersonal confrontations that result in physical consequences Suchlicki (1972), however, defined violence to include physical

attack and verbal threats of physical attack against others Hagan and Forster (2001) took into account the self-harm aspect of violence such as suicide Kelly and Pink (1982) defined school violence quite broadly, including disrespect to teachers and administrators, theft, and physical assaults Other researchers, such as Alexander and Langford (1992) only take into account such serious forms of violence as rape,

robbery, and assault (Akiba et.al 2002) This way of measuring is also common in

many large-scale surveys on school violence initiated by American governmental agencies These surveys often measure school violence in its serious forms such as homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, and assault The strength of this measurement is that it enables comparative analysis between official statistics of violent crimes and survey databases of school violence, such as Zimring‟s work (1998) However, this method of defining school violence naturally results in showing an extremely low rate of incidents of school violence, which in turn endangers the reliability of the analysis Possibly for that reason and, in addition, it

is commonly acknowledged that school bullying is the most common form of school violence Recent research conducted in the US tends to employ a violence index which is quite close to a bullying index, covering even minor attacks such as verbal threats, pushing, and hitting

This research studied violence as an interpersonal confrontation where verbal

threats and/or physical force are employed to intentionally inflict physical and/or emotional pain on the opponent A confrontation can be seen as violent if at least

one of the parties intentionally hurts the other, whether via verbal threat or physical attack

This understanding will hence exclude vandalism and what Stuart Henry (2000) calls „structural violence‟ out of the realm of „school violence‟ in this study Henry‟s concept of violence is very comprehensive and interesting While most of the researchers consider violence simply as a form of conflict within teacher-student and student-student relations, Henry broadened the term by suggesting that school violence is systematic and consists of both visible and interpersonal attacks (as mentioned by other authors) and the hidden crimes of „the structurally powerful in society and the symbolic social harms that deny humanity through violating human rights.‟ (Henry 2000: 18) With this definition, Henry goes on to study more subtle forms of school violence such as discrimination of teachers toward students with low academic results, hidden violence created by the social structure such as the school tracking system, and the correlation between school violence and a broader social structure Henry‟s definition is quite comprehensive and may be a very good conceptualisation to analyse the nature of schooling and school violence However,

since the primary concern of this study is juvenile delinquency rather than education, Henry‟s way of conceptualising school violence cannot be applied in this study

In sum, this study examines school violence as violent confrontation between students which happens or is started up in school Violent action of a teacher against

a student or a student against a school staff member will not be taken into account in this study Vandalism is also excluded in this study Only violent confrontation between students will be investigated

Specifically, school violence in this study refers to the following acts:

- Verbal threats without weapon

- Verbal threats with a weapon

- Destroying an opponent‟s belongings

- Fighting without a weapon

- Fighting with a weapon

5.2 Research objectives

This research intends to:

(1) Discover how high school students in Hanoi (hereinafter referred to as students) use violence to deal with their conflicts

To achieve this objective, this study aims at answering the following questions:

- How common is it for students to resort to violence?

- Who are violence users? Description of their demographic portrait (gender, age, and academic performance)

- What types of violence have been mostly engaged in by students?

- Where does the violent confrontation often occur?

- How do stakeholders, namely bystanders, school staff, parents, and police, respond to student fighting?

Beyond all, this study seeks the nature of and prominent trends in school violence in Hanoi, Vietnam: things similar to school violence in other countries, and things different, based on which linkages between a single social phenomenon as school violence and a broader socio-cultural context can be established

(2) Explain this phenomenon based on its association with the two social institutions that are most influential with regard to the students: family and school

Many social factors have been studied to explain school violence These factors range from individual factors such as student‟s academic performance and attachment to parents, to organizational factors such as the school neighbourhood and the school tracking system The association between these factors and student violence was measured and found statistically significant, suggesting that school violence can be explained from different points of view

However, to ensure the quality and feasibility of this study, I restricted the explanatory objectives of this study to two matters: how the control mechanism imposed by authority institutions, such as family and school, and how the learning mechanism operating in the school environment via peer network condition students‟ resorting to violence

Specifically, Hirschi‟s control theory was applied to explore how different dimensions of the association between students and their family and school – including attachment, involvement, engagement, and belief – affect students‟ recourse to violence Besides, the relation between student violence and external control in the form of parental monitoring and school discipline was also examined Theoretically, both internal controls (the student‟s bond to family and school) and external controls (parental monitoring and school discipline) were expected to exert

a restraining effect on student‟s engagement in school violence On the contrary, a learning process in which violence is perceived as a proper solution to deal with peer conflicts and easy access to skills and knowledge of how to engage in violence will facilitate recourse to violence, as suggested by the differential association theory Applying Sutherland‟s differential association theory along with Hirschi‟s control theory, this study seeks to explain how social control and the learning process

conditioned by students‟ differential association actually relate to students‟ resorting

to violence to deal with peer conflicts

5.3 Research subjects

High school students are the subject of this study on school violence Other studies have provided evidence that the violent behaviour among students at secondary schools (aged 11–15) are more prevalent than at other education levels (Toby 1983,

Anderson 1988, Akiba 2002, Dinkes et.al 2006) However, this study targets high

school students (15–18 year-olds) because high school students are more aware of the costs and the benefits of their choice (i.e to use violence or not) than middle or primary school students are, which allows us to better explore the social dynamics which underlie a violent confrontation as well as the effects of social factors on a student‟s resorting to violence Several talks with students before I started this study also suggested to me that while violence at the middle school level is mostly impulsive, violence at high school level is more socially conditioned

„You should study student fights among high school students, they are more interesting Yes, middle school students fight more frequently than do high school students However, fights among high school students are more organized Middle students fight if they dislike each other, without any consideration But high school students tend to calculate well before initiating

a fight They even investigate their antagonist‟s record If they find that, „Well, her mother is Ms X, her father is Mr Y If I beat her then the consequences may be this or that…,‟ then they may give up their plan to fight Middle school students will not do so They beat the one they hate, regardless of the

consequence Therefore, the number of fights among high school students is much lower than among middle school students; however, the consequences of high school students‟ fighting are usually more serious They often fight in groups, not solitarily as middle school students do.‟ (Girl, grade 12, academic performance: good)

5.4 Timelines for collecting data and research sites

All of my research sites – S1, S2, and S3 – are located in inner Hanoi

The process of collecting data for this research took place in two somewhat separate phases

In phase 1, I conducted an eight-month period of fieldwork at S3, which is the best site to develop initial understanding of school violence, from September 2009 to April 2010

In phase 2, I conducted a survey at three schools, with the participation of a total of

560 students; and interviewed a number of students and teachers from S1 and S2

Details on the fieldwork sites and how data was collected are presented in the next chapter (Chapter 2: Methodology and Applied Research Methods)

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY AND APPLIED RESEARCH METHODS

This chapter consists of three main parts The first provides a brief discussion on common methodological approaches to the study of school violence and explains why a mixed-method approach was applied in this study The second describes the employment of the key specific research methods, including field observation, survey taking, and in-depth interviews The development of case stories gathered in the course of field observation, which is commonly used throughout this study to provide a detailed illustration for analysis, is also presented in this part Lastly, some ethical issues and possible risks when conducting fieldwork in schools will be briefly discussed

1 Methodological approach

The quantitative approach has been commonly applied to examine and analyse school violence in many countries (such as in Olweus 1993, Eitle and Eitle 2003,

Ellickson and McGuigan 2004, Dinkes et.al 2006; Eisenbraun 2007) However,

some researchers, such as Bessant (1993), have also advocated phenomenological and ethnographical approaches in order to provide a deeper understanding of school violence According to Bessant (1993: 3), quantitative methods aim at finding causal patterns explaining school violence; however, they often fail: „Very little of this

model of research has significant explanatory power capable of saying why it is that

people knife each other, thieve, or vandalise Furthermore, many of those that are seen to be causal categories do not commit acts of violence or crime as it is predicted they will Many who do commit the violence and/or crime do not fit the causal categories Many, who do fit the background categories and later committed

the predicted crime, go for long stretches without committing the crimes to which the theory directs them.‟

After reviewing the existing literature on school violence, it appears to me that a mixed-method approach was more appropriate than a typically quantitative or qualitative approach In the qualitative approach, the description and analysis of school violence is heavily based on a personal viewpoint, and bias, memory shortage and the like may heavily affect the reliability of information For example, 71% of people in America believe that school shooting is very likely to occur in their community, as reported by Jim Larson (2006) However, school violence is actually not as serious as people often think Yes, schools are sometimes the scene of horrific violent attacks, but most of the offenses occurring in school are non-violent (Larson 2006; Thompkins 2000) People often dramatise the seriousness of school violence because they are seriously affected by the intensive coverage given by mass media

to some extreme cases of school violence (Thompkin 2000) Hence, if we base ourselves on a qualitative approach alone, the portrait of school violence may be distorted by what Thompkin (2000) called „a culture of fear‟

On the other hand, if we base ourselves only on quantitative methods, it may be difficult to understand the nature of the phenomenon For example, it is reported in the TIMSS survey (conducted in 37 countries) that only 10% of Israeli teachers claimed that the threat of student violence limited their teaching, while 65% of

Korean teachers claimed it did (Akiba et.al 2001) What accounts for this big

difference? Readers, when seeing this difference, may think that school violence in Korea is much more serious than in Israel In fact, the rate of violent victimisation in school in Korea and in Israel is quite equal, and violent student victimisation in

Korea is even somewhat less prevalent than in Israel (31% and 34% respectively), as reported by Akiba and her colleagues (2001) Why? It appears here that numbers alone are not enough to explain the phenomenon, and a better understanding of the context which generates such statistics is needed

Accordingly, this study applied a mixed-method approach, with the hope that it would get the best of each methodological approach to draw a complete picture of school violence While the quantitative method, namely a questionnaire survey, helped produce a reliable statistical description of the phenomenon and the associations between it and its predictors, structured in-depth interviews were used

to obtain insight on the phenomenon from stakeholder‟s point of view

In addition, participant observation at the school with high rate of school violence (S3) is employed as a powerful tool to discover the operation of school violence as a social phenomenon in relation to its social environment This method is also used to crosscheck information As Michael Agar (1996) pointed out, the „informant may also have their own personal motives and may thus choose to leave out or stress certain aspects‟ (cited in Horton 2011: 34); information gathered in an interview only may be distorted Besides, information collected via a one-off conversation such as an interview may be also distorted by the passing feelings of the informant For example, if a student has just been scolded by his teacher before the interview, he may make disparaging comments about her Observation of participants was then employed to both explore the dynamics of school violence within its breeding environment and crosscheck the reliability of the information

2 Research Methods

First of all, it should be noted that the real names of participants and of the schools

in this study are changed to protect the privacy of those involved

The second important note is that the names given to the participating schools, namely the S1, S2, and S3, are applied with regard to only two aspects: student academic performance and the rate of school violence S1 was the name given to the school wherein student academic performance was high and the rate of student violence low; the name S3 was assigned to the school with low student academic performance and a high rate of violence, and S2 was labelled to the school whose academic performance and rate of school violence are in-between S1 and S3

Fieldwork was started in September 2009 and ended in April 2010 During the last few months of fieldwork, I conducted in-depth interviews with students, parents, teachers, and local people The survey was taken at S1 on 4th October; at S2 on 24thOctober; and at S3 on 13th November 2011

2.1 Participant observation

Participant observation was conducted at S3 over eight months, from September

2009 to April 2010 There were two reasons for choosing this school as the only site for field observation Firstly, I want to create an identity as an insider and establish a good rapport with people in different positions at the school (i.e teachers, students, administrative staff, school superintendent, and school management board) and thus

be in a position to approach the matter of student violence from different points of

view This required an enormous amount of time and energy, so I decided to confine this aspect to only one school

In addition, the key purpose of field observation was to gain insight into the phenomenon of school violence: what sparks it, what fans it, how patterns of violence spread among students, how people respond to student violence and how these responses promote or restrain the spread of violence Accordingly, S3 was the best choice as an observation platform

Hereinafter, I will provide a brief description of the research site and then a description and an explanation of how the participants were observed, including getting access to the school, assuming my role, and making observations Lastly, I will introduce how case stories were developed over the course of fieldwork

The research site (S3)

This school is located in a quiet neighbourhood Around it there are small offices, some shops selling office supplies, and a military barracks As is true of many other high schools in Hanoi, this school is surrounded by high brick walls, so people are unable to observe the school from outside and students cannot get in and out of school except through the main gate As at other schools, a small building for school security guards is located next to the school gate

The school playground, about 100m2, is relatively square, surrounded by three storey buildings arranged in a U-shape Two buildings consist of classrooms, and the other is for administrative use, including the offices of the school management

four-board On the other side of school playground there is a small canteen Generally, it

is quite easy to observe the goings-on of the whole school from any position

The school is quite small There is also no room for sports or other extra-curricular activities During recess, students have only two options: stay in their classroom or

go out into the school grounds There is a small library not very well stocked Moreover teachers sometimes congregate there, so students hardly visit their library

There is a small canteen where students and teachers can buy snacks, drinks, instant noodles, and some basic stationery items The canteen has a small room where things are sold and an open-air area with small tables and chairs for students Since the canteen is located next to the school grounds and opposite the administration building, everything the students do is exposed to public observation when they are

at the canteen

School runs from 7:00 a.m to 11:30 a.m., Monday to Saturday There are normally five classes a day except for Wednesday when there are only four classes The break between classes is 5 minutes, but the third break lasts 10 minutes The last class on Saturday is not for study but for a weekly summarisation of the class‟ activities Homeroom teachers summarise all the work covered, admonish the students if incidents of misconduct occurred, and assign work for the next week

As in other high schools, the management board of this school consists of three members, a headmaster and two vice headmasters There are 57 staff members on the site, of which 42 are teachers Most teachers are supposed to be homeroom teachers for one class, something many of them are unwilling to do, partly because the additional allowance for a homeroom teacher is quite low (VND200,000 per

month, equal to US$9.00) while this job involves a lot of activities and responsibility Besides, if the class for which they are responsible has to discipline students for breaking school regulations such as coming late or not wearing the school uniform on Monday, the homeroom teacher‟s achievement profile and bonus may be affected

As a support for homeroom teachers, each class has a monitoring team including one class monitor and three assistant monitors Besides the monitoring team, each class has a Ho Chi Minh Youth League Leader Team consisting of three student members, who are mainly responsible for mobilising and organising extracurricular activities Members of both the monitoring and youth union team are prominent students in the class, selected annually by vote

As in other high schools, this school has four security guards responsible for such things as checking people going in and out of the school Besides, there is a superintendent who takes care of school discipline in general The superintendent is assigned to observe discipline matters of both students and teachers, and reports directly to the school management board The school superintendent has his own office with its face to the school gate and back to the school grounds, which isolates

it somewhat from the school Students that violate school rules are sent to his office and the case is handled either by the student‟s homeroom teacher or by the school superintendent Parents of students in trouble are called to meet the student‟s homeroom teacher in this office I was allowed to work in this office during my fieldwork

In general, the organisation of this school is quite similar to that of other high schools in inner Hanoi The school infrastructure, although not sufficient, is not too bad compared to the average The quality of the teaching staff, as claimed by the

school headmaster, is slightly higher than the average

Getting access

Getting inside governmental agencies in general and schools in particular in Hanoi is not easy, which is a common problem for research in Vietnam, as many other researchers such as Hy Van Luong (2006), Helle Rydstrom (1998, 2003), Salemink (2003), Horton (2011) have pointed out (Horton 2011) Vietnamese schools, at least

in Hanoi, are normally quite closed and especially careful not to open their internal transactions and information to external scrutiny

To successfully get access to the school (after some tries in vain), I obtained a personal recommendation from a former director of my target school in addition to

an official recommendation from the Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities where I am on the permanent staff Thanks to these recommendations, the school headmaster allowed me to work for the school as a school worker and concurrently an individual researcher on a voluntary basis

On the Monday9 of the week I started working at the school, the teacher responsible for Youth Union Activities, under the Headmaster‟s permission, introduced me to the whole students of the school after summarizing the school‟s activities in the last week I was then allowed to say salute to the students and introduce myself, my

9

Every Monday in the first school hour, all of students and teachers gather on school playground to salute the National Flag and hear the summation of the last week This session is then ended with a cultural performance by students on a turnover basis My introduction was made after the summation and before student cultural performance

research on school violence, and my counselling services at their school Before that introduction to the students at S3, I introduced myself to the whole school staff in a monthly staff meeting with the support of the Vice Headmaster

Taking a role

How to position myself in the school was my greatest concern before conducting my fieldwork I needed to be an insider so that students and teachers could act in my presence as freely and naturally as if I was no stranger there However, I also needed

to appear towards the students as not being one of the teachers and „not-one-of-us‟ towards the teachers, so they would consider me as an objective agent

Accordingly, I chose to play the role of a school employee, providing counselling to students in matters such as higher education, career orientation, peer relationships, skills to avoid becoming overwhelmed at exam time, parent-child relationships, and school disciplinary matters

During the first few weeks after I officially introduced myself to the students, no one wanted to try my service So I decided to not wait for potential „clients;‟ instead, I looked for them I attended a monthly teachers meeting, and with the headmaster‟s permission, I asked homeroom teachers to help me identify students who might need

my support I gave each of them a small slip and asked them to write down the names of the students and outline concretely the troubles the students were facing This really worked All of the teachers filled out slips and gave them back to me Some homeroom teachers even contacted me after the meeting to ask me to help them handle troubles facing their students The majority of my „clients‟ were found and approached this way

Since then, I worked with homeroom teachers to handle student matters, most of which involved weakness in study, laziness, or discipline Sometimes I visited a student‟s home with his/her homeroom teacher to have a talk with the student and parents about school-related problems However, I usually worked with the students

in school

Besides the counselling, in order to get more familiar with the students, I also held some workshops for them These workshops were about topics of concern to them, such as career orientation after high school, study experiences in university, reproductive health, and peer relationships When I was organising the first workshop, some teachers offered me to send their students to the workshop to make sure that at least some would attend I explained to them that I wanted the attendance

of students to be voluntary, but they still asked their class monitors to bring some students to the workshop This turned out to be a great help, since the first workshop attracted only a few volunteer attendees However, the number of volunteer attendees in the next ones increased remarkably And the attendees seemed quite satisfied with the workshop

In addition, I also voluntarily took part in Ho Chi Minh Youth League activities, particularly organising them This kind of involvement was quite helpful for me to establish a good rapport with the students

Given my roles as both researcher and school social worker, I tried to make my own characteristics and socio-economic background unnoticeable, and make my appearance earnest and simple At first, both students and teachers kept a distance to

me I believe because I was a stranger to them rather than because I was a

researcher Gradually, when I get more involved in school extra-curriculum activities, they became more open Some of them, both students and teachers, even took the initiative to make friend with me, and visited my office during school breaks just to have some chat

Even though being school social worker played a very important role to my research (it helped me to approach students and teachers and gained their trust, and develop

my understanding of the internal dynamics of the school), undertaking this role rarely overlapped with undertaking my role as a researcher As a school social worker, most of my jobs were to serve teachers‟ or students‟ demand As a researcher, what I did (e.g what I observed or asked) were strictly based on my research objectives, and before interviewing anyone (student, teachers, or parents) for my research, I always let them know and asked their permission

Making observations

I worked in the superintendent‟s office most of the time However, during breaks between classes, I often went out to visit the teacher‟s room, go to the canteen, or sit

on a bench in the playground Sometime I joined in a conversation between students

or teachers Sometimes I brought my laptop/notebook to work Thanks to the roles I undertook, students and teachers came to consider me as an insider and no longer took notice of my presence When they found that I wanted to work rather than talk with them, they just carried on their conversations as if I were not there

It was most advantageous for my observation to have a seat in the superintendent‟s office, which was the stage for many sessions with students who had violated school regulations, as well as meetings between homeroom teachers and parents of

students During such meetings, I usually tried to make myself invisible to the people involved by concentrating on my work Students and teachers generally did not pay heed to my presence Parents initially seemed quite hesitant because I was there, but when the teachers paid no attention to my presence, they gradually accepted it too

I kept a field diary Sometimes, I checked with certain students and teachers about what I observed to see if my observations actually captured the reality or if an event was an exceptional case that I happened to observe For example, I once saw a student bringing a knife to school I then asked around to see if bringing a knife to school was a common thing or not When most of the students confirmed that it was not uncommon, and they also saw a student bringing a knife to school, I then could remark that truly some students did bring knives to school

Examples of observation can be found in Case 3 and Case 4

2.2 Semi-structured interviews

I employed the semi-structured interview method in this study to explore how different stakeholders perceived the same matter, namely school violence, and how the experience of the interviewees may differ in certain aspects, such as school life, family life and peer relationships

I started to conduct my first interviews quite early, within the second month after starting to work at the school However, I found that the way my interviewees – at that time mostly school staff – answered the questions was not very convincing Everything seemed too stereotyped to be true Hence, I decided to interview them

again in the second semester, after I had built up a better rapport with them Interestingly, the answers this time turned out quite different For example, when I first interviewed the superintendent (a few weeks after I started working at the

school), he asserted that school violence used to be very prevalent in his school

some years ago, but now students were rarely involved in fights, even though they were still very naughty He explained that this change was due to a stricter disciplinary policy imposed by the former headmaster who decreed that any student involved in fighting would be immediately expelled from school Since fighters were expelled and potential fighters dared not risk being expelled, the rate of student

violence in his school had dramatically dropped This information, frankly, made me

sad for days, worrying that I had not chosen a good research site

However, when I interviewed him again three months late, he told me that student

fights were quite common in our school and he even shared with me his experience

handling on-going fights

It was much easier for me to interview students This may have been partly because

of my special position in the school I was on the same level as the teachers, so almost all of the students I asked to take part in my study accepted my invitation even though some of them at first appeared somewhat reluctant However, my job in school never put me at odds with the students as sometimes happens between student and teacher, so students usually felt at ease talking with me

In total, I interviewed 28 students, five teachers including the school headmaster, three parents, one school superintendent, and one local person