This part is to discover in what situation or for what reason students resort to violence. While student violence in the sampled schools in Hanoi appears quite rampant and serious, survey data shows that it mostly starts out with a trivial conflict, as shown in Figure 9.
16 VND15,000 = S$0.90.
Figure 9: Percentages of students reporting the conflicts that led to their most recent clash17
5.1%
11.4%
16.6%
27.4%
9.7%
9.1%
4.6%
30.3%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Bullying Love affair Divergence on way of living Sport Teasing, telling bad stories Earlier conflict Friend's conflict Study, exams
In general, various reasons underlie a violent confrontation between high school students. Bullying is the most common reason cited by students to explain their violent confrontation; however, it accounts for only 30.3% of violent incidents. This may be because bullying is not as common in high schools as in middle schools.
„Fight mostly results from other conflicts rather than bullying. Bullying is less likely to happen in high schools [than in middle schools].‟ (Girl, grade 12, class monitor, academic performance: good)
Teasing or bad-mouthing is also a common spark for violence, accounting for 27.4%
of the most recent violence cases in which survey respondents were involved. While teasing mostly occurs among boys, bad-mouthing mainly happens among girls, as I observed over the course of my fieldwork.
There is an important finding that up to 11.4% of violent confrontations that survey respondents were recently involved in were sparked by their friend‟s conflict, showing that students engaged in these confrontations in order to support their
17 Other reasons account for 9.1% of reported violent clashes.
friends, not because they disliked or disagreed with the one they fought against.
During my fieldwork, I also learnt about some cases where the fighters did not even know each other. Their friend called them to give him/her a hand in a violent confrontation with his/her opponent(s), so they came, even though they did not necessarily know the opponent. The murder near the Nguyen Trai High School entrance gate in 200918 is an example. Two school girls had a conflict with each other, so they asked their friends to stay by their side, and their friends brought in other friends. The two sides set up a meeting to resolve the conflict; however, the two conflicting students stayed at home that day. Because their „supporters‟ did not know who their opponents were, they accidentally attacked the wrong students, which caused an innocent student to die and another to be injured.
Even though the rate of fights for friends is not really high, it indicates the existence of a network of violence among high school students in Hanoi – the peer network on which a student can rely when s/he needs support to win a fight against someone.
The danger of this network is that it makes resorting to violence feasible by reducing the feeling of guilt and increasing the chance of successful revenge.
Next to the „friend‟s conflict,‟ conflicts sparked by sports activities account for only 9.7% of the violent incidents among high school students in the research sites. This kind of conflict mostly happens among boys. Among those involved in violent clashes, only 9.1% of respondents quoted „divergence in lifestyle‟ as triggering their recent clash. This rate is much lower than my expectation, since most of my interviewees – both students and teachers – often gave this reason to explain student
18 Source: http://giadinh.net.vn/20091025025357373p0c1005/2-sinh-vien-bi-chem-nham-truoc-cong- truong-thpt-nguyen-trai-ha-noi.htm
violence. High school students, especially girls, often pay much attention to the appearance of other persons: their looks, their dress, their hair style, and even the way they walk and talk. They may feel annoyed at someone whose fashion or behaviour is unpleasant to their eyes. This is not necessarily because of jealousy, but simply because of the difference between them.
However, it is undeniable that jealousy is present in many conflicts even though it was not clearly named, especially in conflicts among high school girls.
„There are many things over which they [girls] may have a conflict with each other. „She is more beautiful than me,‟ „her academic results are higher than mine,‟ etc. In general if someone has something better than theirs, they may hate that one. Or, if two ill-natured girls meet each other they will hate each other. Besides, they [school girls] often hate those who are slow. Or, „I dress smartly, that girl dresses so drably, but that clod studies better than me,‟ and then that „cloddish‟ girl will be hated.
When they hate other girls for such reasons, what do they often do?
„Usually they treat these girls as normal, but they will bad-mouth them behind their backs. That is in fact a good thing in this society, because if they showed overt hatred they will be beaten up someday and [turning to her friend named My to joke] being like My is actually fortunate. Her family is not wealthy, making no one jealous. My‟s academic results are average, and her face is not beautiful, so no one pays attention to her or hates her [then the two girls laugh].‟ (Girl, grade 11, academic performance: good)
Study is another matter that may give rise to conflict among students. The conflict may emerge from jealousy or competition among those who are conscious of their academic performance, or simply because a good student refuses to let another student copy his/her answers during an examination.
„Students nowadays are very competitive. They compete to get the teacher‟s attention, to get higher marks. They also compete for many other things. For example, if you study well, then many will make friends with you. Good students have many peers around them. But do they really like you? No, they just want you to help them such as let them copy your assignment or your exam paper. If you don‟t, they‟ll accuse you of being arrogant and then tell bad stories about you. Sometimes you may be sworn at, or they will harp on something so that you can‟t concentrate in your examination.‟ (Girl, class monitor, grade 11, academic performance: Good)
In summary, the reasons for students to resort to violence come from different sources, indicating that violence has various meanings to them. To some ones or in some situations, violence is just a means to achieve a goal (such as to force a classmate to help, even illegally, in examinations; or to release an impulsive anger;
or to revenge). To some other ones or in other situations, violence means power, and resort to violence is to assert the power of themselves over someone. This meaning is especially true for those who use violence to bully other student and those who use violence to stop bullying. This meaning also underlies the attacks against those who appear challenging to the attackers by the way they dress or look at the attackers. Remarkably, friendship is one of popular meanings of violence to students. Students believe that true friends have to be beside each other especially in
difficult times, so if you are my friend, and if I have a conflict with other student, you are expected to give me your hand when I fight against that guy. This meaning is quite specific, because studies on school violence in other countries have shown that their high school students mainly resort violence for their own conflict, and hence student violence confrontations are mostly one-on-one fight between the two having conflict. Why the Vietnamese students at the research sites are so different? I believe this is because of a cultural origin: the Vietnamese has a great collective sense, therefore they can take part in a fight against someone not because of having conflict with him/her, but just for their friend who has conflict with him/her, or because their group expect them to do so for someone in group.
The finding of this study differs from DeRosier‟s who found that in the majority of student violence incidents, the attackers „had experienced chronic, severe rejection and bullying by peers and their primary motivation for violence was revenge.‟
(DeRosier 2007: 259) This study suggests that student violence in Hanoi mostly starts with a trivial conflict rather than serious rejection or bullying. This difference, in turn, suggests that school violence in sampled high schools in Hanoi is more serious and rampant than as found in DeRosier‟s study. Besides, violence seems not to be a specific solution for a specific conflict; rather, it appears to be a popular tool for various kinds of peer conflict among students in the three sampled high schools Hanoi.