In the US where school violence is of great concern, school principals and disciplinarians reported that in 1996 and 1997, for every 1,000 public school students, there were only 10 incidents of offence. Particularly, 9.5 out of these 10 incidents were less serious or non-violent offences. The remaining 0.5 covered all types of serious offences, including robberies, physical attacks, fighting with a weapon, murder, and so on (Thompkins 2000: 57). Another study shows that most of the students consider pushing, teasing, and the like as a „physical attack‟ (Dinkes et.al. 2006). Researchers commonly conclude that school violence in the US is in fact far less serious than what people think.
In addition, it should also be noted that existing studies of school violence often examined student victimisation (violent incidents of which students are victim) rather than student violence (violent incidents wherein students are victims and/or perpetrators). In an episode of student victimisation, the perpetrators may be intruders who are more likely to commit serious violence against students than students may be against their peers. As Toby (1983) showed, strangers accounted for a great proportion of perpetrators of serious violent offences (94% for rape and 81%
for robbery) in US schools. He also found that students generally tended to engage in simple assaults rather than serious, face-to-face violent offenses. This finding is
consistent with those of many other studies on school bullying in America and in Europe, that bullying is the most common violent offense within the school grounds (Olweus 1993, Thompkins 2000, Swearer and Doll 2001, and Espelage and Asidao 2001).
Zimring (1998) also found that „the use of guns and knives in adolescent fights is lower than for young adults in reported violent assaults. This seems to be the major difference between the mid-teens and the mid-20s‟ (p. 28). This finding hence helps confirm that school violence in the US usually are trivial attacks rather than serious violent offences.
Meanwhile, I found over the course of my fieldwork at S3 that violent conducts committed by students in my research sites were quite serious in that many of them led to serious consequences to its targets as well as their family. They resulted in their target‟s psychological fear and stress, and/or serious physical pains so that their target needed medical care or even hospitalization as shown in part 3 of this chapter.
Besides, the family of those who were attacked or verbally threatened to be attacked was also affected: they had to arrange someone, normally the father or the mother, to bring their boy/girl to school and pick he/she up after school to protect him/her, which caused a lot of inconvenience for them for months.
Even though these verbal or physical attacks result in pain and disorder for individuals and families, not every violent conducts as to the conceptualization in this study is violent as to the understanding of students themselves. Humiliation and swearing, for example, for many students are not violent. They are just some bad words. Slapping and hitting are not violence, they are just negligible clash. Students
at S3 tend to count only attacks that result in bleeding as violence, and the other kinds are just negligible clash.
However, students at S1 tend to have a broader definition of violence. To them, any attack that results in the feeling of hurt and pain is violence, including humiliation and swearing. Students at S2, otherwise, often count only physical attack as violence.
Following is the rate of each violent conducts according to the conceptualization of this study that appeared in the most recent confrontation that students of S1, S2, and S2 involved in.
Figure 8: Percentage of students reporting the violent conduct(s) presented in their most recent clash
69.7%
6.3% 10.3%
37.7%
7.4%
1.1%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Swearing, name-calling
Belongings destroyed
Verbal threats Fight without weapons
Fight with weapons
Other
As shown in Figure 8, verbal violence (i.e. swearing, name-calling, and humiliating) is the most common of the different types of student violence. However, it should be noted that not every respondent considers it as „violence,‟ so the rate of 69.7%
possibly understates the reality. It is probably because this type of violence is so
common that some respondents ignored its existence. In fact, one respondent said that she hardly witnessed this kind of violence, but when the interviewer gave examples of some foul swear words and asked if she had ever heard them from her peers, she said she heard these words daily.
„Now these manners of speaking [swearing and calling down] are very common among 9x [or 9Xers],15 you know. It sometimes cannot be considered as swearing or calling down. If you listen to conversations among the 9Xers, you‟ll see these words are used frequently. Yes, sometimes it is [humiliating]. But it is used so much among 9Xers that what may be a call- down for you may not be for us because we get used to it and see it as normal manner of speaking.‟ (Girl, grade 11, academic performance:
average)
Beside name-calling and swearing, belongings such as book bags and clothing are sometimes intentionally destroyed during student fights. This appeared in 6.3% of the most recent student violent incidents reported in the questionnaire survey. This rate is quite low, possibly because it is somewhat exclusive to girl fights.
Use of a weapon was reported in 7.4% of student fights. Weapon used in student fights ranges from contingent things grabbed nearby (such as a bottle or a metal bar) to lethal weapons (such as a knife or sword). It is unspecified in the quantitative data that a lethal weapon was present in exactly what percentage of student fights.
However, most of students interviewed in-depth asserted that lethal weapons were used very commonly in student fights.
15 9x: A term used to refer those who born in the 1990s. It is common in Vietnam to thus differentiate generations born in 1970s (7x), 1980s (8x), and 1990s (9x).
„Many [students] now even used a tong or phong to fight. Do you know what it is? A tong is a very long sharp knife. A tong can cut a person‟s arm off. It‟s very sharp. But a phong is even more dangerous. A phong is the knife used to stick a pig. A tong is only used to cut. But a phong can be used to stab. If one stabs with a phong, then twists it in the victim‟s body, that one will surely die.
Many students bring a tong or a phong to school. I heard that a student even had a gun. No, I didn‟t see the gun myself. I saw students carrying a tong or a phong, but not a gun. I just heard so. But it‟s likely true. You know, now it is very easy to buy a gun. A lot of guns are sold cheap at the Vietnam–China border. Anyone can buy one, as long as you have the money.‟ (Boy, grade 12, academic performance: good)