Pugilism

I confess that I have only been in one actual fight during adolescence. It was one I tried to avoid, but when (no pun intended) push came to shove, there was no escape. As it turned out, my opponent ended up tripping and cutting his lip, and that was the end of that.

Today, for some oddball reason, students who know each other ended up in a fight in the business technology classroom. Why it happened is still a matter of rumor and multiple eyewitnesses seeing different things, but the drama was quite intense.

Because it took place in a room full of computers, our tech estimates that there could be about $8,000 worth of damage. That's quite a fight. And a disaster. I have no doubt that my father's stories about fights in his high school are accurate. And, I saw a minor stabbing in my own rural high school, where little ever happened. It isn't the fighting that has exactly changed and escalated in the last generation, but the quantity and quality.

Fights seem to break out over the most mundane of comments and even misunderstandings. The tolerance level seems to have taken a turn southward and never recovered. "Mugging" me, that is staring at me the wrong way, or what I think is the wrong way, is an invitation to fists. And the resort to weapons doesn't seem to be far behind.

While this kind of out-of-control behavior, rolling over tables of computers and reeking havoc, is bizarre to me, it does seem to be within the context of our social and cultural expectations. There isn't any question that we are saturated daily with violence and the resort to violence. Americans don't honor peacemaking or the heroism of walking away confidently. The John Wayne syndrome, inherited by Dirty Harry and perpetuated by street culture is the American way. How can schools win that one?