Why is school violence so terrible despite all the well-behaved students?

There have been many stories of school violence that have occurred recently. In the mildest cases, gangs insulted and boycotted friends, then ambushed and fought, and posted clips online. Many cases have caused serious consequences, even deaths, and the police had to intervene, such as the case of an 8th grade student at Trung Mau Secondary School (Hanoi) who was kicked and stomped in the face many times by a female classmate, or the case of LVK (an 11th grade student of the continuing education system at Thap Muoi High School) who was restrained and taken away by a group of young men as soon as he left the school gate. After that, the group used their hands, helmets and sharp objects to injure K. Then, an 11th grade male student at Lang Chanh High School (Thanh Hoa) was beaten in the head with an iron rod by a fellow student, causing a traumatic brain injury and had to be taken to the hospital for emergency treatment.

Most recently, there was a case of a 10th grade female student in Nghe An who committed suicide due to suspected violence. The incident is being investigated by the police and the school. It can be seen that the consequences of many recent school violence cases are very serious, with the nature of the cases becoming increasingly serious. According to recent data from the Ministry of Education and Training, each year nationwide, nearly 1,600 cases of students fighting inside and outside of school occur. On average, there are about 5 cases of violence per day. For every 11,000 students, one is forced to drop out of school due to school violence.

There are many reasons to explain the increasing school violence, but one reason that is clear to everyone is that the era of strong development of information technology, besides the great benefits, also has many negative consequences, especially for children.

Any child from secondary school, even younger, is equipped with a smartphone by their family, this is an inevitable need for children to contact their family when most children now have to be picked up and dropped off at school by their parents. Then homework, discussions with teachers, and classmates about studying also require smartphones. Especially in the recent long period of time due to the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, having to study online, the use of smartphones has become even more necessary. With a phone and an internet connection, many children can easily access both negative and positive content online.

Harmful information and deviant behavior online, especially on TikTok, greatly affect children - an age group that likes to express themselves and does not yet understand the law. Therefore, when conflicts arise, many children bring what they have seen online to "practice" with friends and people around them.

The cycle of life and education today also makes children become emotionally dry and lack of sharing, not knowing how to handle situations that happen around them. Almost every child of school age has to spin dizzyingly with a dense study schedule, studying all day at school, studying with tutors or going to extra classes in the evening, even having to take advantage of meal and sleep times. With such a cycle, it is difficult for them to have time to participate in fun activities or share their problems, joys and sorrows with friends, parents and relatives.

Therefore, when things go wrong, children will be confused about how to handle it, not knowing who to ask for help or share with, and will find their own solutions, sometimes in negative, aggressive ways such as fighting or committing suicide.

But after all the right and wrong behaviors of children, adults still need to recognize whether they have loved their children properly?

First of all, for a child of school age, teachers are always exemplary role models for them to follow. Every word and action of teachers is a guideline for children. But in reality, many sad incidents and behaviors occur in schools, making children and society disappointed.

In many schools today, in order to compete with the disease of achievements and titles for the school, the class and the teachers themselves, they only focus on "teaching words" and reviewing to achieve high results in exams and scores. Teaching social skills to students is almost forgotten, or is only limited to 1-2 periods of Civic Education each week, or class time but is only used to praise students with good achievements and criticize individual students.

In many classrooms, there is almost no sharing between teachers and students, with special circumstances, let alone understanding the psychology of each student. Not to mention, in some places, teachers have prejudices about individual students who are different, leading to the collusion of friends and the whole class. There have even been cases where teachers encourage and force other students to follow their "orders" towards students who are considered naughty or disobedient, such as forcing the whole class to slap their friends, forcing students to drink water used to clean the blackboard... have happened.

But the strange thing is that according to the year-end performance report, almost every school and class has very few students with good conduct (only a few percent), average or poor conduct is rare, the rest have good or excellent conduct, but the number of school violence cases has not decreased, and even increased in severity.

Along with that, in many families, the connection and sharing between parents and children is increasingly loose due to objective and subjective reasons. The reason is the lack of time, children are busy with school schedules and extra classes even on weekends, while parents are also busy all day with work and many other financial worries. Therefore, the joys and sorrows of children in class and on the street do not have time to share with their parents.

Furthermore, many parents today place too much importance on accumulating knowledge and forget to nurture their children's mental health. We are happy when our children show off their high scores and good achievements, and get angry and even beat them when their results are poor and they lose to their friends. And in the minds of many people, parents have worked hard to earn money to provide for their children, so the children's duty is to study to get good results, so that their parents can be proud.

But few people think that children also have a lot of sadness, loneliness and confusion, sometimes despair, not knowing who to share and ask for help when things happen that are terrible to them.

Let's ask, we adults, when we have enough experience and courage, if we are boycotted by our colleagues, how miserable and tired will we be? Then how scared will a young child, whose mental health is not yet stable, be when faced with a similar incident?

How many of us really encourage our children to help friends in difficult circumstances, or give money to beggars on the street? Perhaps because of this, children’s acts of kindness and compassion do not have the opportunity to be nurtured and developed, and become rare in society.

We often consider children's problems as small, childish matters and do not share with them and find solutions, then one day painful consequences will be inevitable. Therefore, after school violence incidents, we need to seriously look back at ourselves and need to have real changes, changes in the way we love children.

Only then will children realize that they really need adults and dare to share the problems they face. And only then can we save our children from the painful consequences of school violence.

According to VOV