If you’ve gone to Jacksonville High School for at least a year, it’s almost guaranteed that you have seen a student fight in the hallway or cafeteria. As of November 2, JHS has had three fights occur during the school year. For the 2011-2012 school year, up until November 2, we also had only three fights.
Since Officer Melbourne started working at JHS in 2000, he says the number of school fights has gone down. Mr. Grounds said that in the past four years, he believes that the decrease in fights and physical aggression has been the effect of the PBIS committee and their incentives. They have helped to keep fighting from going out of proportion.
Principal McGiles says he is against fights. “Fights are never the answer for problems. Students need proper channels to fix disputes. They should talk to adults to resolve problems.”
Assistant Principal Mrs. Dillard says, “Fights happen at school when they want it to be broken up. The students want an audience. The adults at JHS are charged with the responsibility to break up the fights. The students get involved in fights to match an action with a similar reaction.”
Back in 2001, a US survey revealed that 33% of high school students had been in a fight in the past year. And of that 33%, only 12.5% of students said that fight was on school property. 43% of the male students surveyed said they had been in a fight in the past year, as did 24% of girls.
Recently, when junior and senior high school students around the world were asked what the cause of the most recent fight they had seen was, 54% of them said someone insulted someone else or treated them disrespectfully.
Male teenagers are much more likely to fight than females. Younger teens are more likely to fight than older teens. In a recent worldwide survey, over 40% of 9th graders said they were involved in a fight during the past year, while only 30% of 12th graders had.