Exactly. Punching someone in the face in high school is a good way to get shot, stabbed, poisoned, or run over.

HN excels in American exceptionalism.

Large portions of globe functions with fights at school that don't escalate to death or injury with a weapon.

My problem with current fights in canada, where school shooters exist but are rare, is they seem largely gang related (read business related) which doesnt have a chance of providing the right lesson because the lesson from a business fight is the same lesson from bullying fights: come back with a bigger weapon to right this injustice. The lesson we are looking for requires the kid know the social norms roughly and be in a testing situation that crosses the line, is corrected with a mild amount of violence from the other kid but leaves the situation such that they could repair the friendship in the future with the right words and realizations. This happened at least five times in my youth and atleast two escalated to a bit of violence and it was informative. I dont see it happening at all in my kids or my neices and nephews youths and that c(ncerns me a bit.

I'm 60+, Australian, and (eventually) went to a high school with a lot of physicality, mixed groups, and seething undercurrents - a mining town with global migrant workers on traditional indigenous land.

We had fights, they could be brutal, the social mechanics allowed a needle to be threaded which myself and a number of others largely managed to do; stand your ground, don't engage physically, don't run .. if someone calls you out and starts smack talking, don't rise, just reply and confound. If they take a swing dodge it and don't respond, if it lands, suck it up and don't respond - in the rung climbing of high school and elsewhere this makes the other look a fool.

There were lessons learned from that and I can still my grandchildren benefitting from phyical encounters (not just fights, engagement with big waves, steep hills, solid animals, bicycles and motorbikes) that can hurt but largely don't kill them.