About 1,600 physical confrontations between students in various parts of Vietnam have been recorded over the past seven years, according to a report by the education ministry.
The Ministry of Education and Training, in coordination with the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences, organized a conference on Wednesday to address concerns over the apparent decline in moral turpitude of Vietnamese students in recent years.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training, nearly 1,600 fights broke out between students since the beginning of the 2009 school year, many of which were categorized as criminal violations.
The severity of the violence also increased over time at an alarming rate, the ministry said, adding that many of the incidents involved weapons, including knives, machetes, and even homemade guns.
The majority of confrontations arose from childish reasons.
Another concern addressed at the conference was the prevalence of violent school videos finding their way onto social media.
In one case, several students filmed their gang attack on one victim and later published the videos online.
In a more recent case, footage depicting two schoolgirls from the north-central province of Nghe An being attacked by a group of female students from another school was uploaded to Facebook on October 4.
The attackers only left the scene after one of the victims was bleeding, sparking immense concern from the public over the responsibility of the local education sector.
Violence does not seem to be the only issue of morality affecting teens. Another report by the Ministry of Health showed teenage girls make up around 120,000 of the country’s annual 1.4 million abortion cases.
According to Tu Du, the biggest maternity hospital in southern Vietnam, about 400 female patients between the ages of 11 and 18 come to the hospital annually to terminate their pregnancy.
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