That's one thing that has definitely changed A LOT. When I was a kid (I'm 33), fighting in school was obviously against the rules and frowned upon, but it wasn't the sort of zero-tolerance instant draconean punishment that it is now.
Hell, when I was in 6th grade, and the teacher literally walked in on me beating the hell out of the class bully (for the record, he was bigger and older than me), he basically just made us stand in the hall. Largely because he liked me, and despised the punk I was dismantling, but there was never any official action on it.
I never liked bullies. I tended to explain the situation to them after a while if they didn't take the various hints I'd drop. Basically, they can either shut up and be polite, or they can fight me, rather than the little kids they generally preferred to pick on. Most of them dropped it there, but a few required more strenuous education.
The one in middle school was far and away the dumbest of the lot, and the only one I had to educate TWICE. High School was pretty easy in that regard, most of them took the hints, only had three or four scuffles, none of them lasting very long.
In fact, now that I think about it, I was never actually punished for fighting when I was in school. Part of it was the fact that I only ever wound up fighting people who were well known bullies and troublemakers, I think. Even so, these days I'm pretty sure things would be handled quite differently. Considering that locally we had a case where a 1st grader with no history of violence brought a camping implement that happened to have a knife on it (he was using the spoon part of it to eat pudding that he brought from home) into school and was promptly suspended for 45 days.
Overturned after mass public outcry, but still. That was the zero-tolerance policy. NO mitigation for circumstances.
/huggles
