I got in a few fights when I was in grade school. Nothing really serious, though. Sometimes, I would get into a fight without even knowing it. I was always the “big kid” in school, but I was also shy and introverted, so that sometimes led other kids to think they could take me on and impress their stupid friends by having a go at me on the playground. Generally these encounters would end without a punch thrown, as the kid would get up in my face and I’d give him a good shove and put him on his ass, which would tend to make him rethink his plan. A few times punches were thrown, and since I can’t ever remember being hurt in a playground fight, I must have got the better of most of them. I do recall doubling over a kid with a punch to the gut, but that shithead deserved it. He threw me in a mud puddle while we were standing in line to go back inside! Anyhow, the point is, like most every kid I got in some fights at school, but it was nothing serious and certainly nothing organized or planned.
Unlike, say, these kids from Tacoma WA. Nine sixth-graders decided there wasn’t enough ass-kicking action on the playground, so they decided to form a Fight Club. You know, like the movie. Unfortunately, one of them forgot the first rule of Fight Club, and blabbed about it to the local media. So now they’re all expelled from school.  Normally I’d say the school should have no business caring what kids do with their free time, but apparently some of the fights took place on school property, so they do in fact have a reason to care. I’m not sure what the point of expelling them was, though. Yeah, that’ll show those kids! Throw them out of the place they likely hate anyhow as punishment for forming a mutal beatdown society.
Honestly, isn’t it better that these kids decided to form a club to have mutually agreed upon fights amongst themselves rather than randomly picking on kids like me on the playground? I’m not saying its the brightest idea they ever had, but I can’t see how throwing them out of school helps. Wouldn’t a better plan be to encourage their parents to buy them some gloves and maybe help organize some boxing lessons or something?   I mean, let’s face it, some little boys are just naturally aggressive, and focusing that in a direction that keeps them from growing up to be hoodlums is probably a much better idea than just telling them to stop going to school. But these are the same people who punish kids for defending themselves from bullies, so what do you really expect?
Only a churl would point out that perhaps forcing them to spend twelve years of their lives in an authoritarian shithole like a public school is more likely to make them into thugs than is some goofy-ass fight club idea that probably wouldn’t have amounted to anything anyhow.