Have to disagree, its nothing like it was 50 years ago...a fight after school was so rare I still remember the one I saw in the 6th grade.
It might be related to where you were, too...
But, from my own direct experience, what I see now is what I saw before. You might think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that one doesn't know if they will come home alive or not, by the end of the school day -- but in my case, this was the facts of the matter. Everyday you didn't know if you were coming home alive.
The school year started off with a shooting, a killing and several wounded -- and continued throughout the year with beatings and "rumbles" and students beating up teachers, parents beating up teachers, and students beating up students.
I transferred to another school, after that one (moving to Oregon) and it wasn't like that. It was more of a "preppie school" -- but it was in that school, too -- that I had my "go-round" with the school bully and put him in the hospital, for him never to return to school again.
Even in that preppie school, there were "fights after school" where people would go out and hang around to see the big fight that everyone knew was coming on after school. I was in one of those myself, when the friends of that bully I beat up, came around me challenging me. I was there after school, too... LOL...
So, although the circumstances that I see today are the same as what I saw 50 years ago -- again, it also depends on where you're at. In one place you might not see it, while in the next place, it's going on, just like that -- at the very same time (and in the same generation of students...).
I've seen that directly, myself.
Geez, I went to school in Detroit, it use to be a great city....