Stop Pretending Every Behavior Is a “Misunderstanding”
By John Huber
Sometimes I read articles that leave me shaking my head, not because they’re wrong in every detail, but because they’re completely disconnected from reality. That’s exactly what happened when I read the recent piece from EdSource titled “There Are No Bad Kids: How Educators Can Protect Students Against Harmful Diagnoses.”
There are absolutely bad ideas, bad policies, and bad systems in education. But the idea that there are “no bad kids” has become a weaponized talking point used to guilt educators into tolerating behavior that would be considered unacceptable in any other setting. It’s naïve at best, reckless at worst.
The article suggests that the real problem isn’t student behavior itself, but the adults who dare to describe it in honest terms. According to this mindset, it’s harmful to say that a child is defiant, disruptive, or aggressive because it might lead to a negative label.
You know what’s far more harmful than a label?
Ignoring the victim of that child’s behavior.
Where in this defense of “no bad kids” is there a single mention of the student who gets shoved into a locker? What about the teacher who gets cursed at or threatened? Or the dozens of students who lose learning time every single day while one student monopolizes the room?
The article calls terms like “oppositional defiant” and “conduct disorder” “highly subjective,” and yes, that’s true, but teachers don’t need medical degrees to recognize repeated, intentional, disruptive behavior that undermines their ability to teach. Schools use these terms after patterns of disrespect, disruption, and outright aggression.
Banning suspensions for willful defiance is incredibly destructive to education. To put forth a policy that basically says students do not have to listen to anyone if they choose not to is a policy of self-destruction for the concept of safe and orderly schools. Of course, it reduced suspensions in California. How could banning suspensions not reduce them?
Here’s the hard truth nobody in this article wants to admit:
Yes, there are students whose behavior is harmful to others. Yes, those behaviors need to be identified, addressed, and sometimes even labeled for what they are. Pretending every child is simply misunderstood does nothing but abandon everyone else in the classroom.
I’ve seen firsthand what happens when this toxic ideology takes over:
- Teachers walk away in frustration, burned out and unsupported.
- Students with severe, disruptive behavior continue to escalate because no one holds them accountable.
- Victimized students suffer in silence, learning less and feeling unsafe.
Let’s be clear: “diagnosis” isn’t the problem. The denial of reality is what’s harming students and schools.
The solution isn’t to erase terms like “disruptive” or “defiant.” The solution is honesty, clarity, and accountability. Schools need the tools to identify behavior issues early, the authority to intervene decisively, and the flexibility to protect the learning environment for all students, not just those causing the disruptions.
Yes, there are many students who need extensive support with behavior, and yes, we as educators should absolutely provide them with the needed support. Perhaps the behavior is out of the student’s control, and perhaps the resulting actions of the schools are part of a larger bias. But the answer is not to remove all measures of accountability.
I’m tired of the narrative that treats every aggressive, abusive, or disruptive student as some misunderstood hero-in-waiting. Sometimes the reality is far simpler: a student is behaving badly, and that behavior needs to stop—whether we call it a diagnosis or not.
Until we start putting the needs of the whole school community back at the center of these conversations, we’ll keep losing teachers, losing learning time, and ultimately losing kids who do want to be in a classroom where respect still means something.