Is Negative Behaviour a Choice?

Few questions in education are more charged than this one. And few questions are asked more carelessly. Because the moment you ask "is this a choice?", you've already implied an answer — and that answer tends to determine everything that happens next.

If behaviour is a choice, the student is responsible. Hold them accountable. If behaviour isn't a choice, it must be excused. Be compassionate. This is how most schools think about it, even when they'd never say so out loud. And it's wrong on both sides.

The free will problem

The philosopher Sam Harris has argued that free will, as we usually understand it, is an illusion. Every decision we make is the product of causes that came before it — our genetics, our upbringing, our experiences, the state of our nervous system at that precise moment. We can't choose our genes or our parents. We can't fully choose the environment that shaped us. So in what sense did we ever really "choose" anything?

This sounds like it would make accountability impossible. If nothing is truly a choice, how can we hold anyone responsible for anything? But Harris's argument doesn't actually lead there. Understanding that behaviour is caused — that it has a history — doesn't mean we stop responding to it. It means we respond more intelligently.

The four variables

Every student who misbehaves is doing so in a context. That context is made up of at least four variables: what is happening in the classroom right now, what has happened today before they walked through the door, what is happening in their life outside school, and what has happened throughout their history in school. These variables don't excuse the behaviour. But they do explain it — and understanding the explanation is what makes intervention possible.

The student who has been up all night because of violence at home is not making the same "choice" as the student who is bored in a lesson that is pitched too low. The student who has spent years being excluded and humiliated by the system is not making the same "choice" as a student who is testing limits for the first time. These look similar on the surface. The responses they require are completely different.

No excuses — but no ignorance either

Here is where schools often go wrong: they treat "understanding the cause" as "accepting the behaviour". These are not the same thing. You can understand exactly why a student swore at a teacher, and still apply the appropriate consequence, and still believe that swearing at teachers is not acceptable. Understanding does not require endorsement.

The no-excuses approach in behaviour management gets one thing right: it refuses to allow poor behaviour to continue. Students are held to expectations consistently, regardless of context. That is a form of respect. The mistake is assuming that consistency requires ignorance of cause. It doesn't. The most effective schools apply consistent expectations and investigate the reasons behind the behaviour — because the investigation is what tells you what additional support the student needs.

What this means in practice

When a student behaves badly, two questions need answering, not one. The first: what is the appropriate consequence? The second: what is driving this, and what needs to change so it doesn't keep happening?

The consequence addresses the behaviour. The investigation addresses the cause. You need both. Schools that only apply consequences are stuck in a loop — the same students, the same incidents, week after week. Schools that only investigate without applying consequences create a different problem: the message that behaviour is negotiable.

Being supportive and strict means holding both at once. The consequence is the strict part. The investigation — the curiosity about what is really going on — is the supportive part. They are not in tension. They are how you move forward.