I don't believe in naughty children. Hear me out.
A "naughty child" implies there is an inborn propensity for Bad. That this is some aspect of their identity or personality that they were born with an can never be rid of, an inevitable consequence of who they are. I've heard children described as "naughties", as "terrors", as "bad". And I think this sets both us as teachers trying to teach behaviour, and the students as young people in need of learning how to behave in society, up for failure
Ultimately, behaviour is a choice. You can either choose to do the right thing, or you can choose to do the wrong thing. Sometimes those choices will be clear and easy, but other times the line between what is right and what is wrong will be difficult to see. And this goes for the choices we, as adults, make just as much as it applies to the young people we teach.
Part of our job as teachers is to help students to make the right choices. For some students making the right choices will come easily and seemingly naturally, but this is only because they have already been taught the expectations. For others, it will be very hard. Perhaps in their family it is normal to talk across one another, and they need to be taught that this isn't acceptable in your classroom. Maybe they have hyper-doting parents who never tell them "no" and they therefore struggle to accept certain prohibitions. Do such things make students "naughty"? Does a transgression truly change the nature of a person? Perhaps - if your view is that a child who consistently makes the wrong choices is "naughty". But if a child is a naughty child, then surely there is no hope for them? They can never be good. Are they not doomed to always be naughty? Or is it that they're just not very good at making the right choice because until now they've not been effectively taught how?
An example: A child feels wronged, as children - especially teenagers- are wont to do. They've been taught by those around them that the thing to do when you feel wronged is to shout and to throw things. Obviously, this is unacceptable, but does it make the child naughty? Or did they instead make a decision based on what they've been taught? Indeed, is there any point having the child face a consequence id they've "just a naughty child"? Unless, their behaviour in fact isn't an aspect of their personality, and is instead a series of choices.
If a child is "naughty", is there any point in issuing sanctions? They're naughty, of course they're going to do the wrong thing. Or is it better to just put all the naughty kids in detention right off the bat - after all that's what we do with naughty children. Of course, both of these scenarios are ridiculous but whilst the latter would never happen, I have hear the sentiment of the former on more than one occasion in my career. This idea that some children are almost irredeemably bad, that their behaviour is an intrinsic part of who they are as a person.
Thinking of a child's transgressions as just that, instead of identity can be hard. It can be really hard, especially when you get a new class and recognise a name on the list for all the wrong reasons. Your heart sinks. But thinking of student behaviour as a series of choices, independent of who they child is as a person means you're in with a chance to teach them how to make the right choices.
There are some things we cannot change about ourselves - no matter what colour I might dye my hair, it will always grow out of my head kinda brown. Short of paying someone thousands of pounds to fire lasers at my eyeballs, I will always be short-sighted. I find apple crumble too filling to be truly enjoyable. These are things I cannot change, but my behaviour is (mostly) mine to control. I can choose not to work on Shabbat instead of tackling my ever-growing To Do list. I can choose to support a colleague in getting a challenging class settled and into the room, instead of minding my own business and enjoying a slightly extended lunch break. I can choose to check in with them after the lesson to make sure they're okay. I can give money to charity, and support my local community centre, and volunteer to run a youth group and not one of these things makes me a good person any more than not doing them makes me a bad one. They are simply acts that result from choices. I am free to make good choices, the right choices, or I can make bad choices, the wrong choices. And, this is key, so are our students. Our job is to help them to know which ones are the right choices, which ones are the wrong choices, and how to make those right choices.
Of course, none of this really matters in terms of what happens after a child makes a bad choice/ is naughty. If a child fails to meet the expectations as laid out for them, then they need to face a consequence. It doesn't necessarily matter if their transgression was because of a choice or because of some genetic "badness".
NB: I've said before, whenever I read stuff about behaviour, I think about the y9 student who came to me with a slightly torn fingernail and asked to go to First Aid. It was the sort of break that can be dealt with by nibbling the torn edge off and getting on with your life, so I said no. The child then looked me in the eye and ripped off their nail. They stood there, blood pouring down their hand and said, "now may I go to First Aid". (My first instinct was to stand my ground, but I didn't want to deal with an angry parent, so off they went to First Aid). I think there are people, children and adults, who relish the act of doing the wrong thing, but I think, thankfully, they are few and far between. Whether such people deserve to be called "naughty", I don't know. Part of my thinks they deserve a stronger adjective. But I still wonder if the reason they take such joy in doing the wrong thing is because they didn't face suitable consequences when they were younger - said consequences were insufficient to deter them from the feeling they get when they do the wrong thing.
This all also raises the question of "what is the right choice?" I think even history's greatest horrors were carried out by people who believed they were doing what was right. But this is a philosophical question and far beyond the scope of a classroom. In our classrooms, we (or the school we work for) decide what we expect.