The September incident in which a Kansas general education teacher physically picked up and moved a student raises fundamental questions about autonomy, consent, and the meaning of dignity in education. Defenders of the teacher argue that the act preserved the student’s dignity by removing him from public view and framing the action as comforting. Yet the teacher herself acknowledged that the real goal was to obtain compliance: “we were looking for him to comply to any direction.” These competing narratives - compassion versus compliance - reveal a central ethical tension. Can an act that enforces compliance against a child’s will also be called compassionate? Or does such framing obscure the underlying reality of restraint?
At the heart of this case is the issue of consent. Moving a student’s body without their permission is restraint, regardless of whether it takes the form of a hold, a pickup, or a so-called hug. Good intent does not change this fact. To describe the action as compassion erases the student’s lack of choice and reframes coercion as care. True dignity cannot be imposed; it must be preserved through respect for autonomy and boundaries.
This dilemma becomes sharper when considering the legal and ethical meaning of consent for minors. In most contexts, society recognizes that minors cannot legally provide consent for situations involving profound power imbalances, such as sexual encounters, because authority undermines true choice. The same logic applies here. Even if a child verbally agrees, can that consent be considered valid when the adult has overwhelming control? The question is even more complex for disabled minors, who face additional vulnerabilities and systemic biases. Their “agreement” may be more a reflection of compliance under pressure than of authentic consent.
The simplest test of consent is to ask: would any disabled person want to be picked up and moved without their say? Their likely response underscores that such actions cannot be framed as compassionate (see Stairs, 2025; Disability Rights Texas, 2020).
The incident also reflects a broader behavioral framing common in educational practice. The student was not in imminent danger, yet the situation was treated as an “emergency” because he was noncompliant. The intervention was reduced to a demand: obey any directive, regardless of whether it was connected to the original cause of distress. This is characteristic of compliance-driven frameworks that collapse complex situations into binary choices: obey or be managed.
Outsiders, viewing the event through this lens, may reframe the teacher’s action as comforting because it resulted in the appearance of regulation and resolution. Yet compliance achieved through force is not regulation - it is submission. The narrative of compassion is thus retrofitted onto an act of control, making coercion appear as care.
Defenders argue that the teacher’s action shielded the student from embarrassment by removing him from a public hallway. Yet dignity is not achieved simply by being hidden from view. If the removal was non-consensual, then the act undermined the very dignity it was supposed to protect. True dignity is inseparable from autonomy. It is not something adults can bestow after disregarding a child’s voice or will.
The use of mental health language to justify physical control is also deeply problematic. Labeling the act as protective or therapeutic risks disguising coercion as treatment. The reality is that forced movement escalated the power imbalance, communicated that compliance mattered more than autonomy, and reinforced the harmful lesson that adults may move a child’s body whenever they deem it necessary.
Disability status complicates the narrative even further. Without a disability label, whether appropriate or not, blame for “poor behavior” might have fallen on the parents. With the label, the teacher’s actions can be excused as necessary adaptations: “he is not a bad kid, just a disabled one who requires different treatment.” This shift deflects accountability from the adult’s actions and risks dehumanizing the student. Rather than being recognized as a child with rights, he becomes an object of management whose autonomy is secondary to adult authority.
One of the most telling aspects of this incident is the absence of the child’s perspective in both the framing and the defense of the teacher’s actions. The entire conversation revolves around what the teacher intended, what outsiders perceived, and how administrators or policies categorize the act. Missing from this framing is the most critical voice: the student’s. Whether he felt violated, frightened, silenced, or humiliated is largely invisible, because adults have controlled the narrative.
This erasure is not incidental—it reflects a deeper systemic issue. Children, and especially disabled children, are often positioned as passive recipients of care or discipline rather than as people with agency and perspective. When their voices are excluded, adult interpretations dominate and reshape events to fit existing narratives of compassion, compliance, or professional authority. The absence of the child’s account makes it easier to describe forced compliance as “comfort” and to ignore the psychological harm of being physically moved against one’s will.
Equally significant is the exclusion of disabled adults’ perspectives from these conversations. Disabled adults frequently report the long-term harm of coercive practices in schools—being restrained, forced to comply, or silenced in the name of care. Their testimonies highlight trauma, loss of trust, and the internalized belief that their boundaries do not matter. Yet these lived experiences are often disregarded when schools and defenders discuss incidents like this one.
By ignoring the voices of disabled adults, educational systems repeat cycles of harm. Adults who have lived through restraint and coercion warn that such practices can foster trauma bonds, teach submission, and normalize powerlessness. To disregard these warnings is to silence the very people who can best illuminate the risks. It also perpetuates the idea that the perspectives of authority figures matter more than the experiences of those who have been directly impacted.
These testimonies and data highlight the lived realities that too often go ignored. They show both the immediate harm and the long-term trauma that disabled individuals carry from such experiences. Their exclusion from current debates mirrors the original harm: denying those most affected a voice in defining what dignity and safety mean.
The exclusion of the child’s voice and the silencing of disabled adults is not just an oversight—it is a reflection of the core issue. Restraint, by its nature, communicates that the student’s voice, feelings, and autonomy are secondary to adult control. The narrative surrounding the incident mirrors that same silencing: it privileges the adult’s justification over the child’s lived reality. In this way, the erasure of perspective becomes both the symptom and the symbol of the larger problem. Respecting dignity requires not only avoiding physical coercion but also centering the perspectives of those most affected. Without their voices, what remains is a story told by those with power, rationalizing their own authority.
This incident is not simply about one teacher’s intent. It highlights the deeper question of whether schools value children’s autonomy—especially the autonomy of disabled children—when their behavior challenges expectations. To claim that moving a student against his will was compassionate because it removed him from view or appeared to comfort him is to blur the line between care and control. Compassion cannot be retroactively assigned to acts of restraint. Dignity cannot be achieved through force. Consent cannot be assumed when power imbalances are so profound.
Ultimately, the hallway incident illustrates exactly why no-restraint policies exist: to prevent adults from masking coercion as care and to safeguard the fundamental rights of students to autonomy, dignity, and respect. Including the voices of children and disabled adults is essential if we are to confront these harms honestly, acknowledge their impact, and create practices that truly uphold dignity rather than disguise control as compassion.
Autism Alliance of Michigan. (2023, July 24). Opinion: I was shocked by the use of seclusion and restraint in Michigan schools. Autism Alliance of Michigan. https://autismallianceofmichigan.org/opinion-i-was-shocked-by-the-use-of-seclusion-and-restraint-in-michigan-schools/
Disability Rights Texas. (2020, December 7). Restraint in Texas schools: The shocking use of restraints for students with disabilities. Disability Rights Texas. https://disabilityrightstx.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/DRTx-Restraint-Report-FINAL-Dec-7-2020-2.pdf
Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). (2023, August). Restraint and isolation: 2020–21 report. Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. https://ospi.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/2023-08/restraintandisolationreport.pdf
Stairs, J. (2025, April 23). Testimony on restraint and seclusion practices in Maine schools [Written testimony submitted to the Maine Legislature’s Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs]. Maine Legislature. https://legislature.maine.gov/testimony/resources/EDU20250423Stairs133903126377731108.pdf
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