This paper presents a critique of the educational model of emotional and behavioural difficulties in British education. In the wake of strong criticisms of the so-called medical model of maladjustment (pre-1980s), educational policies have defined the "disturbing" pupil as having emotional and behavioural difficulties, and have more recently shifted towards reconstructing such difficulties as matters of discipline within school. The arguments from social science, semantics and ethics that were brought into play in the anti-medical critique are considered here in view of their consequences today for the construction of the "disruptive pupil" and dilemmas for practitioners.