The treating of birds as something "completely different" from other dinosaurs, that is. There is no magical "division" that makes avians fundamentally different from other dinosaurs in general any more than sauropods or ceratopsians are different from non-sauropod and non-ceratopsian dinosaurs. Even going only by superficial similarities, there's nothing that all non-avian dinosaurs share that they don't also share with avians. And deinonychosaurs (for example) are more similar to birds than to (for example) ceratopsians, so any group of related animals that includes both deinonychosaurs and ceratopsians must also include birds. To say otherwise is ridiculous. Besides, no one has the slightest problem with bats and whales both being mammals. The only way you could even come close to logically arguing that birds aren't dinosaurs is to make a case for birds not being of dinosaurian origin, period, but at this point you're more or less out of luck with that, too. Birds are dinosaurs. Fact. It's not any stranger than bats being mammals. There isn't a difference.
I've talked about this (baffling) issue previously
here.
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Sta.sh
Either that, or update the schoolbooks. Since most people don't do much biology-related research beyond what they need to finish school, they usually hold onto the most recent bit of information they had been exposed to, which in their case is either school textbooks or the info their parents give them. But even if they read other scientific books or browse the internet in their free-time (or better yet, if their relatives are paleo-experts), what are the chances their introduction to birds would be that they are dinosaurs?
If kids were taught the latest facts/theories from the beginning, then they would know better from the start, and wouldn't need to be taught/convinced later on about these things.
Though I myself haven't checked what the schoolbooks on biology state lately, so maybe they have been updated while I wasn't looking...