Learning Disabilities the Court\'s Decision

Learning Disabilities

The court's decision in this regard seems entirely reasonable. It is not passing judgment on the question as to whether having a foreign language requirement is a good thing -- Harvard is free to make that determination based upon its own assessment of what constitutes the Harvard ideal of an educated person. Georgetown, a Catholic university, may require religion classes of all of its students. And some schools require no core classes at all. That is their prerogative as a private institution of learning.

A student's evaluation as to whether he or she can complete the common core must be one of the things he or she considers before accepting admission to a university. Many schools offer many different ways of obtaining an undergraduate degree, and it is not discrimination to have core requirements anymore than it is discrimination against the indecisive to force students to choose a major their sophomore year. Mandating a waiver for learning disabled students for foreign languages also seems to 'favor' those with language-related disorders, given that students with dyscalculia cannot waive their mathematics requirements. This also raises the question: what if he or she was an international politics major and a foreign language was critical to understanding the curriculum? Could the student claim discrimination as he or she was not allowed to pursue that major? Allowing students to legally opt out of university requirements could become a slippery slope

Question 2

One of the reasons BU fell afoul of the law was its poor administration of its LD program. It did not tell students promptly if their requests were granted, did not communicate with students and parents about providing reasonable accommodations in a timely, interactive, or sympathetic fashion, and adding the additional requirements for students to prove their LD status seemed destined to add further levels of bureaucracy to the process. Also, because learning disabilities can be a spectrum, someone with a mild learning disability seeking moderate accommodation might be forced to engage in some very 'major' testing.