Educational Rights of Students with Disabilities

Every so often, there are children born with mental disabilities. This can be hard on parents, schools, communities, and above all the children themselves. In addition, while treatment is possible, in some cases children cannot productively work in the same environment in neurotypical children. This is a tricky issue, because although it may be unproductive or even disruptive to have them in a traditional classroom setting, it is important to realize that these children have rights too. This is a sort of dilemma, and it is important that alternative education be provided. Thankfully, many professionals are glad to work with children who need specialized educational care.

Of course, in providing these rights we can only help these children insofar as we understand them. Many mental disabilities are not well understood, and without this understanding, it is difficult to educate them properly. There needs to be more research into the physical and psychological causes and consequences of these children's learning problems. In addition, there must be more applied research as well- that is the only way to education children with abnormal learning needs is to figure out what exactly their learning needs are. In addition, in the issue of having rights, this is important because of the gap in the kind of education we can give them and the kind of education we could give them.

This issue comes into play when we ask what the rights of disabled children should actually be. Of course, they have the right to an education. This is given as a right to all citizens and not being neurotypical is no excuse to have these rights stripped away. Then again, because their educational needs are separate from those of normal children, they cannot be given the same education. The questions of rights come in to how much we owe them in terms of education. Because they do not have the same needs of normal children, it takes more, or at least different and specialized resources to education them- and it would be difficult to justify too unequal giving of resources and funding to one type of child over the other. The reality is these kids need additional resources to get an education.

However, of course the greater expense is justified, as is additional resources. This is a sort of an indirect affirmative action, but there is an equal educational right that every human should be given, and it should be taken to give every effort to make this possible.