ABSTRACT
Traditional learning-disability theory grew out of pioneering work by A. Strauss and L. Lehtinen. Learning-disability "specialists" have given scant attention to the reasonable position that if neurological impairment produces poor learning, then neurologically impaired students who demonstrate poor learning are achieving according to their "potential". Psychologically oriented empiricists who have cataloged contradictions and inconsistencies between learning-disability theory and practice have not questioned the fundamental premises upon which learning disability theory rests. The inherent contradictions in learning-disability theory and practice can be explained only by examining the social and cultural processes through which learning disability is created. These processes medicalize school failure by transforming diversity in achievement into individual pathology or "disability". The concept that school failure results from an underlying neurological deficit was formalized in public policy with the development of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142). Despite the commonsense nature of the deficit-discrepancy view of school failure, it has not been without criticism.
