• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship
    • Faculty Scholarship Series
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship
    • Faculty Scholarship Series
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of openYLSCommunitiesPublication DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionPublication DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    Display statistics

    Mental Retardation and Society: The Ethics and Politics of Normalization

    • CSV
    • RefMan
    • EndNote
    • BibTex
    • RefWorks
    Thumbnail
    Name:
    Mental_Retardation_and_Society ...
    Size:
    2.498Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    Download
    Author
    Rose-Ackerman, Susan
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/4967
    Abstract
    During the sixties, social critics visited institutions for the retarded and were shocked by the conditions they found. Scholarly research supported the conclusions of lay observers. Consensus was easy: people saw conditions that everyone believed were bad, and all agreed that policies should change. Only a small percentage of the retarded were in institutions or helped by specialized public programs, and many had been excluded from school. Care was inadequate both because it was of low quality and because many of the retarded received no services. Social critics were allied not only with scholarly experts but with many who had a deep personal interest in programs for the retarded. Both parents and professionals who cared for the retarded sought changes in treatment and educational methods and increases in public funding. The key slogans were deinstitutionalization, normalization, mainstreaming, and a developmental model of care. This consensus is now falling apart. As shock and outrage are translated into particular programmatic changes, public policy toward the retarded has once again become a difficult and controversial issue. The retarded, their parents, and their professional advocates are only a small minority of the population. The severely and profoundly retarded are an even smaller group. To change policy, the minority must generate support from the general public. Sympathy, however, is easier to obtain than tax dollars and private monetary donations. This places activists for the mentally retarded in a difficult position. A clear, simple message is easier to use as a rallying cry than a balanced and complicated assessment of the relative merits of alternative policies. The principles of normalization and deinstitutionalization would, however, be expensive if consistently translated into policy. Even the most impassioned advocates may be forced to lay aside principle in the competition for funds. Under the pressure of scarce resources, cracks appear in the alliance of legal activists, mental retardation professionals, and parents. The tensions not only represent clashes between private interests and moral principles but also reveal fundamental philosophical disagreements. The debate, however, has seldom moved behind the slogans to examine the underlying premises of the normalization movement.
    Collections
    Faculty Scholarship Series

    entitlement

     
    DSpace software (copyright © 2002 - 2023)  DuraSpace
    Quick Guide | Contact Us
    Open Repository is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
     

    Export search results

    The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

    By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

    After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.