Wolf Wolfensberger authored a chapter entitled "Normalizing Activation for the Profoundly Retarded and/or Multiply Handicapped" in An Alternative Textbook in Special Education
(Edited by Burton Blatt, Douglas Biklen, and Robert Bogdan, 1977).
Wolf Wolfensberger Recounts a Trip to Scandinavia:
"The fact that profound retardation need not be so extensively equated with immobility was poignantly brought home to me by observing a particular living unit in a Scandinavian institution which was actually rather backward by Scandinavian standards. In this unit, 60 of 68 adult residents were not toilet trained, but only one was chronically bedfast, and only 12 were wheelchair-bound; the rest were ambulatory. A situation such as this would not be particularly remarkable in Canada or the United States, except that in this institution, these were the most retarded and impaired persons to be found! …they were up and about in wheelchairs, walkers, sitters, standers, and what have you, doing things and going places. In some living units it was hard to get around because of all the wheelchairs and special devices – acres of full beds replaced by acres of activation equipment.
With all the money in the world we shall achieve nothing unless our ideology tells us what to do. I have seen one attendant sit and stare from behind a glass wall at a vast day room with 50 children milling purposelessly, and I have seen the same scene with seven attendants sitting and staring. Money for 50 attendants would have yielded no additional benefits, because there would have been no ideology to convert the money or the manpower into beneficial action and tangible results."
