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ASABE member Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University, a best-selling author, and a consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior. The subject of an award-winning 2010 biographical film, she also was listed in the "Time 100" list of the most influential people in the world in the "Heroes" category. Diagnosed with autism as a child, Grandin talks about how her mind works-sharing her ability to "think in pic- tures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.
I think I'll start out and just talk a little bit about what exactly autism is.
Autism is a very big continuum that goes from very severe-the child remains non-verbal-all the way up to bril- liant scientists and engineers.
It's a continuum of traits. When does a nerd turn into Asperger, which is just mild autism? I mean, Einstein and Mozart and Tesla would all be probably diagnosed as autistic spectrum today. And one of the things that is really going to concern me is getting these kids to be the ones that are going to invent the next energy things.
OK. Now, if you want to understand autism: animals. And I want to talk about different ways of thinking. You have to get away from verbal language. I think in pictures, I don't think in language. Now, the thing about the autistic mind is it attends to details. There is a test where you either have to pick out the big letters, or pick out the little letters, and the autis- tic mind picks out the little letters more quickly.
And the thing is, the normal brain ignores the details. Well, if you're building a bridge, details are pretty important because it will fall down if you ignore the details. And one of my big concerns with a lot of policy things today is things are getting too abstract. People are getting away from doing hands-on stuff. I'm really concerned that a lot of the schools have taken out the hands-on classes, because art and classes like that-those are the classes where I excelled.
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