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Grandin: Everyone has strengths

Author, animal scientist and autism advocate Temple Grandin speaks Wednesday evening in Whalen Gym at Fort Lewis College.

Town and gown came together in a big way Wednesday night when more than 1,300 people gathered to hear Temple Grandin, whose book Talking in Pictures: My Life with Autism was selected for this year’s Common Reading Experience at Fort Lewis College.

The author, autism advocate and internationally known animal scientist talked about different learning styles, particularly her own visual, associative strengths. And of course, she did it with pictures.

One example was the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2011. She saw obvious flaws when she looked at the plant’s design.

“I don’t have a physics or engineering degree,” Grandin said, “but they put the cooling system and cooling pump in a nonwaterproof basement next to the sea, without waterproof doors or anything. And then because they didn’t have good social learners, they never called for help. They sat in the control room and let it burn. If I had designed it, I would have been thinking, ‘If the cooling pump doesn’t work, I’m in a lot of trouble.’”

After identifying several other learning styles, including verbal, audio and pattern-thinkers, she has concluded that author Malcolm Gladwell, who posited that anyone could learn anything given adequate resources, is wrong.

“Bill Gates and I had access to all the same resources, but I couldn’t learn (coding language) FORTRAN for anything,” she said. “I was lucky to go to college when you didn’t have to know algebra, because when a visual learner is struggling with algebra, you should switch them to geometry.”

Grandin shared examples of people who have reached the peaks of their professions and were autistic.

“Einstein wasn’t verbal until he was 3,” she said. “Steve Jobs was a weird loner who brought snakes to school and set them loose. How many drugs would Einstein be loaded up on today?”

She raised a lot of questions about things she worries about in modern education, leaving everyone with food for thought.

“Sometimes majors get too narrow,” she said. “What did I get from a liberal arts college? I had a class in sociology, one in logic, one in anthropology. I learned breadth of thinking.”

Her concerns were not just for Asperger’s and other high-functioning autistic students but about all students. She thinks extracurricular activities, in particular, are critical for different kinds of learners to explore and find where they belong.

“Some places are sports-cuckoo,” she said. “They’ll raise $400,000 for a new track and then cut band.”

Parents should have publications like Business Week, Wired, Science and Nature in their libraries, she said.

“How can kids do interesting stuff if they haven’t seen interesting stuff?” she said. “I had to fill my mind with millions of webpage images to Google through.”

Beware helicopter parenting, she said, and get kids away from video games.

“Too many kids aren’t doing enough hands-on activities like cooking, sewing, FFA or 4-H projects,” Grandin said. “How can you make reasonable policies if you don’t understand how things work?”

Grandin took questions after her lecture. A 14-year-old high school freshman with Asperger’s syndrome who attends Animas High School asked what he should do.

“Find something you’re good at and get really good at it,” she said, “and get a job. Sonic’s hiring.”

abutler@durangoherald.com

Sep 30, 2015
For animal scientist Temple Grandin, empathy triumphs


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