Temple Grandin is a world-renowned author and designer of one-third of the livestock-handling facilities in the United States, who helped develop more humane ways to treat cattle being led to slaughter. She also happens to be autistic, and has written books as how she was able to break the boundaries of autism.
Temple Grandin says one of her proudest accomplishments is developing an objective scoring system for meat plants, which she said made some of the biggest difference for animals.
“Where you score handling,” Grandin said. “How many cattle fell down during handling, what percentage of cattle were electric prods put on, what percentage of cattle moo and bell rang their heads off in the stun box, what percentage do you put electric prods all over them, and how many did you stun unconscious on the first try. I can measure that stuff. We held them to a real high standard on that, and in 1999 when I trained McDonald’s how to do this resulted in more trains then I’ve seen in a whole career prior to that.”
Grandin was diagnosed with autism as a young age, and as part of her autism she is a visual thinker, which she says helped her learn the behavior of cattle.
“In the 70’s when I first started, I didn’t know I was a visual thinker,” Grandin said. “I thought that everybody thought in pictures, I didn’t know that other people thought differently, so I’m watching cattle go through the chutes in Arizona feed yards, and I noticed that sometimes they’d stop at a shadow, a reflection, a vehicle parked outside the fence, or there’d be a hydraulic pump out in front of them. Distractions would stop the cattle. So I got down inside the chutes, and people thought that was crazy. But since I was a visual thinker, it seemed obvious to me that I ought to be looking at what the cattle were seeing.”
Grandin says everyone learns differently, and education needs to accommodate all types of thinkers to help every child succeed.
“Kids that are different,” Grandin said. “Where there is a learning difference, where they’re good at one thing, bad at something else. I’m a visual thinker I think in photo realistic pictures. Another kid is a pattern thinker, a mathematician mind; they’re your engineers, computer programmers, mathematicians, and statisticians. Then you have people that are more of a word thinker, now I’m worried about the visual thinkers especially getting screened out, and you need us.”
Grandin says she wants people to be more focused on the outcome of education, which is students entering a good career.
“And I also want to say the kids that are like me,” Grandin said. “Kids that are different, I don’t want to see them playing video games in the basement. I want them out having a great career.”
Grandin says to do that kids need to learn job skills at early ages.
“We’ve got to teach kids work ethic,” Grandin said. “And that needs to start in middle school. In my generation, kids had paper routes, we don’t have paper routes anymore, we’ve got to find something to replace that, like walking dogs for the neighbors, church volunteer jobs, they’ve got to learn how to do tasks outside the home on a schedule.”
Grandin says some of the most influential people in her life were her mentors, like her mother and high school science teacher who helped her find places she fit in.
“The best way to get social interaction is through shared interest,” Grandin said. “I was bullied all through school, so was Steve Jobs, bullied and bullied and bullied. The only places that I was not bullied was where there was a shared interest, horseback riding, and electronics, model rockets. I mean today it’s going to be computer club, it could be band, theater, or it might be robotics.”
Grandin says she wants to help students find something they are passionate about and help them turn them into successful careers.
The following lectures and open forums are free and open to the general public, on a first-come, first-served basis. All lectures will be held at the Atkinson Recital Hall in the Music Center on the NMSU Las Cruces campus.
Thursday, Aug. 25
8:55 to 10:10 a.m.: ANSC 100 class – Lecture Topic: Grandin’s book, “Animals Make Us Human”
1 to 3:30 p.m.: University Common Read Open Forum – Lecture Topic: Grandin’s book, “Thinking In Pictures. My Life With Autism”
6 to 7:30 p.m. – Public Open Forum
Friday, Aug. 26
10:30 to 11:20 a.m. – ANSC 312V class – Lecture Topic: Importance of Human-Animal Bond to people with Autism
For more information, contact the Animal and Range Science Department at ascience@nmsu.edu.
