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Speaker discusses the skills of those with autism
Temple Grandin, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2010, spoke Wednesday in the TSC Ballroom about living with autism and how it has helped with her animal rights work.
Grandin, who has been featured in a documentary and several other media, has a doctorate of animal science.
Grandin advised students to pay attention to small details. She has worked to make slaughterhouse conditions more humane, and said the smallest details can make a difference between scared cattle and happy cattle.
She also said she sees her world in small details, a trait of many who have autism.
"There's this whole world of sensory detail," she said. "It's very detailed in the world of visual pictures ? of smells, of touch sensations ? and if you have someone on the autistic spectrum as really severe, touch and smell may be the only senses that work."
Analyzing the details of the animals around her was how Grandin said she turned slaughterhouses from a fearful place for cattle into a humane one. She said she inspected plants and made only a few small changes in things like lighting and fence heights.
Grandin said the severity of autism can range depending on the individual. She said people can be diagnosed with autism so severe they can't speak, or the autism can make them high-functioning people in society who just have "extra geek circuits."
There is no finite beginning to the autism spectrum, she said, and one can't tell where "extra-geeky" crosses over into autism. She said she thinks both Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs were on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum.
"If you get rid of all the genetics that make autism and your computer breaks, you're not going to have anyone to fix it, because half of Silicon Valley is probably on the spectrum," Grandin said.
People with autism tend to be strong thinkers in different areas, like visuals or mathematics. Grandin said people on the autism spectrum need to find their special talent and then practice and broaden skills.
People with different skill sets need to learn to work together, that's when the real innovations occur, she said. Grandin used what she said was generation-changing technology of the iPod as an example of that.
"Steve Jobs was not an engineer," she said. "He was an artist. If you look up his patents on Google, they're all about the user interface. The engineers have got to make the insides work."
The strengths people with autism have should be focused on and encouraged, she said. Too many people get hung up on the autism label and don't focus on the talent that matters, Grandin said.
The best thing someone with autism can do is find a mentor who can foster their curiosity in a subject and help them improve, she said, and also take hands-on classes in high school and middle school.
"People like me learn from the bottom up. We focus on details," Grandin said.
One person in the audience Wednesday said he was proud to have Asperger's syndrome because of the progress Grandin has made in her field.
Katie Lovendale, a junior majoring in special education, said hearing about the different ways in which people with autism think influences how she will think about special education. She said she plans to take Grandin's views and experiences into account as she heads into her career.
"You hope one day they'll grow up to be like Temple Grandin," Lovendale said about kids with autism.
Grandin is in Utah to receive the Peek Award for disability in media. The Peek award originates from Kim Peek, a Utahn with a disability made famous from the film "Rain Man," Adina Zahradnikova, executive director of the Disability Law Center, said. The center sponsored Wednesday's event.
Zahradnikova said the center also sponsors the "Everyone Can" campaign at public elementary schools and spreads the idea that everyone is good at something. The goal, she said, is to eliminate the stigma that comes with the autistic label, a key message in Grandin's speech.
After Grandin's speech, she signed copies of her book in the International Lounge. The books had sold out at the USU Bookstore by that time.
After the signing, Grandin gave another speech in the ballroom about her work inspecting and improving slaughterhouses.
"I feel strongly that we have to treat animals right," Grandin said. "It's because of us that cattle are born, we should give them a life worth living."
She also said she feels it is natural to eat livestock, because it is a natural function of life for many people.
"People forget that nature isn't nice," she said.
Grandin wants people to be aware slaughterhouses are not the horror factories seen in extreme animal rights advertising. She believes showing the public what really goes on in slaughterhouses will quell worries of animal cruelty.
"We need to be streaming plants on the Internet so the public can see what's really going on," she said.
Source: here
