Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions

by Temple Grandin

At one plant I visited, something else entirely caught my eye. Until then, nearly every plant I’d ever worked on or consulted with used equipment made in America. The parts were manufactured here, and there were workers at the ready who could put together new components and repair any malfunction. At this plant, the equipment was brand-new. It was beautiful, meticulously crafted and made of gleaming stainless steel, with many intricate moving parts. Looking at it, I imagined the highly skilled, high-wage workers who had designed and installed the equipment. Then I discovered that it had been transported from the Netherlands on a container ship, in more than one hundred shipping containers. I stood on an overhead catwalk and looked at all the complicated conveyors and exclaimed to no one, “We don’t make it anymore!” This is the price we have paid for removing most hands-on classes from our schools, such as shop, welding, drafting, and auto mechanics. The kids who should have grown up to invent this equipment are often considered poor performers, academically or behaviorally, and are shunted into special education. But many of them are simply visual thinkers who are being screened out because the current curriculum favors verbal, linear thinkers who are good at taking tests. The hands-on classes where some of these “poor students” might have shown great ability are now gone.