WEBVTT

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Well, it's really great to be here today,

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but I want to talk about
different ways that people think,

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and one of the first steps is realizing
that different kinds of thinking exist.

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Another thing I want to challenge
the educational system with

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is there were some
really great minds in the past,

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and what would have happened to them

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if they were in today's
educational system?

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What would have happened
to Michelangelo today, Beethoven today?

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Thomas Edison? A lot of people?

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What would happen to them?

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OK, we're all familiar
with Michelangelo's art.

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And there's been a book written
about Michelangelo by one of his students.

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It's been translated into English.

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And he was a lousy student.

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He dropped out of school at age 12.

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That's 6th grade -

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6th grade high school dropout.

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That's Michelangelo.

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And his father hated art,
said that he didn't consider it "learned."

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He wanted him to grow up
and write legal documents.

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Yuck!
(Laughter)

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Now, fortunately,

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he was raised in a situation where
they had access to stonecutter tools.

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So he had some exposure to it.

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All the churches
were doing all kinds of art.

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So he grew up with exposure to it.

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This brings up another
very important thing:

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how do students
get interested in something?

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They get exposed.

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I ended up in the cattle industry

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because I was exposed to it
when I was 15 years old.

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How about Beethoven?

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He had great accomplishment,
but a lot of adversity,

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and he wrote his greatest works
when he was half deaf,

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and all the way stone-deaf,
and he couldn't perform anymore.

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And we're still playing his music today.

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In fact, he had a piano company build
a special device to go on the piano

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to help him to hear.

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And this is a reproduction of the device
made by the Orpheus Institute.

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But he wanted to accomplish things.

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Okay, this is one
of my most important slides:

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the different kinds of minds.

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I'm a photorealistic, visual thinker,
an object visualizer.

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And you know what? I can't do algebra!

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And I'd be screened out
of today's educational system.

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I do talks all over
the country on education,

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I'm talking to high school kids
that can't graduate from high school

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if you can't do algebra.

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If I'm going to be a chemist,
I need algebra,

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but for a lot of things you don't,
and we need visual thinkers.

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We need visual thinkers to solve problems.

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Another kind of mind
is the mathematical mind,

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a pattern thinker.

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They think more mathematically.
They don't think in pictures.

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And then you have the verbal facts people.

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Now let's look at how the different kinds
of minds approach problem-solving.

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Visual thinkers are bottom-up thinkers.

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Concepts are learned
with specific examples.

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I've done a lot of work
on improving things

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in the livestock industry.

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But it was something specific.

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It wasn't vague and abstract.

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A lot of verbal thinking
on a lot of different issues,

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it gets very abstract.

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I've got to have an issue
that I can really put my head around,

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so I can do something about it.

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But the first step is we've got to realize
these different thinkers exist.

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The skills can complement each other!

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Think about the iPhone -
Steve Jobs was an artist!

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That's why your phone is easy to use.

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The mathematicians
had to make it actually work.

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And I've had some brain scans,

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and I've found out that I've got
some big visual thinking circuits!

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And this shows my lack of working memory.

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So what am I doing
with this piece of paper up here?

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This is my external working memory.

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Because I don't have working memory.

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It's all full of water.

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In fact,

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if I was a computer,

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I've got the Amazon cloud
or the Microsoft cloud,

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the Google cloud,
whichever cloud you like the best,

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for graphics files,

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huge memory for graphics files.

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If I can convert it
to a graphics file, I remember it.

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But I'm only a 286, or a one-bar phone,
when it comes to working memory.

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So that's why I have these notes here -
because it's my external working memory.

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Now, how do you figure out in kids
what kind of thinker you are?

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Visual thinkers are good at art,
mechanical things.

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I was good at photography.

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And this will show up in 2nd or 3rd grade.

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Mathematical thinkers
will be good at math.

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And one of the big
mistakes that's made

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is they're giving the kids baby math,

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and so the math ability
doesn't get developed.

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Another thing about some of these kids
that are super good at math

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is they do it in their head.

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Don't make them verbally show their work.

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That's not how they think.

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We've got a big shortage right now
of computer coders.

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Well, maybe computer coding
needs to be introduced to third graders.

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And then there are verbal thinkers,
who love history, love facts.

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Verbal thinkers, I need them
to make my things more linear.

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Many of my books have co-authors,

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because a visual thinker
tends to be scattered,

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so I need a verbal thinker
to make the book more linear.

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See, that's the different kinds of minds

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working together.

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Now I want to talk
about the space program.

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I always loved the space program.

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It was the greatest achievement
of my generation.

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And there's now people
that were mission-critical

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that are now getting recognized.

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And I was very emotional to go down
and visit the Vehicle Assembly Building.

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I just loved doing that.

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There was a guy named Hal
who did algebra equations,

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algebra equations for fun,

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in a reclusive and messy office.

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He admitted he didn't do any of the work,

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but without his equations,
the lunar landing would not have worked.

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He was mission-critical.

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Katherine Johnson, the mathematician -

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and she finally got recognized.

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Her mathematics for calculating orbits
was absolutely essential.

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Now we've got to give
some ladies credits here.

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The Playtex Corporation
made the space suit.

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Four of the finest
bra seamstresses sewed it,

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and their boss was a TV repairman.

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This was probably not
the mathematics department here.

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But the space suit
was super mission-critical.

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When I went and visited Cape Kennedy
two and a half years ago,

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I found out maybe the right stuff
rides to the moon,

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but the geeks and the misfits and the kids
with labels build the stuff.

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(Laughter)

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I spent 25 years in construction,

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and I've worked with skilled trades people

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that today would be diagnosed
as autistic, dyslexic or ADHD.

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So where's that kid today?

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Probably playing video games
in the basement

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because nobody thought to let him play
with tools when he was little.

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Also, one of the people that worked
on this launchpad had Tourette syndrome.

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Now, this brings up
an important thing about identity.

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Autism is an important part of who I am,

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but career comes first.

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And people ask me all the time,

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"Was it really hard,
as a person with autism,

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to go into the cattle industry?"

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Nope, back in the '70s,

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being a girl was a bigger barrier
than autism could ever be!

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(Laughter)

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And they really did put
bull testicles on my vehicle.

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That scene happened.

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And another thing in the movie
that's totally true is visual thinking.

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It shows that accurately.

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Now, my grandfather was the co-inventor
of the autopilot for airplanes,

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and he worked with another person
that probably was autistic,

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probably a visual thinker,

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who came up with this idea
for three little coils.

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Then my mathematically-minded grandfather,
MIT-trained engineer, did the math for it;

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the different minds working together.

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A lot of kids are getting labels -

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autism, dyslexia, ADHD.

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I'm worried about them
getting screened out.

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We need their minds.

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Thomas Edison was labeled
as a hyperactive high school dropout.

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He's got some autistic traits.

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Jane Goodall only had
a two-year secretarial degree

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when she did her famous work.

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Would that be possible today?

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I want to make you think.

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Steven Spielberg -

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bullied, dyslexic, rejected
from a top film school.

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One of the things that saved him:

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he was exposed to movies when he was a kid
with a Super-8 movie camera.

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I got bullied in high school.

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They called me all kinds of names,
like "tape recorder" and "bones."

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They'd go, "Bones!"
as I walked across the parking lot.

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And the only places I was not bullied

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was when I was doing a shared interest
with a friend of mine -

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riding horses,

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some other friends I had with electronics,

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friends who shared interests.

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Schools need to be keeping these classes:

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art, sewing, musical instruments,

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woodworking, theater,
welding, auto shop ...

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(Cheers) (Applause)

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creative writing.

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(Applause)

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We need to be keeping these classes.

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They also teach practical problem-solving.

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A Nobel Prize winner was 50% more likely
to have an art-and-crafts hobby

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compared to just some other scientist.

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That's another reason.

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Steve [Jobs], bullied in school.
What would happen to him today?

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Albert Einstein, no speech until age 3.

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He'd probably be in an autism class today.

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Where would he go today?

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I want to have you think about that.

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And the debate between so-called
useless humanities programs,

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such as calligraphy,

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should not be ignored.

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Calligraphy was one of the things
that helped Steve Jobs

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to be a good designer!

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We've got kids today who don't know
how to hook up a garden hose.

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(Laughter)

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They've gotten totally away
from the world of the practical.

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I have a livestock handling class,

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and my students have to do
a scale drawing.

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And we've got some students today
who've never used a ruler,

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never used a ruler to measure anything.

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Well, I don't know about an electric drill
for a kid this little,

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but we wanted to have kids growing up
and doing real things.

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And I loved this kindergarten:

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they had five-year-olds making things
out of broken computer parts.

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This is actually an Italian model.

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They believe in hands-on.

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We've got a huge shortage today
of skilled trades -

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plumbers, electricians,
mechanics, welders ...

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Computers are not going to replace this!

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Maybe in the future the computer
will diagnose your medical problems,

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but it won't fix
the hospital's air conditioning.

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Always going to have
to have people to fix things.

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These self-driving cars,

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they've got a lot of different sensors
and complicated stuff on them.

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I had a chance to visit Apple,
and that was super cool,

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and they need coders,
and they need them really badly.

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And there's a lot of kids out there
that are good at math.

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Somebody needs
to introduce them to coding!

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And when I was a young kid,
I used to love to do little projects.

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That was a little bird kite
that I invented,

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and I had to tinker to make it work.

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Yeah, we need to get kids
doing these things.

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Now, when you're weird, what you have
to do is you have to sell your work.

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So this is one of my drawings right here,

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and when I'd show my drawings to people,
people were impressed.

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In fact, this is a drawing
that I sold a major meat company

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to have them have me
design stuff for them.

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I simply showed them my work.

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Now, why does it say
you have to touch to perceive?

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When our industry went from hand-drafting
to computers - this was in the mid '90s -

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I started noticing very,
very strange mistakes on drawings -

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like the center of a circle
was not in the center of the circle.

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And what I learned was that person
had never drawn by hand,

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and they'd never built anything.

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And even today, I've got some drawings
from a major engineering company

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that had some concrete work in it
with no reinforcing rod.

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Really?

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I don't think that's a very good idea.

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They're not seeing their drawings.

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When you're weird, you've got
to show what you can do.

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Show your work off.
That's what you've got to do.

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And this is a picture
of one my early jobs,

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and this is the kind of pictures
that I would put in my portfolio

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to show clients.

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An interview for me was spread
the drawings on the table,

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put the pictures out there,

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give them my brochure ...

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That's the replica of one of my systems
they built for the HBO movie.

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And I loved the fact
that they put my projects in it.

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I've also realized
that working with building things

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changes your attitude
about how you do stuff.

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You have to actually get stuff done,

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and it's something specific
that you have to get done.

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It's not abstract; it's real.

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And there's my brochure, black and white,

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because back in the '70s, '80s and '90s,
color printing was just too expensive.

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There was no way I was going
to pay for color printing.

00:12:41.604 --> 00:12:44.463
So I made it really nice
in black and white.

00:12:44.893 --> 00:12:47.574
Now, what are some
of the common denominators

00:12:47.574 --> 00:12:50.557
of some of these kids that are different,

00:12:50.557 --> 00:12:54.709
of some of these individuals growing up
with lots of books and learning?

00:12:54.709 --> 00:12:57.305
When I was a young kid,
my mother always read to me.

00:12:57.305 --> 00:12:59.633
I had some very good teachers.

00:12:59.633 --> 00:13:00.786
This is super important.

00:13:00.786 --> 00:13:03.298
I didn't talk until age 4,

00:13:03.298 --> 00:13:06.320
so I had a very good speech teacher,

00:13:06.320 --> 00:13:09.259
and if people talked too fast,
I couldn't hear what they said.

00:13:09.259 --> 00:13:10.989
It was like, "Buh, buh, buh, buh."

00:13:10.989 --> 00:13:15.834
So my speech teacher would slow down
and enunciate the hard consonant words.

00:13:15.834 --> 00:13:18.187
I had Mrs. Deetch,
my 3rd grade teacher ...

00:13:18.187 --> 00:13:22.783
Mother had a really good sense
of how to stretch me.

00:13:22.783 --> 00:13:26.159
A lot of these kids are getting
too overprotected now they have a label.

00:13:26.159 --> 00:13:27.917
And the problem we've got with autism

00:13:27.917 --> 00:13:31.393
is it goes all the way from Einstein,
or maybe Thomas Edison,

00:13:31.393 --> 00:13:33.189
to somebody who can't dress themself.

00:13:33.189 --> 00:13:34.651
We've got the same word!

00:13:34.651 --> 00:13:38.312
So the verbal thinkers
get locked too much into the word!

00:13:39.122 --> 00:13:42.118
And early exposure to career interests,

00:13:42.118 --> 00:13:43.804
learning how to work.

00:13:44.094 --> 00:13:46.876
My mother got me
a sewing job when I was 13;

00:13:46.876 --> 00:13:49.688
I was cleaning horse stalls at 15.

00:13:50.238 --> 00:13:53.668
Learning how to work:
super, super important.

00:13:54.328 --> 00:13:55.460
Great mentors -

00:13:55.460 --> 00:13:57.092
I had a wonderful science teacher.

00:13:57.092 --> 00:13:59.572
He actually was a NASA space scientist,

00:13:59.572 --> 00:14:03.438
and what he did is he got me
interested in studying,

00:14:03.438 --> 00:14:08.755
because now, education
was a pathway to a goal.

00:14:08.755 --> 00:14:13.457
It wasn't done "just do it
for the sake of education."

00:14:13.457 --> 00:14:14.965
I'm seeing a lot of kids today:

00:14:14.965 --> 00:14:18.038
they doing super well on their academics,

00:14:18.038 --> 00:14:22.484
but then when school's over, what's next?

00:14:22.674 --> 00:14:25.484
Well, this is the reason
why they need to learn how to work.

00:14:25.484 --> 00:14:27.552
I've counseled a lot of students,

00:14:27.552 --> 00:14:33.094
and said, "If you're in college right now,
do career-relative, relevant internships.

00:14:33.094 --> 00:14:34.775
Go out and try on careers.

00:14:34.775 --> 00:14:37.850
Find out what you love,
but also maybe find out what you hate."

00:14:37.850 --> 00:14:39.158
It's important to do that.

00:14:39.158 --> 00:14:40.527
You can't get an internship?

00:14:40.527 --> 00:14:42.879
I say, "Get on your department's web page,

00:14:42.879 --> 00:14:45.384
get on the web pages
of whole other departments.

00:14:45.384 --> 00:14:47.805
There's all kinds
of interesting stuff going on

00:14:47.805 --> 00:14:52.224
that you can get involved in,
if you just look."

00:14:52.224 --> 00:14:53.745
And then you discover something,

00:14:53.745 --> 00:14:57.261
because originally I thought I was going
to be an experimental psychologist

00:14:57.261 --> 00:14:58.788
who studied optical illusions.

00:14:58.788 --> 00:15:01.029
Well, that wasn't what happened to me.

00:15:01.029 --> 00:15:02.059
(Laughter)

00:15:02.059 --> 00:15:03.723
It's just that simple.

00:15:03.723 --> 00:15:06.219
Also, when you don't have
much working memory,

00:15:06.219 --> 00:15:08.372
learning how to drive
is going to take longer.

00:15:08.372 --> 00:15:09.526
But it's essential,

00:15:09.526 --> 00:15:13.255
and I can't use this external
working memory to learn how to drive.

00:15:13.255 --> 00:15:16.106
So what you've got to do
to solve the problem of multitasking

00:15:16.106 --> 00:15:18.406
is get out there and practice,
practice, practice

00:15:18.406 --> 00:15:20.288
in totally safe places for a long time.

00:15:20.288 --> 00:15:22.838
I did 200 miles on dirt roads,

00:15:22.838 --> 00:15:26.740
and the truck was three on the tree,
with a really terrible clutch.

00:15:26.740 --> 00:15:27.765
(Laughter)

00:15:27.765 --> 00:15:30.960
And it started out lurching
all around the horse pasture.

00:15:30.960 --> 00:15:33.542
It was just absolutely awful.

00:15:33.542 --> 00:15:34.554
(Laughter)

00:15:34.554 --> 00:15:36.410
Well, the thing that's really important

00:15:36.410 --> 00:15:38.866
is we need all the different
kinds of minds,

00:15:38.866 --> 00:15:41.059
and I'm worried
that in some school systems

00:15:41.059 --> 00:15:44.306
we're screening out some of these kids
because they can't do algebra.

00:15:44.306 --> 00:15:47.347
If you do chemistry, you'll do
a lot of things that need algebra,

00:15:47.347 --> 00:15:51.792
but you don't need it
for solving a lot of problems.

00:15:51.792 --> 00:15:53.486
It's that simple.

00:15:53.486 --> 00:15:55.754
And that was my last slide right there,

00:15:55.754 --> 00:15:57.790
and let me give you some examples

00:15:57.790 --> 00:16:03.045
of where visual thinking
can solve problems.

00:16:03.045 --> 00:16:05.961
The Fukushima nuclear power plant mess.

00:16:05.961 --> 00:16:08.526
It's not a good idea
when you live next to the sea

00:16:08.526 --> 00:16:11.396
to put your super important
emergency cooling pump

00:16:11.396 --> 00:16:13.773
in a non-waterproof basement.

00:16:13.773 --> 00:16:15.763
It has an electric motor.

00:16:16.103 --> 00:16:18.083
That doesn't work too well under water.

00:16:18.083 --> 00:16:20.249
Watertight doors would have saved it.

00:16:20.249 --> 00:16:22.532
Then there's the Boeing MAX mess.

00:16:22.822 --> 00:16:25.272
You all know what
a Sharpie pen looks like.

00:16:25.272 --> 00:16:28.174
Would you trust one of those
stuck on the side of an airplane,

00:16:28.174 --> 00:16:30.686
wired right into active flight controls,

00:16:30.686 --> 00:16:32.511
and you didn't tell the pilots?

00:16:32.881 --> 00:16:34.248
I don't think so.

00:16:34.248 --> 00:16:37.333
You see, when you think
about it visually, you see it.

00:16:37.333 --> 00:16:40.936
Mathematical kinds of minds,
they calculate risk.

00:16:40.936 --> 00:16:42.727
Visual thinkers can see risk.

00:16:42.727 --> 00:16:46.741
They can also see solutions to problems.

00:16:47.410 --> 00:16:50.514
I can see a pigeon
just taking that sensor off.

00:16:50.514 --> 00:16:53.325
Then what happens?
It was a disaster what happened.

00:16:53.325 --> 00:16:58.687
There were other mistakes that were made,
but that was the first mistake.

00:16:59.033 --> 00:17:02.447
They just didn't see it!

00:17:02.447 --> 00:17:03.889
That's the thing.

00:17:04.304 --> 00:17:05.599
And -

00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:09.406
I got to thinking just real recently,
"What is common sense?"

00:17:09.406 --> 00:17:10.406
(Laughter)

00:17:10.406 --> 00:17:13.260
I think common sense is visual thinking.

00:17:13.260 --> 00:17:16.899
Because let's say there was a water bottle
or something on the floor -

00:17:16.899 --> 00:17:19.209
I'd pick that up
because if somebody steps on it,

00:17:19.209 --> 00:17:20.641
they could break their ankle.

00:17:20.641 --> 00:17:24.563
You see, that's seeing it.
Common sense is seeing it.

00:17:24.563 --> 00:17:26.186
So, I just want to finish up

00:17:26.186 --> 00:17:29.490
and say we need to figure out
how the different minds work together,

00:17:29.490 --> 00:17:32.393
where the skills complement each other.

00:17:33.033 --> 00:17:36.055
But the first step is realizing
that different kinds of thinking

00:17:36.055 --> 00:17:37.220
actually do exist.

00:17:37.220 --> 00:17:39.055
And I just want to finish up and say:

00:17:39.055 --> 00:17:41.090
the world needs all kinds of minds!

00:17:41.090 --> 00:17:42.662
Thank you very much.

00:17:42.662 --> 00:17:45.101
(Applause) (Cheers)