Today, I watched the movie ‘Temple Gradin’ featuring Claire Danes as Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is a person on the autism spectrum who revolutionized the cattle euthanization process. After seeing what she had to endure in order to share her talents and be successful, it made me realize some flaws in the mainstream society and the lack of integration between people with disorders and people without disorders. Primarily, throughout her childhood, Temple is seen being bullied by her peers and often falling behind/failing in school because she learns in a different manner or she does certain things to soothe herself that others don’t.

This shows one of the flaws as being a lack of education in mainstream society about people with autism/other disorders. If the students were informed that is a way of coping with a mental disability in a stressful environment, and not something random she does, they would be more accepting or at least not make fun of her for the things she does. Another flaw is how Temple’s education needs aren’t met throughout most of the movie. Teachers didn’t realize that her disorder meant she learned in a different way and had to be taught in a specific way. Instead of finding a way allowing her to excel with her visual learning ability, teachers would give up on her and just give her bad grades.

Then when one teacher finally realized that she had to be taught differently, she moved on to college, and ended up doing something completely revolutionary. Temple Grandin transformed the process by which cattle are euthanized. She created a system in which cows naturally walk in the direction they have to without being violently prodded by handlers using patterns she found in their movements. Altogether, the system was more humane than before. Now, over half the cattle in the US are euthanized by the process Grandin designed. During her college days, she also created a machine, now called the “hug machine” or the “squeeze machine,” which is a deep pressure device that soothes anxious people – especially people with autism.

Since the professors and students at her college didn’t understand what it was, or care to comprehend how it helped her, they ordered it to be taken away and trashed. This led to Temple having many panic attacks and being overly anxious. It wasn’t until she contacted the one teacher that believed in her, and proposed an experiment to the college testing the efficiency of the machine, that they allowed her to keep the device. Now, the device is used in numerous therapy programs. Although things are different these days, and students with autism do receive help, this is how they are mostly treated in the mainstream society. Gradin’s amazing accomplishments are still used today, and she is still an inspiration to all of us. Her designs, and models are used worldwide today and have made a lot of profit.