Carolyn Cooper | Left-handed children suffer in school

For the last several months, I’ve been tutoring a bright seven-year-old boy online. Our subject is language arts. He’s articulate and engaged and we’ve had lots of fun chatting about a whole range of issues such as politics, sports, science and music. I was intrigued by the fact that he does not like to write. Whenever I asked him to write about the topics we were going to discuss in our next conversation, he would make it quite clear that this was a burden. No matter how interested he was in the subject!

I kept wondering why this perceptive child doesn’t like to write. It simply didn’t make sense. I finally figured out the answer last week. It’s a pain for him to write. Literally! And it’s all because he’s left-handed in a right-handed world. The physical act of writing is very challenging. This is how the child put it. I’ve slightly rearranged his spontaneous sentences:

“First, the book is shaped for right-handed people and it’s not comfortable. It makes my hand hurt. It’s easier to write on the left-hand page. It’s hard to write with your hand bending down to the other page. It’s hard to write on the hump of the exercise book. The margin is on the left side and it’s big. It’s hard to write where I’m supposed to start because the margin gets in the way.” I suggested that he turn his exercise book upside down and he sensibly said he didn’t think his teacher could manage that.

Last week, I gave my star pupil an assignment to identify ten objects that are specially designed for lefties. He excitedly jumped up and said he had something to show me. He ran to get it. It was scissors for left-handers. One of his aunts who is teaching him art online had just sent it. Before, when he had projects for school that required scissors, he had to depend on his mother to do all the cutting. Now, he’s able to do it all by himself. And he feels so proud.

OWN-WAY

Naturally, I asked the child’s mother if she had noticed that he doesn’t like to write. Of course, she had. But what was fascinating was her interpretation of his behaviour. She had just assumed he was being his usual ‘own-way’ self: not doing what he should when it suited him. But since she’d recently started to deal with the challenges of remote schooling, she’d realised that the matter was much more complex. It was taking the child a long time to write down assignments. And it certainly was not because he was fooling around.

Left-handedness is primarily a physical issue. It has nothing to do with intellectual ability. But what happens to a child in the classroom who doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with written assignments? Is that student dismissed as a ‘slow learner,’ especially when she or he is being taught to write? Are our teachers trained to recognise and solve the problems that left-handed students encounter in school?

A lot of parents and teachers don’t seem to realise the challenges left-handed children face. Simple decisions like the location of the student in the classroom can make a big difference. Left-handers should be placed at the end of a row so that their elbow doesn’t collide with that of their right-handed neighbour. Desks should be designed for left- handers. There are helpful techniques for using pencils; and even specially designed pens.

The National Pen website confirms that, “Lefties have to push the pen away from their hand while simultaneously creating legible loops and slants, crossing ‘t’s and dotting ‘i’s. Pushing means it’s more likely that the pen tip skips and the line gets broken.” The solution to this problem depends on how the ink flows. The smoother, the better: “Less pressure is required for ink flow, meaning more comfort and less exertion while writing.” Some pens even have a curved barrel which means left-handers don’t have to hook their wrist around to see what they’re writing.

INTERNATIONAL LEFT-HANDERS DAY

Most of us who are right-handed don’t usually think about the advantages we enjoy. We just take them for granted. We are in the majority and it just seems natural that practically everything is set up to accommodate us. By contrast, approximately 10 per cent of the world’s population is left-handed. And they often have a hard time adjusting to the reality that most things don’t work the way they should for them.

Furthermore, left-handers are sometimes suspiciously seen as not quite ‘normal’. This distrust of left-handers has a long history. The word ‘sinister’ is of Latin origin meaning, ‘left, on the left side’. The word conjures up evil practices. The opposite of ‘sinister’ is ‘dexter’, another Latin word, meaning ‘on the right hand’. That’s the source of ‘dexterous’ which means skilful, especially with the hands. There’s a stark contrast between left and right, evil and good. And it’s firmly fixed in our language.

International Left-Handers Day was established in 1992 to challenge sinister stereotypes. It’s observed on August 13. One of the slogans for the celebration is, ‘I’m left- handed. What’s your superpower?’ It’s a challenge to right-handers to acknowledge how easy we have it. And we must ensure that every left-handed child is freed from the pain of writing against the grain.

- Carolyn Cooper, PhD, is a specialist on culture and development. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.