Left Over, Left Out, Left Behind: The Daily Discrimination against Left-Handed Students
Published July 28, 2005
In Lewis Carroll's book, Through the Looking Glass, Alice (who previously visited Wonderland) finds herself in a world in which everything is backwards. Objects that had been on her right side are now located to the left. Doors that opened inward now open outward. When she wants to move to the left, Alice finds her body moving to the right.
As imaginative and far-fetched as Alice's adventures may seem, they are a reality for almost 13% of the world's population: left-handed people. To the average lefty, living in a predominantly right-handed world is much like taking up full-time residence in Alice's looking glass. To us, everything IS backwards. And while we southpaws have adapted to our very own bizarro-world, we often feel the strain of living in a world that is not designed for us. Laws that require businesses and schools to offer equal opportunities to everyone — regardless of race, creed, appearance, sexual orientation, political leaning, or physical ability — do not apply to left-handedness. And that is why I feel that left-handed people are discriminated against in the one place that should be the least biased and the most tolerant of diversity: schools.
The most obvious element of left-handed discrimination in schools is seating. In most classrooms, desks are designed for the right-handed writer, with an arm rest for the right elbow, and nothing but air for the left. Although there are some left-handed desks available, the number of lefty students usually outnumbers the desks, and these desks are typically placed in the back of the room, where the student can write just fine, but he can't hear or see very well. This trade-off is unacceptable, and can often affect the student's grades--and possibly his behavior. In addition, because the left arm is not offered the same support as the right arm, a left-handed student is forced to contort his entire body into an awkward and uncomfortable position, which, according to the Handedness Research Institute, may make him susceptible to back, neck and shoulder pain. Some students have complained of muscle spasms, severe lower back pain, and carpal-tunnel syndrome, all attributed to the forced usage of right-biased desks.
Because of all this twisting around, just so they can write comfortably, many students have been unfairly accused of cheating. Since a student has turned his body to the right, it does in fact look as though he is trying to see his neighbor's paper; however, the fault most likely lies not with the student, but with his desk.
Studies have shown that the "inefficient and awkward writing position" forced upon left-handed students may lead to slower handwriting. This can be a huge drawback during timed tests, and especially during tests that can make or break a student's future, such as the ACT or SAT. One student said, "...lefties are disadvantaged ... on tests ...which use multiple choice booklets. You have to twist your arms around each other to line up the questions (on the left) with the answers (on the right). You definitely lose time doing this--and in most of these tests time is important." Another student is quoted as saying, "I am a lefty, and ... a very good student. However, on timed tests I have always been running against the clock and been less able to produce an amount of written material in comparison to my right-handed schoolmates...we are handicapped on very tightly timed tests ..."
- Left Over, Left Out, Left Behind: The Daily Discrimination against Left-Handed Students
- Published: July 28, 2005
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Society
- Writer: Mei Flower
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Comments on this articleComments
great post Mei! I am left-handed and don't even notice some of the issues you mention because I am so used to them.
My brother has mixed dominance, bhw, and he had to have reading tutoring to accomodate it.
Our 19 month-old is doing things with both hands, he throws (quite well) left-handed. Maybe I'll finally get one! My mother is left-handed and I'm the only child of four who is. Of her six grandchildren, my son would be the first (if he is).
We may no longer be demonized but we are still inconvenienced!
Great post.
Our school motto was 'Nec Dextorsum Nec Sinstorsum' or 'Neither to the Left Nor to the Right'
One hand clapping, et al.
southpaw here as well...it did serve me well in the ring during my youth....but spiral notebooks alone were enough of a nightmare, until i started using them upside down to put those pesky spirals on the other side...
my one line of encouragement to all left handers out there is simplicity itself, and based on medical fact...
only left handed people are in their "right" minds....
Excelsior!
yes, being left-handed is an advanatage in most sports
School supplies for lefties ...
When you buy left-handed scissors at the store, they are not designed for the lefty. They are right-handed scissors with the handles reversed; the manufacturer has not switched the blades, so they are easier to hold but don't cut very well.
Spiral notebooks! Grrr ... I remember Mead used to make them for lefties, with the spirals at the top, but I haven't seen them for years. You can buy lefty spirals and binders at 3-4 times the price of regular. I just start from the back and move forward.
Being left-handed makes it easier for the lefty to adapt to things; when I suggest that a right-handed student sit in the lefty desk to "see how the other half lives" they flat out refuse because "it's weird."
Sometimes mixed dominance is a result of someone trying to "switch" a lefty. My first grade teacher tried to switch me, and my mom had a fit! So, thanks Mom!
Mei Flower: When you buy left-handed scissors at the store, they are not designed for the lefty. They are right-handed scissors with the handles reversed; the manufacturer has not switched the blades, so they are easier to hold but don't cut very well.
Not sure that makes sense, each handle and blade is normally one piece. How can you switch one without the other? Scissors are chiral, so left-handed scissors should be an exact mirror image of right-handed scissors.
Scissors are designed to use the natural tendency of the thumb to push into the plane of the scissors and the fingers to pull back, thus levering the blades into each other. To use opposite handed scissors, pull your thumb in toward your palm and hold the scissors away from your palm with your fingers as you're cutting.
Left-hander here, too.
Love all the scientific back-up to this piece.
Clinton and Nixon were both left-handed. They say lefties are more creative. Perhaps that starts with figuring out how to navigate around a classroom.
There are businesses that sell left-handed items, like can openers and scissors, but they are more expensive than the mass-produced, right-handed versions that are sold in the department stores.
Turning the spiral notebook upside-down? Why didn't I ever think of that?
Eric, most children are ambidextrous until age 4 or 5. Thus far, I have one lefty, two righties and a three year-old who can scribble on the walls equally well with both hands.
a really really tedious post.
the point about writing desks is fair, but the rest is just a whine.
i am a left-handed person, but i don't use it to try and define my entire being. you'll be moaning about having a left-handed soul next.
i can't believe you think it's a chore to put coins in a vending machine with your right hand??? it actually sounds like you hate your right hand. use both, maybe? more people ARE right handed, it makes SENSE to put the buttons there, whether you be left-handed or right-handed, the argument is valid.
adapt and be stronger.
You lefties are all SINISTER (quite literally).
That is all.
Aaman - you are a pop-culture diva. Why did you pull Susie Derkins into this :-) I think the strip was written backwards and she's the only righty. LOL.
that's funny Margaret! But it seems to me they show a pretty definite preference much earlier than 4 or 5
Handedness being established around age 4-5 is just an average, one of those broad guidelines that parents use to either brag about or worry for their childrens' growth and development.
Some perfectly normal kids may very well find their preference before age 4, but I would surmise that any child who is still ambidextrous by the age of six or seven will likely remain so for the rest of his life.
In my school, all of the desks on the left hand side of the room were for lefties. I sometimes sat in them (I'm a rightie) because my awkward positioning in order to write on the desk made people not sit next to me.
Also... can you blame the discrimination? 13% is a really small number, and the costs to provide equality for left-handers is a lot to ask of a school.
I don't think I'm whining.
can you blame the discrimination? 13% is a really small number
In my school of 1500 students, 4 are wheelchair-bound. Should we tear out the ramps?
It does not cost more to buy a flat-planed desk that doesn't favor either the right or the left-handed student. Schools have to replace desks all the time, so substituting one type for another piece by piece doesn't offer any financial difficulty.
I just tried to point out that lefty students are at a disadvantage, not that they're stupid, not that they're inferior. When a teacher teaches 24 kids how to make their letters, and tells two that they have to learn on their own, how fair is that? And very few teachers will try to force natural lefties to write with their right hands nowadays, but it does still happen, as do the comments about being anti-social and fundamentally unstable. Just this year I was told (by another teacher) that I have criminal tendencies because of my left-handedness.
left-handed scissors should be an exact mirror image of right-handed scissors.
Yeah, they should, but the cutting edge of the blade is not turned when the handles are switched. So you're still using the right-handed scissors, just further to the left (if that makes sense).
>>can you blame the discrimination? 13% is a really small number
In my school of 1500 students, 4 are wheelchair-bound. Should we tear out the ramps?
Ka-blam. LOL. She has a wildly good and irrefutable point there.
i love being left handed because none of the people in my family are but when i get to school all i hear is,how is it possible for you to write like that and the worst one is i like your hand writing but i don't see how it's so nice you're a lefty;i just think to myself please shut up
It's hard to be left handed I'm not going to lie, but because everything is so right handed oriented I have automatically learned to adapt and I don't even notice it anymore. But it still sucks
Being left handed is the last great discrimination!
You righties don't even notice you're doing it to us, that's how deeply embedded it is. Every time I instinctively reach out for an object, a door handle or light switch or whatever, it's not there! Some clot put it in the wrong place!! Then, uuuhhh, I remember.
Just wait til the Chinese take over the world, my time will come! Oh, hang on, I can't speak Chinese either...
I'm a lefty and my young son is a lefty too! He started coming home from school with GRAPHITE SMUDGES on the side of his left hand and I HATED THAT! I had the same problem when I was in college with ink smudges. So I tried to find a product out there to solve this problem but none was available. So I decided to create my own product for my son. We call it "SMUDGE GUARD" and will launch it within a few months. It has eliminated the smudging problem for us when we write and draw and we hope that all left-handers will find this new product helpful in the future too!
My 4 year old daughter is left handed. It has been obvious since she was just a few weeks old. Now she is getting ready to start pre-k and I am really worrying about every little thing working against her likelyhood of enjoying school. She was so excited until her teenage cousins started telling her how much they hate it. I have been wondering what the teachers will say about her tendancy to turn spiral notebooks upside down or to start on the last page and work her way forward. And she is really having a hard time catching the hang of her pencil sharpeners... I actually ran into this post while looking for lefthanded pencil sharpeners, notebooks, and scissors. ... Does anyone know of any kinda cheap sites?
Hey Michelle,
Being left-handed myself, I never really had major problems in school - Only small annoying problems. Like:
1. having those looseleaf notebooks and spirals hurt my arm when writing.
2. having those ugly smudges on the side of my hand and pinky
3. having to sit on those right-handed chairs at school.
But there are products are there that can help..
1. buy spirals notebooks that have the spirals on top instead of on the side (like steno notebooks).
2. Buy [my product] SmudgeGuard to eliminate the problem of smudges.
3. Choose the limited amount of Left-handed chairs in school.
Hope this helps!
Jeannie
I'm left-handed - 41 years in. Things designed for right handers are countless. Everything in your car. I love the slection I find of left handed golf clubs at the pro shop. The most annoying item though I can think of is a Skill Circular Saw I have. When cutting a board with my left hand naturally, it exhaust the saw dust directly in my face. Someone said it is an advantage in sport to be left-handed - it is only because the opponent expects you to be/play/shoot right handed. In baseball, you are only able/allowed to play 5 of the nine positions. Fed up often by reverse discrimination as a white male due to unrelentling and often unreasonable demands for advantage by countless minority groups, I often when asked if I am a minoroty have replied "yes, I'm left handed." I believe we should unite and form the NAA"L"P, march to the Capital on the left side of the street and sue everyone and anyone we can for personal financial gain, I mean our rights, oops!, I mean our lefts.
I am also left handed, and I never really encountered any problems with products made for right handed people. The only thing that really bothers me is that my school has no desks for lefties, and writing essays is a real pain. Otherwise, I think all of the complains from right-handed products are ridiculous.
about the jesus thing, there is no possible way how two lefthanded people can sit by each other and bump elbows...
Have been reading through the comments on this post, which I found very interesting.
I'm a righty, but after learning that Leonardo da Vinci was a lefty who wrote backwards to create a mirror code, so only he could decipher his instructions, I tried to teach myself to write with the left hand - and succeeded.
For all of you who complain about right handed three ring binders and the like, come to Israel and learn to write Hebrew (or Arabic). This country is a lefty's paradise, and writing Hebrew with the right hand is very much what writing English is with the left. The two ring binders are all made correctly for lefties, the calendars all go in the proper direction. It all makes me wonder if left handedness wasn't a dominant trait in the priestly class in ancient Israel.
In Israel, you have to be real creative to get by. Lefties are just that.
Like Chris says, lefties rule...
Ruvy -- why the "priestly class" specifically? Ehud wasn't of Shevet Levi; he was of Shevet Binyamin.
(Book of Judges, Chapter 3, for anyone who's trying to figure out what I'm talking about.)
MAOZ,
Ehud had to be left-handed - his right hand was withered.
I was thinking that the priestly class and the Levi'ím pretty much ran the show in ancient Israel. Lefthandness is a genetic trait that does not require the withering of the right hand...
Ehud's right hand was withered? Somehow I missed that -- from where do we learn it?
I am also a Left-Handed student. I find difficulties in everything mentioned. Well, i have not thought of some of the things mentioned before, but now as I think of it, i do find some difficulties. The SMUDGE GAURD looks interesting, but what about the other problems we face? I wish of could be that simple. But with a student salary, it is hard to purchase specialized items just to accomplish something a righty can do with a less expense.
My teacher in Elementary would scold me for using my left hand. My cursive was never slanted correctly, and i could not write, "like the other kids". She once contacte my parents to change my handedness, and my mother was raged.
I have adapted, but that bump i get on my left-pinky from writing still pains.
'no pain no gain' right?-->left?
Brenda
A story in my family is that when my eldest cousin was born and my grandma meet him she said to his mom "How could you do that? You are raising a devilish child by letting him be left-handed." well now all 5 of her grandsons are left-handed.
Well I am a right-hander, but I support all of the left-handers. In fact I'm doing an essay on discrimination against left-handed people. Anyone got any tips.
Yes, do an article or essay about how taking guitar class, the teacher expects you to learn right handed even if it doesn't feel comfortable.We wouldn't make right handed guitar players learn left haned so why make left haned learn right ? Also , the schools provide right handed guitars for right handed kids, but no left handed guitars for left handed kids.This is happening right now in Northern Virginia.
This article really hit home with me. When I was young my grandmother as well as a teacher told me that it was wrong to write left-handed. now I write with my right hand in something that can only be described as chicken scratch. There have been other times as well that I have felt weird. I ordered a guitar from a place about a week ago and when it arrived it was a righty, only to find out that they only make the color I want in a right-handed model. Why is it that a guitar for a lefty cost more money? Things like this have eat at me my whole life, and I am still in college.
Great post! When I first started my new job, I noticed that the employees were in the process of rearranging things. After asking what they were doing they told me that their last boss was left-handed and insisted that everything was to be set up for lefties. They were simply in the process of changing things "back to normal". Naturally I put a stop to it immediately. I even contacted my predecessor to thank him for standing up for his lefts and that I would gladly keep things as they were.
Left handed here, and this is to say that while I quite agree with the author's point of view that most things are for right handed, I cannot view it as being something to be considered as perpetually damaging discrimination. I mean, if you are a lefty, it does not mean that you should only use your left hand and never use the right one. Just adapt and try to use right handed tools with the right hand.
Become stronger, adapt. . . .
I have adapted to being left handed.But I just dont think its fair why people do this to us.When I was in Kindgergarten most of the kids though I was really weird.My friend is right handed but she was acutally left handed..I noticed she had trouble writing in Kindergarten.She says now her mom made her be right handed..harsh.Her dad is right handed.I think being left handed is an advantage. I am much more creative and imaginative than my friends.I am now in Highschool.
Interesting stuff. I'm a mix, in that I write and use tools with my right hand but throw with my left. I sometimes cook and do other things with my left hand. I'm also left-footed.
Someone mentioned that handedness isn't fixed until the age of about five. This article and its comments thread have got me thinking I might actually be left-handed, and just adapted as a youngster because it was easier - everything being designed for righties as it usually is.
Another reason for my suspicion is that I have appalling handwriting and a very awkward writing grip that causes my fist to drag across the lines I've just written. I could use some of that Smudge Guard!
I wonder...
I'm left-handed too and find it very frustrating how the whole world is designed back to front. It's just wrong!
Then how come your comment isn't written backwards?
;-)
I'm really thinking about this now. It's interesting that for most activities in which it doesn't make a difference which hand one uses - throwing darts at a board, kicking a ball, voting - I'm a leftie...
This is an awesome post and a great way of saying much us lefties are discriminated against in the world.
I'd like to see a right hander try and live in a left-handed world for a day.
I'm entering high school and I'm a lefty. 3/4ths of my family is left handed too :D. So far whenever i tell people im left handed they say cool and ask a lot of questions like: how do you write? is using scissors hard for you? Sometimes i don't like to write on the dry erase board because my hand turns the color of the marker! In the house we have about seven or eight pairs of left-handed scissors floating about. (We never know where they are when we need them) My dad dosen't mind he's the only righty, and that's pretty cool of him. I do plenty of stuff with my right hand so don't really mind that, or I just scoot over and let my left hand take over. My mom uses scissors with her right hand, and plays jacks like that too because that's what she had to grow up with. I love being left handed cuz its a great conversation starter. I even did a poll in the classroom of how many lefties there were. I found quite a few in hiding heh..heh.. anyway really appreciate all who read this :D. thanks
Just don't try to marry another left-handed person, or the religious right (!) will rise up against us.
Years ago I ran an ice cream store, and we always kept left-handed ice cream scoops (they really are different) on hand.
The word is spelled "iceberg" by the way, not "iceburg".
Yes, finally I'm part of an oppressed minority class. Does this mean I have to vote Democrat now?
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/33246)
Fantastic post! I'm right-handed, but my best childhood friend was/is left-handed, and I was well aware of the troubles she had at school with desks, notebooks, scissors ... basically everything.
But this was in the '70s and '80s. Are school supplies for lefties still in such short supply?
Also, if you think lefties have it rough, try being my husband: he has mixed dominance, where neither the left nor right is dominant. He had a boatload of trouble in school with teachers who penalized him for penmanship that he couldn't fix and for the associated reading troubles that came with the mixed dominance. It's basically a form of dyslexia. And he still has trouble today with left/right distinction.