Ilda
Anthony Scott wrote:
> Phil Graham asked:
> >
> >Does anyone know much about differences in the ways left-handed >people
> learn stuff - indeed, do they learn fundamentally differently?
>
> Well, I am very left handed & I have always worked in professions where
> the number of left handers one encounters seems to be above the % in the
> population as a whole: academia, art, computing. This might lead one to
> lend some credence to the left-brain, right-brain stuff: in left handers
> the right brain is supposed to be "prominent." My own feeling is that
> left-handedness can give you fairly direct experience of cultural
> mediation by artifacts and rituals which are essentially right handed,
> and this affects how/what you learn.
>
> A few examples:
>
> - eating habits. In Britain we use the knife and fork at the same time,
> and there is a proper (right-handed way) round. Easier to eat in the US
> style, which some left-handers adopt.
>
> - pens. If one is of a certain age, one has learned that it is
> impossible to write left handed with (calligraphic) pens, which must be
> pulled across the paper, and blot if pushed. You will observe many
> left-handed people cope with this right-handed artifact by curling their
> left hand right around and pulling. I'm sure the inventor of the ball
> point pen was left handed!
>
> - cars. Driving in Britain the gear lever (shift stick) is to my left.
>
> - scissors. It is impossible to cut with some right hand scissors in the
> left hand.
>
> - swords. According to my history teacher, we Brits drive on the wrong
> side of the road because the Romans would pass each other right side to
> right side (i.e. stay to the left) in case they had to draw swords and
> fight (right-handedly, of course).
>
> - teaching. A specific answer to your question, and I know that I was
> not the only case. When I first went (early) to school, I had maanged
> to acquire a sort of joined-up script. There had been some recent
> publicity that forcing left handers to do things in a right handed way
> somehow did them (brain) damage. My teacher took one look, saw that I
> was already doing something like writing, and left it at that. The
> folks at LCHC will confirm that I still have infant writing!
>
> - heraldry. If you were born "on the wrong side of the sheets" of a
> noble father you might still get to bear arms, but your coat-of-arms
> would have a diagonal bar going the wrong way so as to display your
> bastardy.
>
> So far, I've met only one art teacher who actually makes sure she has
> some left-handed scissors for the left handers in her class. She is of
> course left handed herself.
>
> yours sinistrally,
>
> Tony Scott
>
>
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