Do you prefer writing with your left hand? If you do, you are one of the millions of “lefties” in the world. There would be even more left-handed people in the world if many people weren’t forced to use their right hand.
To understand left-handedness, it is necessary to look at the brain. The brain is divided into two hemispheres. In most right-handers, the left hemisphere is the center of language and logical thinking. This is where they do their math problems and memorize vocabulary. The right hemisphere controls how they understand broad, general ideas and how they respond to the five senses. The left hemisphere of the brain controls the right sight of the body, and the right hemisphere controls the left side. Both sides of the body receive the same information from the brain because both hemispheres are connected. However, in right-handed people, the left hemisphere is stronger. In left-handed people, i the right hemisphere is stronger.
Left-handedness can cause problems for people. Some left-handed children see letters and words backward. They read “d” for “b”and “was” for “saw”. Another problem is stuttering. When a left-handed child is forced to use his right hand, the normal current and power patterns between brain cells will be disrupted, which can lead to stuttering. Queen Elizabeth II’s father, King George VI, had to change from left-handed writing when he was a child, and he stuttered all his life.
Anthropologists think that the earliest people were about 50% left-handed because ancient tools from before 8000 B.C. could be used with either hand. But by 3500 B.C., the tools, which were better designed, were for use with only one hand. More than half of them were for right-handed people.
The first writing system went from right to left. The Greeks began to write from left to right around the fifth century B.C. because they increasingly believed that right was “good” and left was “bad”. As time passed, more and more customs connected left with “bad”. This belief is still common in many countries today, and left-handed people suffer because of it.
As the centuries passed and education spread to more levels of society, more people became literate. As more children learned to write, more of them were forced to write with their right hand. In the 1930’s, some teachers finally started permitting students to write with their left hand. In some countries, however, left-handed children are still forced to write with their right hand.