Being left handed
One thing that has been part of my Mills Education is the idea of power, privilege, class, and where I fit in and how I can be an ally. This has led me down some very frustrating roads. I think one of the reasons is because no one discusses one challenge I live with everyday and it bugs me that it doesn't matter.
( Cutting here, because some people may find this incredibly offensive. )
( Cutting here, because some people may find this incredibly offensive. )
It's been less than 20 years, however, since most schools stopped forcing left-handed children to write with their right hands. My husband's very likely naturally left-handed, but had to go through the whole "left hand taped behind your back until you do this RIGHT!" thing in school.
A couple of simple tests I've done say that I'm left-eye dominant. I'm right-handed, but there are a small number of tasks I do much better with my left. Including fencing. I dropped out of fencing class because they didn't have left-handed jackets in my size, and I was tired of being speared in the gap between the buttons and having the foil catch.
I went through a stage in my youth where I tried to write with my left hand. I wound up flipping the notebooks upside down & writing backwards. Got to where I could write fairly legibly that way, and wondered why it's not taught that way for left-handed kids. And then realized that the school system really can't handle the idea of teaching kids to read & write upside-down, and really, they're kinda disturbed at the idea of even very tiny variations in the standardized methods.
Kallisti's left-handed. The way she writes is... interesting.
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That is one thing that stunned me with my left-handed child (Boyo is a lefty). Public schools still do not know how to teach a left handed child to write. I had to show him the paper tilting trick.
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