Dave said:"wafflycathcsdirtycatlitter" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Well, yes. But it could well be that you're left handed.
No, I'm not left handed, nor ambidexterous.
Quoted message said:You might be naturally , Helen, but had it trained out of you as a child....sorry, just realised
that you are probably young enough to have been raised in an era when they'd stopped forcing right
handedness. Often wonder what effect this had on people that did suffer it though....
I'm an old sufferer.
I'm a natural right hander who was forced to write with the left hand by a teacher who wouldn't let
me sit doing no writing while my right hand was in bandages. When the bandages came off I wrote much
better with left than right so stayed with it. I suspect the effect of this has been that it reduced
the natural specialisation of language skills to one side of my brain which usually happens in
males. I have seen it hypothesised that this helps the development of wit, since it makes it easier
to exploit the natural ambiguities of language. The larger corpus callosum in women makes it harder
for them to be in two minds about things.
Another advantage of being a natural right-hander but a left-handed writer is that the injuries
which naturally happen more often to the stronger more used and abused hand don't stop you from
writing. An educational advantage is that I learned very early to distrust teachers.
So it seems to me as though it might be the case that boys should be encouraged to write with the
wrong hand. The lesser linguistic lateral specialisation in adult women (which is why they don't
lose so much speech in strokes, and recover better), may invalidate this argument for girls.
Tomboys, whose linguistic lateralisation is on average roughly mid way between the male and
female averages, would have to be considered separately, as would whatever you call the
equivalent kind of male.
No, Jones, that was a generic "you", and we're not interested in what you call Paul. Now, if you
will all pick up your pens in the wrong hand...
However, given that today's teachers have even given up teaching children how to hold a pen,
resulting in the many varieties of "fumble fist" and "comprehensive claw" our young folk so
ingeniously struggle to write with, I hold out no hope of progress here.
--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 650 3085 School of Artificial Intelligence, Division of
Informatics Edinburgh University, 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK
[dai.ed.ac.ukcamOpen ↗ ] DoD #205