Why did teachers in the past make left-handed kids write wit

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I had a little trouble at first when learning calligraphy (with a quill and liquid ink that stains clothing and skin) but I figured out pretty quickly how to "hover" my hand. There are other somewhat practical reasons some cultures insist on people using their right hands (like eating with your right hand but using your left for hygienic tasks), but obviously, that doesn't justify the prejudice and sometimes hatred that has persisted for so long. No one tells you that you're the devil's spawn just because you have ink on your hand.

That doesn't really explain strapping a child's hand behind their back after caning it.

Teachers were very ableist and other prejudices back in the day. One of the prejudices was against left handed people. It's just that it's been practically wiped out today so it seems bizarre.

It was where the kept the inkwell.

Though, when I went to school in the 1960s, I didn't use fountain pens; the ballpoint was already the most common pen.

Maybe the teachers learned that in school

I'm pretty lucky I was born in an era where being a lefty is generally acceptable, at least in most western countries.

In fact, I'm actually pretty lucky I was born in the last quarter of the 20th century.

My stepdad tried to force me to use it. I'm right handed but dyspraxic.

The only pen which works for me is called a 'handwriting pen'. Like kids use. Biros make my writing scratchy and fountain pens are impossible for me.

Even though I'm from the 90s they still punished me for being dyspraxic sometimes.

Ironically my strictest teacher (who was backwards in many other ways) was the one who encouraged me to go back to handwriting pens as a teenager. He was a stickler for neatness. At the start of year he told us unless someone has a disability they had to write neatly and if someone had a disability come see him so I did. He gave me a handwriting pen and asked me to write what he dictated at the same pace he had in class. He told me as long as I used the pen and kept up the standard of neatness I wouldn't get in trouble as it wouldn't be fair.

Now I'm starting to feel sorry for the left handed kids in his class as even with biros, left handed writing can sometimes be hindered and scruffier tbh...

My wife, most of my (few) friends and it appears possibly my newborn baby are all left handed and I will swear on my grave that I was a lefty that was forced right. The clearest evidence was the fact that despite years of trying I CANNOT bat right in baseball yet throw right and still have such sloppy writing I switched back to printing like a child. I clearly remember my teacher explaining that you HAD to use your right hand to print in Grade 1 just like how only girls wore earrings and dresses because it was the "proper" way to do things.

That would also explain why despite being a borderline genius in elementary school I had atrocious printing and spent literally an hour a night for months practicing it with Mom. My best guess is that it was leftover from religion. When I went to elementary school the Churches still ran all the public schools and we were segregated based on Catholic vs Protestant even thought it was rapidly dying off. Hard to believe I would have been shunned just 50 years ago for marrying a Catholic woman!

I'd give anything to be the age I am now in the 1950s, when there was still some hope for Western civilization. I've always been immensely jealous of my grandparents' and great-grandparents' generations.

I don't believe I would have benefited from being in the generations before the "Baby Boomers."

I would have probably been abused, and been told to shut up by adults. I might have had "punishments" that would have relegated me to a single bedroom for a long period of time.

I was often told to "shut up" by adults even in the late 60s/early 70s----and I was hit with the belt and spanked a number of times. But the Renaissance of the late 60's did make things a bit easier for me, in my opinion.

I firmly believe I would have turned out a better, more able, more developed person if I'd have been disciplined more. I've met others who feel the same way.

There's a trade-off here:

1. Too little discipline in childhood and adulthood anomie.
2. Too much discipline in childhood and adulthood resentment and bitterness.

I don't claim to know which is preferable, but the old-fashioned system seemed to produce better, more moral adults with significantly lower rates of petty crime, divorce, teenage pregnancy, drug use and every other social problem we can't imagine being rid of today.

Honestly, I don't think I would have "made it" under a strict disciplinary regime.

I would have "turned into myself," and become more "classically autistic" than I am now.

Yes, parents and educators need to consider the temperament of the child, along with other factors. The golden mean here is somewhere between the neglectfully absent and indifferent parenting of today and the domineering parenting of the earlier part of last century.

My only regret is that I started doing normal adult things very late, in my mid to late 40s. Had I been inspired to do things earlier, rather than just doing what was easy for me, I would have been much farther along than I am today. I am doing fairly well now, but there are still significant adult milestones I have not met. I would still have to learn a lot more if were to ever get married.

Kraftie and Prometheus have it exactly right.

In my opinion, there are two ways to make a child fail. One is to be completely absent from the child's life and the other is to be a helicopter parent. I have seen cases where the child gets exactly the opposite of what they need at each stage of their lives. Sometimes parents are absent from the child's life in the early years, only to become helicopter parents later on at an age where children need to learn to do more for themselves.

In cases of absent parents, the cycle tends to perpetuate itself.

In cases where a parent does everything for a child, that child will never really grow up.

This is exactly what I mean! Well meaning adults are not doing enough to encourage children to mature into adults themselves, for fear of hurting their feelings. This only does them harm.

I, too, was brought up on the free-range (neglectful and often wilfully, in my view) model, and as a result had to spend the latter part of my adolescence repairing the damage that had been done and learning the things any previous generation would have learned as a matter of course.

Neglectful parenting has the power to destroy civilisation, in my view, and is a large part of the reason for the decline of western civilisation we're witnessing. Once my generation reaches its forties and fifties, there will quite literally be no adults left in Britain and America, considered emotionally, socially, morally and intellectually. Then it will be for traditional civilisations like that of the Chinese to take over - not necessarily a pleasant thought.

Amen.