FULDA/MUNICH (dpa) – Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci were in the club, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates are also among its alumni.
Being left-handed, however, is a distinction that cannot quite shake off the prejudice that its practitioners are less intelligent or unskilful with their hands.Schools in many countries may allow the children in their charge to write with their left hand in the meantime, but “the idea that children should be re-educated to write with the right hand has not yet been prised from the heads of many parents and grandparents,” says Elisabeth Werthmueller of the Left-Handers’ Initiative in Fulda, in central Germany.“What if the child wants to be a dentist?” one distraught family recently asked her – “it has no chance as a left-hander.”International Left-Handed Day, held on August 13, 1976 – it was a public holiday – in the U.S., went largely unnoticed in Germany and was not used in any awareness campaigns here.Nowadays, though, interest is steadily growing and there are several advice centres to provide advice and actively campaign against the notion that left-handers are clumsy.This idea, that the right hand is the right one and the left hand the bad, can be traced to the days of Christ.Psychologist and psychotherapist Johanna Barbara Sattler, who founded the first advice centre for left-handers in Munich in 1985, can only shake her head over some of the claims she’s heard: “Left- handed people die nine years earlier than right-handers,” is one rumour.Moreover, left-handers are chaotic, apparently. “That’s a load of rubbish,” says Sattler. The idea that left-handers have some sort of mental deficiency is still held even today, says Werthmueller.No one knows how many left-handed people live in Germany; the estimates vary from ten to 50 per cent – but that includes many who were forced to become right-handers as children.This “retraining” process to the so-called “right” hand certainly leaves its marks: Werthmueller, at the Left-Handers’ Initiative, reports that she was terribly unconcentrated as a child and had the feeling that “I’m not right the way I am.”Psychologist Sattler maintains that the process of changing writing hands represents a serious assault on the brain. Memory and speech defects, even stuttering and bed-wetting are the consequences, she says, because left- or right-handedness, which scientists say is in any case inherited, is controlled by the hemispheres of the brain. These are connected to the opposite body half by crossed nerves.In left-handers, the right hemisphere is functionally dominant. It is primarily responsible for determining spatial preferences and thought. This explains why left-handed people are often described as particularly creative.But in the workplace, using technical devices, they often experience problems. Nevertheless, it is always better to choose another occupation than to retrain to use the right hand, says expert Sattler. Household appliances for left-handers, such as scissors, potato peelers, ladles and can-openers, are now available through specialist mail-order firms.The voluntary initiative in Fulda often gives left-handers tips on how to hold a pen properly. Werthmueller and her colleague Andrea Zentgraf also help parents who want to find out which hand is the dominant in their child.In contrast to 30 years ago, left-handers are no longer forced to switch to their right hand in German schools, yet many teachers still have no idea how they can help left-handers with practical advice, says Zentgraf. Instead, these children often have to hear that they have to get along with “the problem” themselves.
