Murray Kaufman is a\u00a0retired high-school science teacher and ardent activist. In the following\u00a0video he describes how, as\u00a0a child, he was held back in first grade for being left-handed.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.commonties.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/13\/i-was-a-rebel\/<\/a><\/p>\n What he describes is far worse than what I went through, but I can relate. It was about\u00a040 years ago\u00a0when\u00a0I made myself switch to using my\u00a0right hand to write, to conform, to fit in with the others in my first grade class. It’s been so long, I don’t recall if there were any negative comments being made that led me to make the switch. My first grade teacher – Miss Rooney – wasn’t exactly a sweetheart. She may have noticed me writing with my left hand, and she may have commented\u00a0that only the smart students, the good students\u00a0wrote\u00a0with\u00a0their right hand. She may have even suggested\u00a0that\u00a0there was something wrong about being left-handed.<\/p>\n I do know that\u00a0I struggled with it for a while, naturally preferring to use my left hand. It also made me angry. Using my right hand did not feel natural, and it’s human to feel\u00a0resistance\u00a0to doing anything that doesn’t feel natural.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It also gave\u00a0me my first taste of non-conformity when\u00a0at first\u00a0I decided I was going to be left-handed no matter what anyone thought. My father supported me. He told me some famous people were left-handed, people like Rockefeller, and not to listen to the stupid opinions of others. But I caved in, not because of any pressure or abuse,\u00a0but because I undervalued myself. I didn’t\u00a0have enough confidence in myself to be who I\u00a0was. I began to believe that maybe it would make me smarter, or perform better in class if I made myself switch to using my right hand. At any case, it would\u00a0make\u00a0me conform to the satisfaction of my teacher and maybe help me fit in better with the rest of the\u00a0students.<\/p>\n Think I might have\u00a0sold myself out. Murray Kaufman describes how he went through a period of stuttering when he was forced to use his right hand. I myself stuttered on and off\u00a0during\u00a0my childhood. To this day, I don’t express myself well verbally. Think I’m slighted more because of it, underestimated and do get cut off and spoken over quite a bit.\u00a0Even by those\u00a0who tell me they are my friends. Maybe I should have chosen\u00a0to remain\u00a0left-handed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about left-handedness: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Left_handed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Murray Kaufman is a\u00a0retired high-school science teacher and ardent activist. In the following\u00a0video he describes how, as\u00a0a child, he was held back in first grade for being left-handed. https:\/\/www.commonties.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/13\/i-was-a-rebel\/ “You know what I learned from that … to be\u00a0very tough …\u00a0and to do what you know is right … and\u00a0to not\u00a0give in to any authority … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-czblog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucarinfo.com\/czblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n