Why Left-Handed People Were Punished in Schools for Centuries

Why Left-Handed People Were Punished in Schools for Centuries

There’s something almost absurd about it, once you see it clearly. For hundreds of years, children who naturally reached for a pencil with their left hand were corrected, restrained, and in many cases punished — not because they were doing anything wrong, but because the hand they used made adults uncomfortable. It happened in classrooms across Europe and North America, in religious schools and secular ones alike, and the consequences for those …