Leftover Issues?

The prejudice against left-handed is ancient.    It’s enshrined in our language.   

Right, after all, has two main meanings:   one positional, one judgmental.    And hence two opposites:   left, and wrong.    And that means that the association between left and wrong, the notion that one is inevitably linked to the other, sits deep in our psyche.

There are other signs.    Us northern lads called it cack-‘anded.    And cack, whatever euphemistic etymological origins our American cousins might attribute to it, is Old English for dung, from the Latin cacare, to defecate.

The French may be more refined, but their word for left-handed, gaucher, lines up nicely with our word gauche.    As does the word maladroit, or “bad-to-right”, for clumsy.    And as for the Romans, well, the Latin for left-handed is sinister.    Need I say more?

But, surely, in these enlightened times, such prejudices should be left in the dustbin of outdated attitudes.    Shouldn’t they?

After all, far more recent Presidents of the United States have been left-handed (Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton, and now Obama) than right.    So lefties must be doing something right (if you’ll forgive the phrase).

Yet recent research suggests that “left-handed pupils do less well in tests than their right-handed peers”.    What’s more, “the gap between left and right-handed pupils did not lessen with age”

So, what are we to make of that?    Does the prejudice against our cack-‘anded cousins impede their development?    Or are they just naturally a bit thicker than your alrighty-handed majority (GW not withstanding)?

12th January, 2009
Source: Quodlibs 319

Links

cack-handed (retrieved 09-02-2009)
gaucher (retrieved 09-02-2009)
BBC story (retrieved 09-02-2009)

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