Educational Inclusiveness: Addressing Society’s Failure to Accommodate Left-Handedness

Abstract

Although left-handers are approximately 10% of any indiscriminate general population, they are remarkably over-represented globally in positions of leadership, administration and governance. This has been explained as being due to their right-brain dominance which appears to have made it easier for left-handers to be more elastic in cognitive activities, allowing them to easily cope with challenges, perceive the bigger idea and be self-sustaining. Cross-sectional studies also show meaningfully enhanced left-hander incidences among top athletes exclusively in interactive sports and boxing occasioned by the surprise effect. Despite this, left-handers experience difficulties using everyday tools. Pre-school left-handers experience hitches primarily in writing left-to-right, expressing and responding to spatial discernments, which has contributed to them being the majority in remedial classes. Mismatches in the teaching/learning environment causes older children to fail to complete timed tasks which negatively affects their academic achievements. In sports, left-handers benefit more from long and intense training because of using training manuals meant for right-handers. The adjustments left-handers have to make in school and at the workplace in order to function comfortably usually causes hand, back, neck and shoulder pains which not only decreases their effectiveness but also compromises their physical and emotional wellbeing. An amalgamation of all these has made left-handedness appear as an obstruction to daily life generally and specifically in school. This review paper that sought to establish that the society’s failure to accommodate left-handedness needs addressing, recommended creating societal left-handedness awareness programs, paradigm shifting in initial and continuing teacher training programs and classroom pedagogical approaches, establishment of inclusive teaching/learning resources, and the provision of evenhanded daily use tools by manufacturers at no extra cost.