Imagine for a moment that your 4-year-old son, who is in preschool, comes home one day and tells you that his teacher has informed him that he must stop being left-handed and switch to his right hand because the Devil is a lefty. How angry would you be? I would be livid!
But that’s exactly what happened in Oklahoma to young Zayde Sands, who was told that left-handers are “sinister.” According to his mother, Alisha, he came home from school last week and was having trouble trying to complete his homework using his right hand. So she asked her son why he was suddenly using his right hand. His answer floored her:
“And he raises (the left one) one and says, ‘This one’s bad.’”
Ms. Sands sent a note to the teacher who had told her son that being left-handed was bad, and in response the teacher sent copy of an article that described left-handers as “unlucky,” “evil” and “sinister.” One line of the article even stated:
“For example, the devil is often portrayed as left-handed.”
Alisha Sands then went directly to the school superintendent and complained, but she says absolutely nothing was done to discipline the teacher:
“There was basically nothing done to this teacher. She told them she thought I needed literature on it.”
School officials declined to comment on the case, but they did say it remains under investigation. Alisha Sands says she has plans to file a complaint with the Oklahoma Board of Education:
“It breaks my heart for him because someone actually believes that, believes my child is evil because he’s left-handed. It’s crazy.”
About 10 percent of people are left-handed, and here is just a partial list of some names you might know that happen to be lefties:
Bill Gates, Paul McCartney, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Bob Dylan, H.G. Wells, Richard Pryor, Leonardo da Vinci, and Albert Einstein.
They all turned out pretty well, wouldn’t you agree?
