One of the people, a PT, who works with our preschool-kindergarten program is a wonderful person, but…every time she works with the kids in a big group she shakes the kids hands or does something else with their hands to hit home the concept of “this is our right hand.” Never left. I can’t for the life of me figure out why, but this feels vaguely threatening/alarming to me, not a lot, but just enough that I’m conscious of it. I know most kids are righties, and that it’s not as if she is telling them “this is the hand we write with,” but…it’s a nagging feeling. How would you feel about it?
I’d be a little bugged out. I might want to talk to her, just to make sure that she is aware of my concerns.
Before you bug out on her, ask her what she’s doing. There may be a very good explanation for what she’s doing.
On the other hand, consider this…
When I first went to kindergarten (1965) the teacher had made up her mind that I had some kind of a mental problem because I simply couldn’t cut with the scissors they gave me. It was a miserable time for me because I felt stupid. That damn little scissors just wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do. All my cut & paste projects looked like shit. The teacher would write letters home and have confrences with my parents that there was something wrong with me. When my Dad suggested that maybe I was left handed, the teacher gasped and proudly exclaimed that she’d rid me of that bad habit.:rolleyes:
“Oh, no you won’t!” my Father exclaimed! He insisted they accept my south paw, and that the school get left handed scissors. They did, and I excelled after that.
The point is, if that teacher of yours is trying to “change” left handers, you’ve got to get her to stop. She’s doing a terrible thing if that’s what she’s trying to do. But ask her what she’s doing.
Without more context I’d be hard-pressed to pass judgement. If it’s mainly by hand-shaking that she’s expressing a preference, that may be nothing more that a social etiquette/good manners lesson. As unfair as it may be, there arent’t many hand gestures (saluting, pledge of allegiance, etc.) in society that use the sinister hand.
Then again, if she tells them that lefties are snotty-head poop brains, you may have a case. You probably want to ask her about it though. I would guess she’s just a brainwashed rightie who may not even realize that she’s spreading anti-gauche propaganda.
“PT”? Physcial therapist? Preschool Teacher? 
It may be that as a right-hander she has never thought about “handedness” at all. Like heterosexuals, most righties think everybody is.
William, who knows that aristos, the root of “aristocrat,” is ancient greek for left. Take that, you sinister Romans.
I’d say to lighten up. It seems that she’s just trying to teach them the difference between right and left. I wouldn’t suspect that there’d be any ulterior motive behind it.
Except that the point of the OP seemed to be that the left hand wasn’t even mentioned - just the right.
And I agree that the teacher needs a bit of consciousness-raising.
And I hope and pray that no schools or teachers in the Western world are still trying to ‘convert’ lefties into righties. I came through school a few years earlier than pkbites, and even then it was regarded, where I lived, as an old-fashioned bit of idiocy that fortunately had not survived to the (then-) present day.
Uh, I don’t know…
Maybe the lesson on “this is the left hand” comes next month, after they have the concept of “right hand” down? Maybe it’s just me; I tend to believe that most people will only be offended at something like this if they go out of their way to be offended. It’s most likely quite innocent and easily explained. I’d have to agree with the strategy of asking her what’s up, though,if it still bothers you. You’ll most likely find that it’s nothing offensive at all.
SeamusToo–I don’t think there’s anyone, right-handed or otherwise, who thinks that “everyone else is.” (They may feel that the majority of people are, which is simply a fact, not a statement of any sort of anti-left-handed prejudice in the world.) Are you lumping all right-handed people into a stereotype of anti-lefty closed-mindedness? 
The thing is, I don’t think there’s really any ulterior motive to getting the kids to be familiar with their right hand, at least I don’t yet. Next month may well bring lessons about the left hand. I’m new, and I’d want to get to know her better before making an issue of it even if I do eventually conclude that she is trying to influence them in some way. I actually feel silly about being at all bothered by it since I’m not sure yet why she does it… I figure it’s mild paranoia on my part since I have met people who were openly prejudiced against lefties, not that I honestly think this woman is one, prejudiced, that is. (I think Semus has a point though, most people I know who are right-handed assume every person they meet is until they have reason to suspect otherwise. I’m even guilty of this too, I’d assume a person was a rightie since most are unless I saw them writing. I just happen to make a point of watching people write, so I’m more conscious of who is or isn’t a leftie.) I was merely curious if others thought it would bother them too to any degree.
Oh…PT= Physcial therapist
I’m thinking that the teacher is just trying to make sure the kids learn right & left.
And they’d better not still be trying to make kids switch! I’ve got a left-handed daughter who just started preschool. If I hear of them trying to make her switch, ooooooh, they’re going to feel my wrath. 
well, as a person who is total turned about on “the hand you write with.” okay, if this is the hand i write with, this must be the one that is left. don’t ask me for directions. it will end up like the line in the “matrix” no, your other left.
she maybe a hold-out on the “right is right” idea. or she may think they will figure out the hand that is left out IS left.
???
elfkin, you should definitely talk with the PT.
I hate to break this to you, but aristeros is Greek for “left” (those two little letters make a big difference, like lightning and lightning bug). According to this pageristero/s&lang=greek) it unfortunately carries the same negative connotations as “sinister”. aristos means “best”, and I infer from this entry that it is related to Ares, the Greek god of war. If my inference is correct, that says something about this word and the Greeks.
As a gay right-hander (who’s heart and politics are very much on the left) I have always been aware of the existence of “lefties”… saves having to dunk everyone into the pond to find the witchs BWAHAHAHA
And the classical root for left leaves us with “sinister” not “aristocrat” BWAHAHAHA
When I learned that Zach, my lefty son, was having trouble cutting things out, I brought in a pair of lefty scissors to the school. His (otherwise smart) teacher said that he didn’t need those; all he had to do was turn the “regular scissors” upside down. Yeah, right. Try it. (In case you don’t have any “other-handed” scissors, I’ll explain: Closing right-handed scissors with your right hand squishes the blades together. I mean, of course it moves them together vertically, but it also pushes them together horizontally. Closing them with your left hand forces them apart, horizontally – take a looksie and you can see air between them.)
Turning scissors upside down doesn’t change them. It only makes the thumb hole on the wrong side.
-Sue
I thought ettiquette stated that you shake with your right hand?
When I first read the thread title I thought this would be about the Political left, not left-handedness.
But I’m in both categories. I think I’m just young enough to have escaped teachers trying to “cure” me, and there were usually one or two pairs of left-handed scissors in most of my classes.
But since there often weren’t, Another Primate, I figured out that scissors work the way you describe, so I became adept at two things: either cutting with my right hand (not so hard even if you’re left-handed) or holding right-handed scissors in my left hand and consciously pressing the blades against each other so they’d still cut.
This works, but it makes my thumb cramp.
These days, man, I’d kill for a left-handed can opener.
OK, maybe I have some sort of high-tech, new-fangled ambidextrous scissors or something, but mine work equally well with either hand. I’m rightie, and just to test out what Another Primate said, I switched them over to my left hand (with which I am not graceful at all), and they cut perfectly. There was no gap on the horizontal axis (as was described), and the blades did seem to press against each other with no conscious effort on my part (trust me–I couldn’t purposely press with my off hand with any sort of intent). Are there such things as ambidextrous scissors?
I recall my kindergarten days dimly, but the scissors were not very good. For all the use we made of them (for me, the smell of paste still means “kindergarten”) you’d think the school could shell out for some decent ones, but they were rusty, dull (maybe for saftey reasons) and not very well-put-together.
We did have lefty ones–they had green rubber on the handles so you can tell them apart. One day I got the lefty ones (in my dim recollection, we had a substitute teacher and I pretended to be a lefty because lefties got to come up to get their scissors first) and my cut-and-paste project got an unhappy face that day because the edges were so ratty. Live and learn.