ABSTRACT
The idea that problems of speech and literacy might be due to atypical cerebral dominance was suggested soon after it was known that speech and language depend in most people on the left hemisphere (Ireland, 1881, cited in Harris, 1980a). A report that stuttering was more common in “dextro-sinistrals” than other children (Ballard, 1911–12, in Harris, 1980a) led to the idea that stuttering might be caused by forcing a naturally left-handed child to write with the right-hand. The popularisation of this theory during the 1920s and 1930s was probably the most important single cause of the relaxation of pressures against the use of the left-hand in the United States of America and the United Kingdom (Travis, 1959). These pressures were still severe in the 1920s, according to bitter accounts in letters written to me in the 1960s, in response to my appeals in the media for left-handed parents. However, one mother told me she was forced to use her left-hand, in the 1930s, because her teachers noticed she had some tendencies to left handedness and they were anxious she should not stutter. She continued to use the left for writing, but believed she should have used the right. For peg moving she was equally fast with both hands. Some teachers continue to “encourage” children to use the right-hand today. The supposed link between forced change of writing hand and stuttering is unproven, but in my view “nature” knows best and children should be allowed to follow their inclination for hand use.
