Same here but in the 80s. Teacher would slap my hand with a ruler and force me to switch to my right hand. She also regularly told me I was evil and had the devil in me. My mom came to the school after she found out and nearly killed that teacher.
3rd grade teacher, first day of school. Was writing my name on my desk card. Next thing I know, I had yard stick slam down on my wrist. Got hit so hard that my wrist was swollen for days after
I was gonna say '80s, but you beat me by 10 years. I used to be left-handed, and my physio spotted it immediately: something about early muscle formation.
But as it was a conservative region of the country, I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the 'classic' teaching style.
Started school in 2001, my mother - a lefthanded person herself! - tried the first 4 years of primary school to get me to write with the "correct" hand (unsuccessfully)
Explanation: It used to be fairly normal for teachers in the US, at least, to 'correct' left-handed children by striking their hand or otherwise punishing them for using it for primary-hand tasks. My great-uncle suffered this bizarre form of correction as a child.
This was a thing I'm Europe as well in the 50's. My mom regularly got a slapping with a ruler or got kicked into the coal shed for writing left handedly
You can thank the Romans’ adoption of the Bible for that stigma.
In Latin, sinestra means on the left side. Left handed people were referred to as sinister. After the appearance of Eve on Adam’s left side in accounts of Genesis, the Christian tradition finds instances of the left side being pinned to immorality. As a result, some time during the Latin Classical Era the definition shifted to its current meaning of evil.
I got slapped by my teacher infront of everyone for pointing and showing with my left hand, that the answer I have written on the answer sheet is correct and I should get the marks. Then he lectured me for ten minutes about not using my left hand ever again in his presence. Flamed my parents that they should have taught me that and are bad at parenting.
He finally gave me full marks, but I cried the whole day and got humiliated infront of whole class. This happened in 2000s
My 3rd grade teacher did that shit and is one of several reasons I went into homeschooling between 4th and 8th grade. Wasn't even a Catholic school; it was public.
I grew up in the 90s and went to public school, so I didn't have this experience. What I did experience was using the shittiest scissors in the classroom, and having to share it with 3 other kids because there was exactly one left handed pair.
I was just talking about my first and second grade years today. It was 1977/78. Both teachers those two grades tied my left hand down and forced me to try to learn to write with my right hand. What it did was make my handwriting absolutely terrible. This was due to the fact that in the third grade they didn't teach you that anymore and I never had any practice at it. My parents didn't care it happened since my dad was convinced a left handed man just couldn't match a right handed mans abilities. It was because the school nearly got sued by another students parents that they finally ended that bit of abuse. This is the southern US by the way. The place that is permanently out of step with decency.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I grew up left handed in socal 90s and had a few people in my education try to correct it just by pointing it out but nobody forced me. When I was learning to write my name I would write it backwards and mirrored haha, brains are funny.
My wife is 50 and she was almost forced to be right handed in late '70s/ early '80s. She is still left-handed, but she is almost ambidextrous. Maybe forcing people to do things with their weak hand isn't a bad thing, but obviously we shouldn't mandate they can only use their right hand. What if we had a society full of ambidextrous people? What if we force people to learn how to write with both hands?
She might be cross-dominant. This apparently confused/annoyed my teachers growing up. I only write with my left hand and do almost everything else with my right side.
I'm right handed but left legged. I did long jump and jumped about 4 feet farther using my left leg. Does that count? I know it's different but I find this kind of stuff interesting.
I write left handed but do some sports activities right handed, like golf, unlike my brother who plays it left handed but writes with his right hand. Not even blood related, technically step brothers but we only bring that up in bars after confusing people since we look nothing alike. for baseball I keep having to remember which hand I prefer to throw with to figure it out, I'm not good at sports anyways heh.
Fortunately enough I mostly escaped the southpaw erasure bullshit.
My uncle would tease me for being a "lefty." By calling me a "lefty."
My grandmother had a tendency to ask passive-aggressive questions. Like "Why do you only ever wear one pair of shoes?" Because I'm four years old and I'll outgrow these before I wear them out. Why buy more than one?" Or "Can't you put your foot out straight?" No, I can't. It got bent in the womb and the corrective shoe I wore when I was 0.5 did a reasonable job but it's still a little crooked and there's really nothing I can do about it that isn't very uncomfortable. "Why don't you use your right hand?" Because I'm left handed.
The way my mother tells it, when it was time for me to start drawing with crayons, she put a crayon in my right hand and then colored some with her own crayon to show me how, and I transferred my crayon to my left hand and started coloring, and mama said "Oh he's left handed. Okay." And from there she would hold out spoons or writing utensils and let me take them with the hand I preferred.
In school, none of the faculty ever tried to force me to be right-handed, though my elementary school teachers had no idea how to teach handwriting to a lefty. I did have a fifth grade teacher who, for reasons only known to the bug in her cunt, REQUIRED the use of a spiral-bound notebook. Right handed folks might not realize, lefties end up resting their hands against the spiral bindings at the beginning of every line and it starts to hurt. A spiralless notebook was just unacceptable.