persuasive speech
DESCRIPTION
Written speech on why American schools should not oppress left handed children and try to correct them as highlighted in the Chinese elementary schooling system. Furthermore, the speech also covers the detrimental effects of such a "correction" on the kids and how these consequences carry over into the rest of their lives.TRANSCRIPT
Sharon Chen
Mrs. Abbadessa
Dual Enrollment Public Speaking
25 February 2015
“Surveys of Chinese students since the 1980s report that less than 1% are lefthanded.
This is an extraordinarily low number given the generally accepted view that between 10 and
12% of humans are lefthanded.” Are there actually very few lefthanders in China and, if so,
why? It is culturally seen as a blemish on a person if they are not like the majority, right handed.
Small percentages denotes minority, and around the world, minority groups are often
overwhelmed and ruled by the majority, in our case, righties over lefties. The fact that lefties are
a minority makes it seem like a faulty attribute and inevitably leads everyone in here to think that
it is and that it should be corrected. Some of you have encountered a left handed child and
looked on them with disgust, seeing that they used, as in latin called the “sinister” hand.
However, if you were told that you did something in a flipped or opposite way, how would you
feel? All of us hate to be told we’re “wrong” doesn’t it frustrate you when you have to conform
to what someone else is doing in the “right” way in order to obtain approval? If not approved,
then you’re labeled as someone abnormal. No one wants that and thus we all conform and switch
things like handedness to one standard, right handedness, in order to achieve what we call
“success” in a society. I am here to tell you that with conformity does not come success, rather it
limits the potential of the person being restricted and confuses that person for life, inhibiting
them from being someone far more capable than their oppressed state. It also develops in the
person a sense of isolation and not belonging, often leading to social and emotional problems.
Restriction and punishment of kids who are left hand dominant should be discontinued from
practice in Chinese elementary schools.
Our society needs to leave children’s natural preference of hands alone in order to reach
ensure they have a chance to reach their full potential and not be crippled or confined by
conformity. Lefties are being stripped of their chance at their own potential because of
conformity and confinement and this causes them to be unable to do certain things or even to be
below average in activities that they will be doing on a daily basis throughout life. A figurative
example of what I’m talking about can be found in the poem, “A Work of Artifice” in which
Marge Piercy writes about a bonsai tree being limited from growing to its eighty foot tall
potential, instead contained to a pot and growing to only a mere nine inches high. Simple motor
control and even language speaking can be devastatingly impaired with forcible changing of
hands. A fellow left hander marks her confusing experience of changing hands with the crippling
side effects it bestowed on her “My teacher wanted me to write right handed. She taped my paper
to the desk and made me write with my right hand. I began to stutter and my father was on me all
the time to stop. I was grounded and humiliated by my father. I finally told him what the teacher
was doing with my paper to get me to write righthanded. My father went to the school and told
the teacher to leave me alone and let me write with the hand I wanted to write with. My
stuttering stopped.”
Stuttering is not the only problem associated with forcibly changing hands, I can tell you
from experience, it has caused a number of anxiety and emotional problems for me as a child.
While I went to school in China, my teachers would frequent my residence at my grandparents’
house to tell them about how I never listen and would continue using my left hand. Of course, I
didn’t care back then, it was just all adult talk and did not concern me. However, my
stubbornness and self confidence evaporated after I went back to visit my grandparents and my
other relatives during the summer of freshman year. While twenty pairs of eyes stared and
admired me for things such as my petite stature, politeness, and cultural etiquette in that small
private restaurant room where the familial banquet took place, once the waiters came and served
us our food, faces of admiration dropped to disappointment and all eyes were fixated on me yet
again, but this time in disgust as I start eating with my left hand. One relative even went so far as
to say to my mother in a half joking way, “Gee, you didn’t raise her properly, look at how she’s
using her left hand now!” This type of situation has happened not only once to me, and eating
has become an anxiety inducing event for me to engage in when I visit my relatives. Self
consciousness overpowers me in my depressing state. I look around for solace but of course there
is none, all of them are laughing it off and carrying on happily eating with their right hands. Not
one person in the room full of twenty people could feel my agitation.
There is a simple solution to this, do not try to alter a child’s natural left hand preference
when they’re young. It is imperative to evolve from these traditional ways and cultural mindset if
we want to see future leaders of country/world, although they are traditional views, they should
be let go as they cause more harm than good. We could potentially be inhibiting someone who
could be influential in the future from blossoming into the future successful hero, it is very
important to get rid of this idea of conformity. Imagine seeing future leaders who can smile and
say that their families, friends, and teachers supported them throughout all their endeavors. You,
as a teacher would be praised for encouraging them and not detested for yanking away their
chances at reaching their success. Professor Howard Kushner at Emory University tells us that,
“The methods used to ‘‘restrain’’ lefthanders were often torturous, including restraining a
resistant child’s left hand, often by ‘‘tying up the left hand so that the right hand must be used.”
If you were a left handed person, you would be the target of this cruel and tortuous practice. The
horrifying experience of having to live through a society that condemns and detests left
handedness can follow one into adulthood and cause many psychological and emotional issues
that you wouldn’t want to burden on you your entire life.
Please, do not bother them when they’re using left hand and encourage these kids
to use either hand for writing activities. Let them go free and eliminate the restrictions and
discouragements on how they’re supposed to do things, let them develop preference naturally and
do not inhibit their natural preference in the classroom, do not discourage the use of left hand or
point it out and punish the child in front of the other children. And definitely do your part in
encouraging the new cycle to go on. Lauren Milson, cofounder of the website Anything left
handed, says “There is still a lot of ignorance about this issue. Many teachers think it is enough to
just tell lefthanded children to rest the paper on the left of the desk and give them some
ambidextrous scissors.” In addition to providing the right materials, young school teachers should
also actively encourage use of both hands in class. Hands on activities and games such as pin the
wheel on the donkey let the kids use hand of their choice. The same applies to all other activities
found in an elementary school setting: drawings and writing alphabet activities should be held so
that kids are encouraged to work together and mix with the righties to establish a sense of
normalcy. Do not condemn it as a sin, embrace the diversity. Your children, if you decide to have
any, may one day be left handed and you will have to see them suffer through the pains of living
in a right handed world already, so encouragement and unrestrained use of what they find natural
will provide alleviation. After all, every one of you in here would want to see your child prosper,
even if they do fall in that 10%.