I also find your figure skating comment interesting – I didn’t know they were taught to spin in a specific direction. Does being right or left handed have a role in that? See, I’m curious – I’m right handed, but left eye, ear, and leg dominant, so I’m frequently confused as to how to do thinks physically, if that makes sense. And how much does the direction of spin matter? And why?

They don’t take handedness into consideration when teaching it. It’s ALWAYS taught to the left. The only reason I’m learning to the right is because I find it easier spinning right so I decided to learn to do it both ways. If someone has trouble doing multiple moves to the left they’ll sometimes allow them to do them all to the right instead but generally figure skaters are supposed to always spin and turn left. It’s enough to make me want to really study professional skaters to see if they all, always spin left. It would be interesting to see the results.

You’re ambidextrous friend sounds intriguing. She’d be a psychiatrists dream. *chuckles* Perhaps she has some cross-hatching against the corpus callosum that fires it in certain ways but not in others. Always doing math with the right hand is automatically a crossing because the right hand is predominantly creative and math is predominantly logical. Languages tend to be creative so writing those with her left hand is a sign of crossing again.

The most interesting thing is she can’t do it the other way around. If it were a true blend she’d be true-ambidextrous, able to do both on both hands. Intriguing, it’s the kind of topic we could study in-depth and learn so much more about the ways our brains function.

Would you send a few of those interesting accountants to Texas next thursday? I have to go to my husband’s workplace christmas party. Yeah. Nobody gets down like the accountants. On the other hand, I’m a lawyer, but I practice criminal law. The lawyer parties get a bit wild for me.

It’s interesting what you said about creative types not being recognized for their intelligence in school. I’m going through that with one of my boys. He’s very bright and wildly creative and original. He’s gifted at math and science but always gets marked down severely because his pages are messy and he doesn’t show his work.

The school wants him to go to tutorials for math. When I asked why, they said it was because of his grades. I had to pull his papers out and show the teacher. He had points off for not putting a heading on the paper (not even his name), points off for not showing his work, points off for writing all over the page and scribbling. His actual answers to the math problems? He missed one. The kid doesn’t need tutorials, he needs an administrative assistant.

But the tidy, logical, quiet child will get held up as the standard. Oh well, I love him and encourage him for who he is. There are a lot of engineers and architects in my mother’s side of the family. I suspect he may be another one.

*rant over*

Your son sounds a lot like what I and my oldest brother were like in school. I ended up learning that I had to be neat and tidy and show my work (hence me becoming an accountant, I think) even though showing my work never did me any good. My brother, on the other hand, never did learn that lesson. He’s now an alpha alpha computer programmer – you know, the kind that the other alpha programmers go to when they can’t figure out what went wrong. My brother also didn’t need tutorials. Like your son.

Sounds to me like you see your son for who he really is. And I suspect you’re right.

With the education system, as your post mentions, being focused on left-brain, sometimes it is difficult to answer the call of the right side. IMO you either do or you don’t and no book will help you with that. You might think it’s holding your hand but you can find your way without that. It takes a lot of guts and I think that sitting down and fingerpainting (using an example not as a criticism) is just delaying the journey.

Not to sound all tough love here, I’ve been there with these books but ultimately they didn’t help me become more creative, I just became more frustrated. I just jumped in to writing, as an outlet and I’ve been happy ever since. I sing, and no book helped me with that, I just do it. Does this make sense?

No book, no matter how good, can help you achieve something like this with pat encouragement that doesn’t fit the person. I gave up reading self-help books a long time ago because of this. I’m right brained, I was born right brained (I guess) and I’ll always be right brained. No book has to tell me that or can help me when I’ve lost my way. Just my opinion though.

And how much does the direction of spin matter? And why?

It doesn’t seem to matter at all which direction the spin is done except that my teacher will talk me down if I spin right while she’s watching. I don’t think there really is a reason it’s taught to the left except perhaps whoever originally created the moves was predominantly left-brained.

If the moves were originally designed to the left then I’d assume it’s just always been taught that way with no conscious consideration for the need to do it one way or the other. I guess it also counts that rink skating is almost always to the left (anti-clockwise). If you watch professional figure skaters they then to use the the top of the rink to go left and the bottom to go right.

It could be vital in couples skating because if one only spins right and the other only spins left then they’ll always be out of sink and off footed. If both spun right it would be fine. In singles however, other than the technicality of it being left dominant it should be just fine. I wonder if judges would mark you down for spinning and turning to the right instead of left. I’ll have to look into it more carefully, just in case.

Meanwhile, for classes I learn it the way she wants me to do it. At home when I practice on my own I practice both ways. Perfectionist streak in me insists that if I can do it the ‘wrong’ way easily then I demand myself to do it BOTH ways easily.

Always doing math with the right hand is automatically a crossing because the right hand is predominantly creative and math is predominantly logical. Languages tend to be creative so writing those with her left hand is a sign of crossing again.

I’m sure I got her hands wrong, then – it’s most likely the other way around! I have a difficult time remembering what’s what sometimes…

Thanks for answering my question about the spin. It was my experience in phys.ed. that things were done a certain way not because they were better or, well, because there was any actually logical reason other than it was more convenient for the phys.ed. teacher to teach it that way. It was always insisted that I do everything right-handed, for example. The worst was doing cartwheels and other gymnastics stuff – I can’t do them right handed. I fall down and hurt myself. I can, however, do them left-handed, and nearly failed the course because of it. Which I think is stupid.

Doing it a certain way because everyone on the ice goes counterclockwise makes a certain amount of sense to prevent collisions. Doing it a certain way if you’re skating as partners also makes sense. Doing it a certain way just because and for no other reason doesn’t. I think it’s cool that you’re learning both.

Please, let me know what you find out, other than the above. I’m now very curious.

I also draw inspiration from watching my little ones, although I have to say my just-turned-three-year-old is already fussy about things like coloring apples red and not blue (she won’t even let me color them pink). Maybe I should sign her up for some accounting classes.

Nice post. My left brain likes the parts where why/how things work for writers is explained.

M

It’s interesting to read that Michael J. Vaughn encourages the use of both sides of the brain in unison rather than allowing either dominance. Alternating between both hemispheres must encourage the interaction between them. That balance, as wordsmith called it.

I’ve found the left-right brain actions also affect other areas of our lives. I figure skate and when they teach skaters to spin or turn it’s always to the left. I struggle to the left but find it easy, almost effortless, to the right. I’ve begun to wonder if this is a right brain dominance (and decided to work on perfecting my spins in both directions). It’s also lead me to ask other artists who skate if they find a natural tendancy in spinning right vs. a trained tendancy to the left.

Anyway, this is a topic I could explore forever. Thanks so much for the interesting post and link to more.