Understanding Left-Handedness in Education: A Conversation with Mark Stewart

Mark Stewart 00:00:00

How do you deal with a left hander when you've never had one before?

Mark Stewart 00:00:02

Because it's a very right handed world and people don't tend to think about it.

Mark Stewart 00:00:08

If you reflect that number nationally to the number of children in schools in England, there are over 1 million left handed children currently in schools and there's nothing in teacher training about it.

Mark Stewart 00:00:25

There are actually some very simple things that you can do which don't cost a penny.

Mark Stewart 00:00:29

For example, where you sit at child in the class, they're not knocking elbows with a right hander and actually you're benefiting both children, not just the left hander.

Mark Stewart 00:00:38

You can be right eye dominant but left handed and right footed.

Mark Stewart 00:00:41

So you can be a whole mishmash.

Mark Taylor 00:00:46

Hello.

Mark Taylor 00:00:47

And that was Mark Stewart and he's got a business called Left and right which started 30 years ago when he was looking for a pair of left handed scissors to support his son.

Mark Taylor 00:00:55

Now this has obviously carried on over that number of time.

Mark Taylor 00:00:58

The business has changed obviously as life has moved on.

Mark Taylor 00:01:01

But really important conversations both in terms of providing products for people who are left handed, but also within the education field.

Mark Taylor 00:01:07

And he explains how he's been working through schools and organizations to kind of really make left handed people an integral part of people's thinking and indeed teacher training.

Mark Taylor 00:01:17

Really hope you love this conversation with Mark Stewart.

Mark Taylor 00:01:21

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast.

Mark Taylor 00:01:30

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Mark Taylor 00:01:35

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Mark Taylor 00:01:43

Hi Mark, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Far podcast.

Mark Taylor 00:01:48

This is a subject that we haven't actually talked about before on the show, which is fascinating to me bearing in mind we have a child who's left handed and the implications that come with that and the kind of the decisions about whether to being left handed, you should try and do it right handed or how it affects schooling and learning and all of that sort of stuff.

Mark Taylor 00:02:04

And he's now in university so we've been through the whole sort of cycle.

Mark Taylor 00:02:08

So yeah, fascinating conversation and really looking forward to diving in.

Mark Stewart 00:02:13

Well, thank you very much for asking me.

Mark Stewart 00:02:15

So we have, we have both Christian names the same and a similar family situation.

Mark Stewart 00:02:21

If, if I give you little bit of history about why I started was my youngest son who's the left hander.

Mark Stewart 00:02:29

Ironically my wife and I and eldest son are all right handed and my wife is an ex teacher which had an effect on, on our journey.

Mark Stewart 00:02:40

But Robert, the youngest, he's now 35, something like that, he's a paramedic and when he came along we, we had a big surprise because we hadn't considered having a left hander.

Mark Stewart 00:02:55

We didn't really know anything about left handers.

Mark Stewart 00:02:57

There was nobody on my side at all who's left handed and actually only my father in law on my wife's side but he was of the generation that sadly were forced to write right handed which thankfully doesn't happen anymore in this country but I can tell you more globally later and it was, he is very left sided so he's left eyed, left handed, left footed and we could tell very early with him because we put him in the highchair for example, put a spoon in his right hand as far right as you want and it would go straight to his left.

Mark Stewart 00:03:34

So he is really very, very left sided, dominant, very well coordinated and so we thought well you know, how can we help?

Mark Stewart 00:03:44

Gosh, how do you deal with a left hander when you've never had one before?

Mark Stewart 00:03:48

Because it's a very right handed world and people don't tend to think about it.

Mark Stewart 00:03:54

So when Robert was about four we were looking for a pair of left handed scissors for him and we couldn't find anywhere in Worcester that sold them and I knew of a shop in London called anything Left Handed and the situation was that I was sort of looking for new employment as well and literally after about six or eight weeks we had opened our bricks and mortar shop in Worcester and we were the first ever franchise, I guess you'd call it branch of anything left handed outside of London.

Mark Stewart 00:04:27

So that was coming up 30 years ago in December and it's been quite a journey since then.

Mark Taylor 00:04:36

It's amazing story and like I say like an early franchise kind of situation as well and, and, and on the sort of the, I guess the biology of it like say a surprise having a left hander with a family of right handed people.

Mark Taylor 00:04:48

In terms of your sort of experience and research and all the things I know you've done over the years is there any particular reason why one person becomes left handed as opposed to right handed?

Mark Stewart 00:05:00

Not necessarily.

Mark Stewart 00:05:01

You can't be cast iron about it, it's usually hereditary but not necessarily.

Mark Stewart 00:05:07

You can become left handed through accident, through stroke.

Mark Stewart 00:05:11

The drug Thalidomide caused a lot of children to be born with upper limb deficiencies.

Mark Stewart 00:05:16

Often in twins you'll get one left and one right because they're sort of mirror image within the womb but there is no hard and fast rule that says you will have a left hander.

Mark Stewart 00:05:26

And I guess out of a certain number of people you are bound to get a left handed child.

Mark Stewart 00:05:34

The sort of statistics would say that there is research about genetics, but I can't say I know the ins and outs of that.

Mark Stewart 00:05:45

But it's interesting to know thinking about numbers.

Mark Stewart 00:05:50

There are a couple of things I can tell you on that.

Mark Stewart 00:05:53

I used to go to special needs conference in Norwich and a lady there, reception teacher came up to me and we were discussing children, left handed children.

Mark Stewart 00:06:05

And I said how many of you got in your class or your year?

Mark Stewart 00:06:09

And she said out of her year of 90 children she had 60 left handed.

Mark Stewart 00:06:15

6, 0, not 16.

Mark Stewart 00:06:17

And I went back the following year and said are you sure, you sure it's 60?

Mark Stewart 00:06:20

And she said yes, definitely.

Mark Stewart 00:06:22

The other interesting thing and probably more critical in certainly in my perspective is that back in, I think it was 2006, a member of Parliament at the time, a chap called Peter Luff, who is left handed and who writes with a sort of hook style of writing, he tabled a couple of parliamentary questions and the responses to them from the Department of Education were that the department does not collect information on what proportion of pupils are left handed, nor on whether being left handed has an impact on likely educational achievement.

Mark Stewart 00:06:57

So frankly, they haven't got a clue.

Mark Stewart 00:07:01

The same questions were repeated in 2016 by the Midwester MP Nigel Huddleston, with exactly the same responses.

Mark Stewart 00:07:11

And over the years we've had meetings with people at the department and it's just brushed off and it's how can you make any real proper diagnosis, I guess, or consideration to left handers if you haven't got a clue how many left handers there are in the country?

Mark Stewart 00:07:34

If you take roughly say 13% in fact, Worcestershire Lea did a survey back in the early 2000s and it worked out to 13% if you reflect that number nationally to the number of children in schools in England.

Mark Stewart 00:07:54

There are over 1 million left handed children currently in schools and they do.

Mark Stewart 00:08:03

There's nothing in teacher training about it.

Mark Stewart 00:08:07

The last national curriculum was quite interesting.

Mark Stewart 00:08:13

I had a meeting with Nick Gibb who produced the national curriculum and there's a bit on handwriting in that, which is statutory.

Mark Stewart 00:08:22

So the right handers, you know, you've got to do this and then underneath that it says left handers should have appropriate guidance and that was non statutory.

Mark Stewart 00:08:35

So it was a sort of afterthought.

Mark Stewart 00:08:36

Oh yes, handwriting is really important.

Mark Stewart 00:08:39

Oh, left hand as well.

Mark Stewart 00:08:40

They should have something done to it.

Mark Stewart 00:08:41

But you know, let's not worry too much about it, which I thought was appalling.

Mark Stewart 00:08:46

And I said to him it should be must not, not should be, not should, the word should be must have appropriate guidance.

Mark Stewart 00:08:55

And he said, well the word should does have some impetus and I couldn't disagree with that.

Mark Stewart 00:09:00

But I thought it, you know, it must be done.

Mark Stewart 00:09:03

And I think also possibly the fact that generally teachers haven't been trained to help left handed children, that if you have it must, then you require the trained go with it.

Mark Stewart 00:09:18

So I've had some input into the new curriculum and assessment review so we'll see whether anything comes of that or not.

Mark Stewart 00:09:26

But it's going to be very interesting.

Mark Taylor 00:09:27

To see and it is slightly mind boggling, especially sort of in more recent years as well with the whole thing about equal opportunities in equity diversity.

Mark Taylor 00:09:37

You know, you are at a disadvantage if you're in a class which is set up as a right handed class if you are left handed like you say, if you don't have left handed scissors, if you're not able to be taught to write in the same way, you don't have the same opportunities to express yourself as a left handed person if that's sort of naturally how you are.

Mark Taylor 00:09:57

So it sort of begs the question, isn't it that you know, why has it not been sort of more in the forefront of people's minds and certainly like I say, going forward with the new government and their plans as well.

Mark Stewart 00:10:09

Yes, certainly.

Mark Stewart 00:10:09

I mean Robert, for example, the first week at school was given a pair of right handed scissors to use and when we went to pick him up at the day, at the end of the day every other child had got their picture on the wall.

Mark Stewart 00:10:21

Robert hadn't even cut it out because he couldn't.

Mark Stewart 00:10:24

And I don't think that's good enough because the child can end up thinking not what's wrong with the scissors but what's wrong with me?

Mark Stewart 00:10:31

And the self esteem just goes wallop.

Mark Stewart 00:10:33

Yeah, you know, and it's, it's, it's simple things, funny enough.

Mark Stewart 00:10:38

Literally in the last couple of months I've had some fascinating quotes from, from a teacher and a head teacher and the head teacher said my best friend's daughter is left handed.

Mark Stewart 00:10:49

And I was only this week discussing how schools are not set up for left handed learners and the difficulties faced and from a teacher I've been teaching for 10 years and have never considered support that might be required for left handed learners.

Mark Stewart 00:11:04

It's incredible, isn't It, I mean, I'm not a teacher, you know, I'm just a right handed parent.

Mark Stewart 00:11:10

But to me that's, that's appalling that in this day and age our education system isn't dealing with, you know, over 10% of the school population.

Mark Taylor 00:11:21

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:11:21

And I think in some way that the gray area is also really important.

Mark Taylor 00:11:25

Like I say, especially if you don't have the training because I know certainly in our situation, while our son was left handed, as in he would write with his left hand which was like I say, has all sorts of sort of struggles and things to go with it sometimes as well, he also lives his life playing and being a right handed person in some elements.

Mark Taylor 00:11:47

You know, I know sport was a great example of, you know, holding a tennis racket might be different than holding a cricket bat or holding a golf club or throwing a ball or kicking a ball.

Mark Taylor 00:11:56

There wasn't that kind of dominance that everything has to be left handed.

Mark Taylor 00:12:00

There's some crossover there somewhere which I think is genuinely confusing.

Mark Taylor 00:12:03

And I think actually at that point, sort of at school, like we said, having someone who could just say, well let's think about this, you know, actually take you on a little journey of kind of, we'll experiment this way, experiment that way, see what works, which of course you sort of do in your own way.

Mark Taylor 00:12:17

But that kind of takes time, it takes impetus.

Mark Taylor 00:12:20

And of course I think in the educational situation very often times of the essence, isn't it we're doing this in this class now, you know, the match is tonight, the training is now kind of thing and you don't necessarily have that time to put those sorts of sort of things in place.

Mark Stewart 00:12:35

Yes, I quite agree.

Mark Stewart 00:12:36

I mean there are actually some very simple things that you can do which don't cost a penny.

Mark Stewart 00:12:41

For example, where you sit at child in the class, they're not knocking elbows with the right hander and actually you're benefiting both children, not just the left hander there.

Mark Stewart 00:12:49

But you mentioned the likes of cricket and golf and that's quite interesting because there are what I would term double handed activities.

Mark Stewart 00:12:59

And if I'm being asked by a parent, for example, how can I check whether my child is right or left handed?

Mark Stewart 00:13:07

I would always say disregard double handed activities.

Mark Stewart 00:13:12

And if you think about eating as well, this was really interesting from our perspective with Robert.

Mark Stewart 00:13:18

So as a baby or as a young child, as a right handed person, you put the food to your mouth with your right hand.

Mark Stewart 00:13:27

You're then told with a knife and fork, no, you're not going to do that.

Mark Stewart 00:13:31

You've got to put the fork in your left hand and then try and get the food to your mouth with your left hand, which isn't your natural hand.

Mark Stewart 00:13:38

And what Robert used to do, he'd put the knife on the food and sort of tear with a fork.

Mark Stewart 00:13:44

But he was relatively happy doing that because he was doing what he'd done from birth that was putting the food to his mouth with his dominant hand.

Mark Stewart 00:13:53

So as I say, and with batting at cricket and golf, you can actually bat right handed or in the right handed way without using your right hand if you have to.

Mark Stewart 00:14:03

Because actually it's the left arm that does the main work in controlling.

Mark Stewart 00:14:07

So some left handers have come in and said, oh gosh, I do one thing one way and one the other say, actually, I think that's actually perfectly logical.

Mark Stewart 00:14:15

There's a reason behind it and it's the terminology that's not correct rather than how you're doing it.

Mark Stewart 00:14:22

So.

Mark Stewart 00:14:23

So I found that quite interesting over the years.

Mark Taylor 00:14:25

Yeah, that's fascinating.

Mark Taylor 00:14:27

I know.

Mark Taylor 00:14:27

I think the conversations we had was that neither of them felt natural in a way, that some activities sort of felt natural.

Mark Taylor 00:14:34

And I guess then that just becomes practice and making a decision.

Mark Stewart 00:14:37

Here are a couple of things that everybody can do who's watching this and in the training that I do.

Mark Stewart 00:14:43

And that's another thing, when I do my training, I sort of get imposter syndrome because A, I'm not left handed and B, I'm not a teacher.

Mark Stewart 00:14:52

But it's fascinating and really interesting and reinforces what I say because there's so many, some left handed teachers on the courses and they say, oh gosh, yeah, I had that issue and I have the other issue.

Mark Stewart 00:15:04

And you think, wow, okay, so it's real.

Mark Stewart 00:15:08

These are real problems that children particularly face, you know, and being a right handed parent, a right handed person, if I know how to get it sorted out, it can't be that difficult, can it?

Mark Stewart 00:15:23

But anyway, let's go back to the laterality questions, which are rather fun and we'll go through one or two.

Mark Stewart 00:15:31

And if I was to say, okay, well I'm male, I'm follically disadvantaged, I.

Mark Taylor 00:15:39

Don'T know what you're talking about, but Carrie.

Mark Stewart 00:15:44

So for example, put your hands together, one on top of the other, which thumb is on the top?

Mark Stewart 00:15:51

Now I'm doing that and I'd say I'm right handed, but actually it's my left thumb that's on the top.

Mark Stewart 00:15:56

Oh, okay, well that's a Bit odd.

Mark Stewart 00:15:58

I'm slightly surprised about that.

Mark Stewart 00:15:59

Okay, how about folding your arms?

Mark Stewart 00:16:01

Which arm is on the top?

Mark Taylor 00:16:03

Interesting.

Mark Taylor 00:16:03

Yeah, because it was my right hand which actually was on the top when I did it.

Mark Stewart 00:16:08

Right, yes.

Mark Stewart 00:16:10

So you think okay, well that's again, that's a little bit odd.

Mark Stewart 00:16:12

But if you try it the other way it's just completely unnatural, isn't it?

Mark Stewart 00:16:15

Gosh, yeah, it does feel really odd.

Mark Stewart 00:16:19

There's a fun one I do at the end which is hopping up and down on each leg which seems the easiest to hop on.

Mark Stewart 00:16:26

So it's which eye, which hand looking at which eye you might be, might be dominant with.

Mark Stewart 00:16:33

And that was really interesting and gave us another view into, you know, the, the different dominances that you have.

Mark Stewart 00:16:41

I, I had a little lad came in and he must have been, I don't know, five, six, something like that.

Mark Stewart 00:16:45

Came into our, our shop and we had a toy shop but a little left handed section and we got a kaleidoscope and I said have a look through it, you know, pretend to be a pirate, go, you know.

Mark Stewart 00:16:58

Anyway he, he picked it up and went slap bang in the middle.

Mark Stewart 00:17:02

I thought oh right, okay, haven't seen that one before.

Mark Stewart 00:17:07

But his dominance obviously hadn't been defined eye wise.

Mark Stewart 00:17:12

And it's really interesting because you can be what's termed cross lateral and I'll repeat what I said earlier, Robert is really, really well coordinated.

Mark Stewart 00:17:22

So he's left eyed, left handed, left footed, but you can be right eye dominant, but left handed and right footed so you can be a whole mishmash.

Mark Stewart 00:17:32

And I think that's really quite useful for teachers and parents to understand because for example I had a lady came in and she said whenever I go to catch a ball I put my hand out to where I think it is.

Mark Stewart 00:17:45

But because I'm right eye dominant and my left eye, they don't coordinate together so I keep on missing the ball.

Mark Stewart 00:17:52

So if you have a child for example, who may be a little bit clumsy or not too well coordinated, it is well worth checking which eye hand are the dominant ones.

Mark Stewart 00:18:03

So the child is, although they may be being clumsy, there is a reason behind it and you can't just shout as we were in our childhood saying don't be so clumsy, you know, just get on with, you know, there is a reason why say not that you can solve it, but at least you have that understanding.

Mark Stewart 00:18:19

And I think, and that sort of awareness.

Mark Stewart 00:18:22

And I think the awareness is one of the key things that, that, that's missing nowadays.

Mark Stewart 00:18:28

And I would, I would say further there, there's what I would term passive discrimination.

Mark Stewart 00:18:34

And what I want is that the education system should be more proactive and helpful.

Mark Stewart 00:18:41

And as you said in your, your piece, equality in, in policy, in training and resources.

Mark Stewart 00:18:50

So you give the left handed child an equal opportunity to achieve their full academic potential.

Mark Taylor 00:18:56

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:18:57

So important.

Mark Taylor 00:18:57

And the awareness thing, I think is fascinating.

Mark Taylor 00:18:59

And just going back to the eating piece that we were chatting about, I am, I get ridiculed at home because I am very, I say I'm very right handed.

Mark Taylor 00:19:09

I'm a musician and I'm a drummer.

Mark Taylor 00:19:11

So I do a lot of things sort of ambidextrously as it were.

Mark Taylor 00:19:15

But, but I always have used my right hand to hold my fork for exactly the reason that you mentioned because it seems to do all the, it's doing all the moving around and you're taking it to your mouth and it seems illogical for me to then do it the other way around.

Mark Taylor 00:19:30

And they say, but when you're sort of carving a Sunday lunch or something like that, you hold your knife in your right hand.

Mark Taylor 00:19:36

And I said, yes, because at that point I'm doing the most important thing with my dominant hand.

Mark Taylor 00:19:42

I can just put the fork into the, into the, into the meat, for example.

Mark Taylor 00:19:46

And then it's my right hand that's doing the carving and needs the dexterity in order to do it.

Mark Taylor 00:19:50

And it makes perfect sense to me other than like you say, no, traditionally it has to look, look a certain.

Mark Stewart 00:19:55

But I think lots of left handers said blow you.

Mark Stewart 00:20:00

I'm going to carry on doing what I've done from birth.

Mark Stewart 00:20:02

And I think in the, in the States as well, for example, they put the knife on the food or they cut with the knife using their dominant hand, put that down and then pick up the fork and then feed them like that.

Mark Stewart 00:20:15

So again, they're using these dominant hands.

Mark Stewart 00:20:17

But it's something that say as right handers, we wouldn't have given a second thought until Rob came along.

Mark Stewart 00:20:24

And you know, I say my wife's an ex teacher and there is, there is no blame on the teachers because if you're not trained, if you're not aware of what is needed, then you know, you, you can't really help them.

Mark Stewart 00:20:39

But I think it's really sad for the child, you know, so yeah, it's.

Mark Taylor 00:20:44

Important and that's why I love this, these conversations and why it's so fabulous to be talking about it on the podcast because there'll be people listening in exactly that situation who hopefully will will at least like say gain that awareness and think a bit more about how that may, how that may work in their classroom.

Mark Taylor 00:20:58

But tell me a little bit more about your, your shop and it's sort of evolution like say over the 30 years or however long in terms of the sorts of things that you were originally stock things which may have changed over those years and then I know within terms of books and resources and like I said your workshops and things you do how sort of you've evolved over that time as well.

Mark Stewart 00:21:18

Yes, thank you.

Mark Stewart 00:21:19

It's.

Mark Stewart 00:21:19

We started open in 1994.

Mark Stewart 00:21:22

4 We had a very small shop in New street in Worcester and we were there for five years before we moved around the corner and we started a franchise or we joined a franchise called Formative Fun which was an educational toy shop with really great stuff, wooden toys, some maths, English, science, you know, your good old fashioned toy shop which we, we thoroughly enjoyed and.

Mark Stewart 00:21:55

But, but I wanted to keep my, my left handed section so as you came in the door on the left hand side was the left hand section of course.

Mark Stewart 00:22:03

So we were there for 20 years and we closed the, the bricks and mortar shop in 2021 I think it was this Covid messes up my years.

Mark Stewart 00:22:14

I can't think exactly but we, we, we'd felt it was, it was time to, to move on with that having noticed and having had the parliamentary questions with our MP and we noticed we were getting a lot of children particularly coming in with handwriting difficulties and there seemed to be a space for us to fill as it were.

Mark Stewart 00:22:45

There was nothing in teacher training.

Mark Stewart 00:22:46

We got in contact with the chief executive of the teacher training agency and we decided to produce a training video.

Mark Stewart 00:22:55

This was 1999 and it was in VHS and we had a meeting with the teacher training agency and they said they would send it out to all the teacher training colleges in England and I thought yes, we're really getting somewhere here.

Mark Stewart 00:23:13

Sadly the teachers were not or the trainee teachers were not required to view it.

Mark Stewart 00:23:21

So it didn't help them and worst of all it didn't help the children they were going to be teaching.

Mark Stewart 00:23:26

So to be perfectly frank it was probably a waste of time and money but you know, you live and learn and what we did afterwards we had funnily enough one day we had a guy came in or a mum and a lad came in and I was sorting out child's handwriting and a chap came in who was publisher of the Left Handers Handbook and the child had come in fairly down in the mouth and didn't really want to be there and you know, what was all this about?

Mark Stewart 00:23:59

Anyway, I managed to sort out his handwriting.

Mark Stewart 00:24:02

It usually takes me 15, 20 minutes and once they've got it, they're sorted for the rest of their life.

Mark Stewart 00:24:08

But anyway, the publisher saw it and we had a chat afterwards and I said, you know that there is a little bit on handwriting for the left handed child.

Mark Stewart 00:24:17

There was a Ladybird book on handwriting but I said, you know, I'd really like to write a proper book on left handed handwriting.

Mark Stewart 00:24:26

So they get a good technique and that sort of thing.

Mark Stewart 00:24:29

And he thought about it and he'd seen this little lad and he went out, the lad went out with a smile on his face saying, yeah, I can do it, I could do it, you know.

Mark Stewart 00:24:39

And the, the publisher said, okay, we'll make, we'll produce three books.

Mark Stewart 00:24:46

What, what do you mean?

Mark Stewart 00:24:47

You can't just say we'll produce three books just like that.

Mark Stewart 00:24:51

You know, this takes weeks and all sorts of things said, no, no, that's fine, we'll do three books.

Mark Stewart 00:24:56

And so we did.

Mark Stewart 00:24:58

And this is where my wife came into, into her own being a creative artistic primary teacher.

Mark Stewart 00:25:06

She had lots of excellent ideas and with her and a really good artist friend of ours and a great designer, there were four of them and they wrote the left hand writing skills books and there's a schools version which is all three fully photocopyable.

Mark Stewart 00:25:27

So I was, I was very grateful to have my name on the front.

Mark Stewart 00:25:30

Not that I'd had a great deal of input but, but a little.

Mark Stewart 00:25:34

And that has been absolutely incredible how many we've sold.

Mark Stewart 00:25:42

They're on sale in Australia and the US and various places.

Mark Stewart 00:25:49

And so we then produced something called a right well mat, which is in fact for left handers on one side and right handers on the reverse, which is a sort of a three encapsulated card.

Mark Stewart 00:26:04

So it shows you the different letter formation for the left hander.

Mark Stewart 00:26:08

And yes there is different letter formation, only really the T in the lower case, it's the crossings.

Mark Stewart 00:26:14

The left hander would much rather pull than having to push.

Mark Stewart 00:26:17

And that's one of the bigger problems with, with handwriting in this country anyway for left handers is they're having to push from behind the writing and with the angle of their arm they can end up smudging it or hooking all sorts of terrible, terrible issues.

Mark Stewart 00:26:31

But it's actually really, really simple to sort out if you know what you're doing.

Mark Stewart 00:26:36

And I fear that one of the issues, particularly with Teachers and parents is in the early years because children are using pencil or crayon that teachers and parents look at what is written and not the how.

Mark Stewart 00:26:55

And the how is absolutely critical.

Mark Stewart 00:26:57

And the number of children we've had coming into the shop was sort of 8 to 12, 13 just signed to use a pen or whatever.

Mark Stewart 00:27:06

Finding actually how they're doing it is really causing the problems.

Mark Stewart 00:27:10

They're smudging, they're getting messy hands getting marked down for poor work and they can't see what they're meant to copy.

Mark Stewart 00:27:16

You know, they got really poor grips, they got pain in the wrist and all, you know, a plethora of issues and sadly they, they aren't getting the help needed to sort it out.

Mark Stewart 00:27:30

So.

Mark Stewart 00:27:30

Yeah, where was I going with that?

Mark Stewart 00:27:32

I can't remember.

Mark Stewart 00:27:32

Never mind.

Mark Taylor 00:27:33

No, no, no, it sounds, it sounds great.

Mark Taylor 00:27:35

And so if a parent myself, for example, if I was in that position where I was noticing these things coming up, it getting hold of the book and actually working through it would actually, I guess solve that problem without it necessarily having to be the teacher that does it as well.

Mark Taylor 00:27:51

So I think in this sort of day and age it's sort of heading into that sort of personalized learning and people being more aware.

Mark Taylor 00:27:57

You hope that it happens.

Mark Taylor 00:27:58

Like you say, there's something that happens within the government, that happens within all teachers and training and classrooms and that kind of thing.

Mark Taylor 00:28:04

But essentially, you know, if you have a child who's left handed or who's struggling, unable to write is successfully as maybe they'd hope, you can sort of like say, take the initiative and support them yourself.

Mark Stewart 00:28:16

That's right.

Mark Stewart 00:28:16

I mean, yes, the books do have instructions on how to help.

Mark Stewart 00:28:24

And I think in retrospect it was helpful in a way that my wife Heather and I are both right handed because we could look objectively at Robert and say, okay, well where are the issues?

Mark Stewart 00:28:37

Why is he struggling, for example, with tying shoelaces or ties that, that he found that an issue and so we thought, okay, well how about Velcro for his shoe in issues?

Mark Stewart 00:28:52

Really useful, really useful.

Mark Stewart 00:28:54

So there are a lot of simple things you can do.

Mark Stewart 00:28:56

And just sitting opposite a child, a left handed child, so you've got a right hander sitting opposite, so you sort of do it in a mirror image can be helpful for those type of things.

Mark Stewart 00:29:06

Or finding a friendly left hander who could say, look, I do it this way, you know, why not, why not try it with me and you know, you sort of sort the problem out.

Mark Taylor 00:29:14

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Mark Taylor 00:29:15

And so on your sort of online site now, what is it that you sell, what is it that you cover?

Mark Taylor 00:29:21

Because certainly from I was looking there, it's not just the handwriting and the sort of the stationary side, there are other things as well.

Mark Stewart 00:29:29

Yes, there are.

Mark Stewart 00:29:30

And there's one further thing I'd like.

Mark Stewart 00:29:32

We also produced a book called so youo Think They're Left Handed with a question mark at the end.

Mark Stewart 00:29:37

And that was a really interesting book that having produced the left handed, left hand writing skills were then reversed back slightly younger and I'm going doing something as well, even younger than sort of three, but I may mention that later.

Mark Stewart 00:29:57

But if you have a child who you don't know whether they're right or left handed in the very early years, it's a book that you can use.

Mark Stewart 00:30:07

So it's got various half dozen laterality questions which you can do on a very low key basis like the kaleidoscope, that type of thing to find out which hand, which eye, which foot and so you can observe which is really useful from a parent or sort of nursery perspective.

Mark Stewart 00:30:28

And then we've done again my wife Heather wrote them 16 pages of cutting activities at three different levels and 16 pages of pre letter formation activities again at three different levels.

Mark Stewart 00:30:42

So building these things up and there's a little letter at the end they can pass on to school as well.

Mark Stewart 00:30:48

So trying to get this movement up.

Mark Stewart 00:30:51

So you know if nurseries are where then they can tell that the primary school.

Mark Stewart 00:30:56

And so the help hopefully will, will go up and raise the awareness as well.

Mark Stewart 00:31:02

But as far as other products, I mean we have a whole variety of different scissors, nail scissors, kitchen scissors, embroidery scissors, dressmaking scissors, general purpose scissors.

Mark Stewart 00:31:16

There are corkscrews, there are tin openers that are very popular.

Mark Stewart 00:31:20

Oh, corkscrews.

Mark Stewart 00:31:22

If you want to play a joke on a right handed friend, give them a left handed corkscrew but don't tell them it's left handed.

Mark Stewart 00:31:29

You can have great fun with that.

Mark Stewart 00:31:31

I had a stall at the Three Counties show at Malvern many years ago and this guy came up and he said, can I borrow one of your corkscrews?

Mark Stewart 00:31:38

I said yeah, that's fine.

Mark Stewart 00:31:40

So I went, I saw him walking up to the end of the tent and he was asking this guy to open this bottle and he was turning and turning and turning and turning.

Mark Stewart 00:31:48

Darn thing doesn't open.

Mark Stewart 00:31:49

Turning and turning and turning.

Mark Stewart 00:31:52

And then the guy obviously said actually it's a left handed one.

Mark Stewart 00:31:55

And you go.

Mark Stewart 00:31:58

But it, it amused me anyway so, so there you go.

Mark Stewart 00:32:02

And there are things like secretaries, left handed secretaries.

Mark Stewart 00:32:06

There are the rulers, pencil sharpeners, pencil grips.

Mark Stewart 00:32:12

What else have we got?

Mark Stewart 00:32:13

Gosh, all sorts of different things.

Mark Stewart 00:32:15

Cake forks.

Mark Stewart 00:32:16

Left handed cake forks have been.

Mark Stewart 00:32:17

Been very popular.

Mark Stewart 00:32:18

Yeah, you don't, don't think about.

Mark Taylor 00:32:22

Yeah, and peelers and things like that, which I guess are kind of really important.

Mark Taylor 00:32:25

They could be hard enough at the best of times if you think you've got the ideal one, let alone say one that doesn't work for you.

Mark Stewart 00:32:31

Yes, that's right.

Mark Stewart 00:32:32

Yeah.

Mark Stewart 00:32:33

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:32:34

So how, how's it been sort of going from the brick and mortar to the online world?

Mark Taylor 00:32:39

Was it?

Mark Taylor 00:32:39

I mean, I guess it happened through Covid anyway because that was the way that everybody was doing it.

Mark Taylor 00:32:44

But have you sort of enjoyed that transition or is there any elements that you miss?

Mark Stewart 00:32:51

Yes, and yes, yes, I, I have enjoyed it.

Mark Stewart 00:32:54

It was relatively stressful having having the two businesses.

Mark Stewart 00:32:59

I'm sure people who run a small business will appreciate that with the bricks and mortar and the all, all the added costs etc.

Mark Stewart 00:33:08

And it was time for us to, to close that and we moved back and in fact we moved into our.

Mark Stewart 00:33:15

Move the business back home from our cellar which actually is a bigger office than I had at the shop.

Mark Stewart 00:33:23

So that's nice.

Mark Stewart 00:33:26

So it's worked as well as I would have hoped for.

Mark Stewart 00:33:31

Certainly we've been busy, but not too busy, which is good from my perspective.

Mark Stewart 00:33:39

The one thing I do miss is actually the contact with the people and helping the.

Mark Stewart 00:33:48

That's what I really missed but I can't do anything about it really.

Mark Stewart 00:33:55

That was useful both from my perspective and the business perspective.

Mark Stewart 00:34:00

And from my perspective it's such a joy to see children going out and you've given them a whole new lease of life and you know that it's going to make a real positive difference to them.

Mark Stewart 00:34:13

That's really rewarding on a purely business perspective.

Mark Stewart 00:34:18

You know, you may have somebody, you tell the parent, oh, by the way, I do training for schools and they hand the leaflet onto the school.

Mark Stewart 00:34:24

Then I get some training and it helps, that helps the business that that sadly is, let's say died of death.

Mark Stewart 00:34:31

But we, what we have done is last year I produced a new training video so because obviously the, the previous one was only in, in vhs.

Mark Stewart 00:34:42

So we've now got a downloadable interactive training video which I'm delighted to say is up and running and on the website.

Mark Stewart 00:34:51

And my wife said, you know, you really aren't going to be able to carry on for the rest of your life going out to schools and doing training in person all the time.

Mark Stewart 00:35:01

You know this, this would be a really good thing and obviously it can be used anywhere in the world, which is incredible.

Mark Stewart 00:35:08

Absolutely incredible.

Mark Taylor 00:35:10

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:35:10

It's amazing.

Mark Stewart 00:35:11

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:35:12

How these things have changed.

Mark Taylor 00:35:13

Like you say the perspective and also the.

Mark Taylor 00:35:15

The.

Mark Taylor 00:35:16

The attention of people from like say wherever they happen to be around the world and the interactivity of those things as well.

Mark Taylor 00:35:21

And have you ever tried doing an online live session as it were?

Mark Taylor 00:35:27

So sort of having a group of people watching you into a workshop in that way around.

Mark Taylor 00:35:31

I just wondered how that works from a kind of a mirroring point of view or the sort of face on point of view.

Mark Stewart 00:35:37

Good question.

Mark Stewart 00:35:38

I did do one in zoom and in Covid on zoom.

Mark Stewart 00:35:47

It didn't really work to my satisfaction.

Mark Stewart 00:35:55

It's.

Mark Stewart 00:35:56

The training is very practical and getting the.

Mark Stewart 00:36:03

The sort of camera and all that sorted out to get the right angle, the correct angles and all this sort of thing.

Mark Stewart 00:36:09

It.

Mark Stewart 00:36:10

It was just.

Mark Stewart 00:36:11

Yeah, I.

Mark Stewart 00:36:12

I found it pretty.

Mark Stewart 00:36:13

Pretty stressful to do and say it wasn't fulfilling what I really wanted to do.

Mark Stewart 00:36:19

Hopefully the.

Mark Stewart 00:36:20

The video is that there's.

Mark Stewart 00:36:25

There's more clarity to it showing how to hold the pencil properly etc, etc and the turning the paper and there are practical things that for example cutting out little snails, circles.

Mark Stewart 00:36:46

So the people who view the video have to have pencil, paper and if possible a pair of scissors.

Mark Stewart 00:36:57

So.

Mark Stewart 00:36:57

And you can actually stop the video at various points because it's all in sort of chapters as it were.

Mark Stewart 00:37:03

So if you want to go to laterality questions, chapter two go to cutting out chapter whatever.

Mark Stewart 00:37:08

So you can.

Mark Stewart 00:37:09

You can stop and start.

Mark Stewart 00:37:10

It's not.

Mark Stewart 00:37:11

You have to watch the whole thing all through but.

Mark Stewart 00:37:17

And even.

Mark Stewart 00:37:18

Even helping children.

Mark Stewart 00:37:20

I've helped one or two on zoom and it's really isn't the same as doing it in person.

Mark Stewart 00:37:27

It.

Mark Stewart 00:37:27

I guess it's as good as I can do but doesn't.

Mark Stewart 00:37:32

Doesn't really satisfy my need for really understanding and getting that.

Mark Stewart 00:37:37

There is nothing like being in front of the person and showing and turning the wrist a little bit or straightening that or you know, so there's.

Mark Stewart 00:37:45

You're sort of limited to a certain degree.

Mark Taylor 00:37:48

Yeah, I can completely identify with that.

Mark Taylor 00:37:50

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:37:50

I mean it's a.

Mark Taylor 00:37:51

Teaching music on Zoom is a completely different ball game to being able to do it in person and like say just the small little observations or little things that you can mention or like say little positioning things which you almost aren't even thinking about in.

Mark Taylor 00:38:06

In person is very different when it's online and the expl.

Mark Taylor 00:38:09

Yeah, that takes you into a whole different world which, yeah, I'm definitely an in person point of view from that sort of, especially that sort of one on one kind of situation.

Mark Taylor 00:38:18

So, yeah, is there a piece of advice that you'd like to share with us?

Mark Taylor 00:38:22

And that can be anything personal or professional, but.

Mark Taylor 00:38:26

Or maybe something, a piece of advice you might give your younger self.

Mark Stewart 00:38:29

Now looking back my younger self.

Mark Stewart 00:38:35

Stick with it, stick with it, persevere.

Mark Stewart 00:38:38

Give it, give it everything because, and I think of that when we first opened our shop and my wife can't remember whether she was working or not, but it was very tough financially, very tough and.

Mark Stewart 00:39:04

But what I wanted was if the business was to go under, I wanted to know that I'd done everything I could to make it work.

Mark Stewart 00:39:15

And I used to go down Worcester High street with a banner and say, left handed, come and see us.

Mark Stewart 00:39:21

You know, all sorts of things.

Mark Stewart 00:39:27

So yes, if you're starting a business, be prepared to work at it, work hard at it, give it everything you can.

Mark Stewart 00:39:39

I would.

Mark Stewart 00:39:40

I'm absolutely flabbergasted that 30 years later we're still going, which is absolutely brilliant.

Mark Stewart 00:39:49

It's been an amazing journey and hopefully it'll be going a bit, bit more than that.

Mark Stewart 00:39:54

So, yeah, I think perseverance and, and.

Mark Taylor 00:39:58

Help so many people, which is, which is, which is incredible.

Mark Taylor 00:40:00

If you could, you know, just the, the journeys of those people as well is incredible.

Mark Taylor 00:40:06

Is there a resource you'd like to share?

Mark Taylor 00:40:07

And I know there's sort of something related to what you've been producing that you can tell us as well.

Mark Stewart 00:40:15

Yes, I think the training video really is a resource I'd like to share and the books, I mean there's so many things there that can really help and educate both teachers and parents which will then positively help the children and anything you can do to help the children is a win, win for everybody.

Mark Stewart 00:40:44

There is no downside to this and this is what I try telling the MPs, whatever the DFA putting on posts, you know, there really is no downside and there's so many children you're talking about that really aren't getting the help they deserve and we aren't doing our best for them and that saddens me frankly.

Mark Stewart 00:41:07

Hopefully things are going to change.

Mark Stewart 00:41:10

But yeah, and do something about it.

Mark Stewart 00:41:14

If you're a parent of a left handed child, go and speak to the teachers and the teachers do something about it.

Mark Stewart 00:41:21

Don't just talk about it, do Something about it, make it make that difference.

Mark Stewart 00:41:26

Because you know this, that, that little help can change a child's life.

Mark Taylor 00:41:31

And I think, yeah, I think what I really love about this is the fact that even if you didn't know what to say, you could now say, look, look at this download, look at this book.

Mark Taylor 00:41:40

Look.

Mark Taylor 00:41:40

Even if you're not aware of how these things are, there are things out there which we can make a difference in the here and now.

Mark Taylor 00:41:46

And I think I love the like say the big picture, wanting to change, as we said before, but also actually having a practical step of not just I wish it was like this, but here, something that can make a difference.

Mark Taylor 00:41:56

I'm already maybe doing it at home.

Mark Taylor 00:41:58

I've been experienced.

Mark Taylor 00:41:59

I heard it on a podcast.

Mark Taylor 00:42:00

Let's see if we can bring that into the classroom.

Mark Taylor 00:42:02

So yeah, it's absolutely amazing.

Mark Stewart 00:42:04

Yeah, it's been a fascinating few last couple of years.

Mark Stewart 00:42:09

I'm a co founder of a global group that's really starting to make things move, which is really interesting.

Mark Stewart 00:42:19

A little bit sad in a way because there's still some countries that are out there that still force left handed children to do things right handed.

Mark Stewart 00:42:29

But there's a great awareness going on and I think things are starting to change.

Mark Stewart 00:42:35

Certainly our group is helping raise awareness and hopefully changing children's lives.

Mark Taylor 00:42:44

Yeah, Incredible.

Mark Taylor 00:42:45

Obviously the acronym FIRE is important to us here at Education on far.

Mark Taylor 00:42:49

And by that we mean feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment.

Mark Taylor 00:42:54

What is it that strikes you when you hear those?

Mark Taylor 00:42:56

And I'm imagining the resilience is definitely one of those, like you said in terms of that business point of view.

Mark Taylor 00:43:02

And also like I say, in any kind of struggle.

Mark Stewart 00:43:05

Gosh, yes.

Mark Stewart 00:43:06

I mean all of those.

Mark Stewart 00:43:07

I mean I've given some feedback from the teacher and head teacher.

Mark Stewart 00:43:12

Inspiration, interesting one.

Mark Stewart 00:43:16

Resilience, certainly.

Mark Stewart 00:43:17

And empowerment.

Mark Stewart 00:43:20

You know, there are so many times I think that we write things down, we have good policies and we can talk about this and that until the cows come home, but it's the action that's got to happen throughout for our children.

Mark Stewart 00:43:38

So.

Mark Stewart 00:43:39

But yeah, I think that's.

Mark Stewart 00:43:43

Yeah, I think that's where I go with that.

Mark Taylor 00:43:46

So for those people who are like, I can't believe I didn't know about this before and where can I get all that support and help that you've been talking about?

Mark Taylor 00:43:53

Where, where should they go and look?

Mark Stewart 00:43:56

Okay, thank you.

Mark Stewart 00:43:57

The website is leftshoponline.co.uk.

Mark Stewart 00:44:01

and if anybody wants any help or advice, more than happy to help.

Mark Taylor 00:44:05

Brilliant.

Mark Taylor 00:44:06

And we'll have links to all of those things on the show notes as well, so people can click through.

Mark Taylor 00:44:10

And so, Mark, thank you so much for being here, sharing your journey and all the massive impact that you've had on so many, and keep up the great work.

Mark Taylor 00:44:19

And I think it's so important for us to realize that there is something we can do in the here and now and that there are people out there really sort of supporting people who are in a position that they need help.

Mark Taylor 00:44:31

And like I say, if it's not something which is in the forefront of the news, you kind of feel like it's easy to be overlooked.

Mark Taylor 00:44:36

But I think actually championing, like I said, the, you know, the millions of people who.

Mark Taylor 00:44:40

And millions of children that need this support on a regular basis is an important thing.

Mark Taylor 00:44:44

And I'm so glad we've been able to share it.

Mark Taylor 00:44:45

So thanks so much, indeed.

Mark Stewart 00:44:47

My pleasure.

Mark Stewart 00:44:48

Thank you, Mark.

Mark Stewart 00:44:48

Much appreciated.

Mark Taylor 00:44:50

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.