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

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

Because it's a very right handed world and people don't tend to think about it. 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. There are actually some very simple things that you can do which don't cost a penny.

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. You can be right eye dominant but left handed and right footed. So you can be a whole mishmash. Hello. 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.

Now this has obviously carried on over that number of time. The business has changed obviously as life has moved on. But really important conversations both in terms of providing products for people who are left handed, but also within the education field. 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. Really hope you love this conversation with Mark Stewart.

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast. The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world. Listen to teachers, parents and mentors share how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Hi Mark, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Far podcast.

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

So yeah, fascinating conversation and really looking forward to diving in. Well, thank you very much for asking me. So we have, we have both Christian names the same and a similar family situation. If, if I give you little bit of history about why I started was my youngest son who's the left hander. 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.

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. We didn't really know anything about left handers.

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. So he is really very, very left sided, dominant, very well coordinated and so we thought well you know, how can we help? Gosh, how do you deal with a left hander when you've never had one before?

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

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.

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

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? Not necessarily. You can't be cast iron about it, it's usually hereditary but not necessarily. You can become left handed through accident, through stroke. The drug Thalidomide caused a lot of children to be born with upper limb deficiencies.

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. And I guess out of a certain number of people you are bound to get a left handed child. 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. But it's interesting to know thinking about numbers. There are a couple of things I can tell you on that.

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. And I said how many of you got in your class or your year? And she said out of her year of 90 children she had 60 left handed. 6, 0, not 16. And I went back the following year and said are you sure, you sure it's 60? And she said yes, definitely.

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. So frankly, they haven't got a clue. The same questions were repeated in 2016 by the Midwester MP Nigel Huddleston, with exactly the same responses. 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?

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. There are over 1 million left handed children currently in schools and they do. There's nothing in teacher training about it. The last national curriculum was quite interesting.

I had a meeting with Nick Gibb who produced the national curriculum and there's a bit on handwriting in that, which is statutory. 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. So it was a sort of afterthought. Oh yes, handwriting is really important. Oh, left hand as well. They should have something done to it.

But you know, let's not worry too much about it, which I thought was appalling. And I said to him it should be must not, not should be, not should, the word should be must have appropriate guidance. And he said, well the word should does have some impetus and I couldn't disagree with that. But I thought it, you know, it must be done.

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. So I've had some input into the new curriculum and assessment review so we'll see whether anything comes of that or not. But it's going to be very interesting. 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.

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.

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. Yes, certainly. 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.

Robert hadn't even cut it out because he couldn't. 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? And the self esteem just goes wallop. Yeah, you know, and it's, it's, it's simple things, funny enough. 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.

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

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

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. There wasn't that kind of dominance that everything has to be left handed. There's some crossover there somewhere which I think is genuinely confusing.

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. But that kind of takes time, it takes impetus.

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

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. But you mentioned the likes of cricket and golf and that's quite interesting because there are what I would term double handed activities. And if I'm being asked by a parent, for example, how can I check whether my child is right or left handed? I would always say disregard double handed activities.

And if you think about eating as well, this was really interesting from our perspective with Robert. 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. You're then told with a knife and fork, no, you're not going to do that. 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.

And what Robert used to do, he'd put the knife on the food and sort of tear with a fork. 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. 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. Because actually it's the left arm that does the main work in controlling.

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. There's a reason behind it and it's the terminology that's not correct rather than how you're doing it. So. So I found that quite interesting over the years. Yeah, that's fascinating. I know. I think the conversations we had was that neither of them felt natural in a way, that some activities sort of felt natural.

And I guess then that just becomes practice and making a decision. Here are a couple of things that everybody can do who's watching this and in the training that I do. 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.

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

But anyway, let's go back to the laterality questions, which are rather fun and we'll go through one or two. And if I was to say, okay, well I'm male, I'm follically disadvantaged, I. Don'T know what you're talking about, but Carrie. So for example, put your hands together, one on top of the other, which thumb is on the top? 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. Oh, okay, well that's a Bit odd. I'm slightly surprised about that.

Okay, how about folding your arms? Which arm is on the top? Interesting. Yeah, because it was my right hand which actually was on the top when I did it. Right, yes. So you think okay, well that's again, that's a little bit odd. But if you try it the other way it's just completely unnatural, isn't it? Gosh, yeah, it does feel really odd. 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.

So it's which eye, which hand looking at which eye you might be, might be dominant with. And that was really interesting and gave us another view into, you know, the, the different dominances that you have. I, I had a little lad came in and he must have been, I don't know, five, six, something like that. 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.

Anyway he, he picked it up and went slap bang in the middle. I thought oh right, okay, haven't seen that one before. But his dominance obviously hadn't been defined eye wise. 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. 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.

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

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

And I would, I would say further there, there's what I would term passive discrimination. And what I want is that the education system should be more proactive and helpful. And as you said in your, your piece, equality in, in policy, in training and resources. So you give the left handed child an equal opportunity to achieve their full academic potential. Yeah. So important. And the awareness thing, I think is fascinating.

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. I'm a musician and I'm a drummer. So I do a lot of things sort of ambidextrously as it were.

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

I can just put the fork into the, into the, into the meat, for example. And then it's my right hand that's doing the carving and needs the dexterity in order to do it. And it makes perfect sense to me other than like you say, no, traditionally it has to look, look a certain. But I think lots of left handers said blow you. I'm going to carry on doing what I've done from birth.

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. So again, they're using these dominant hands. But it's something that say as right handers, we wouldn't have given a second thought until Rob came along.

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

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.

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. Yes, thank you.

It's. We started open in 1994. 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.

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. 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.

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. There was nothing in teacher training. We got in contact with the chief executive of the teacher training agency and we decided to produce a training video.

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. Sadly the teachers were not or the trainee teachers were not required to view it. So it didn't help them and worst of all it didn't help the children they were going to be teaching.

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? Anyway, I managed to sort out his handwriting.

It usually takes me 15, 20 minutes and once they've got it, they're sorted for the rest of their life. 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. 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. So they get a good technique and that sort of thing.

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. And the, the publisher said, okay, we'll make, we'll produce three books. What, what do you mean? You can't just say we'll produce three books just like that. You know, this takes weeks and all sorts of things said, no, no, that's fine, we'll do three books. And so we did.

And this is where my wife came into, into her own being a creative artistic primary teacher. 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. So I was, I was very grateful to have my name on the front. Not that I'd had a great deal of input but, but a little.

And that has been absolutely incredible how many we've sold. They're on sale in Australia and the US and various places. 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. So it shows you the different letter formation for the left hander. And yes there is different letter formation, only really the T in the lower case, it's the crossings.

The left hander would much rather pull than having to push. 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. But it's actually really, really simple to sort out if you know what you're doing.

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

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. 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. So. Yeah, where was I going with that? I can't remember. Never mind. No, no, no, it sounds, it sounds great.

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. 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. You hope that it happens.

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. 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. That's right. I mean, yes, the books do have instructions on how to help.

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? 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? Really useful, really useful. So there are a lot of simple things you can do.

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. 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. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And so on your sort of online site now, what is it that you sell, what is it that you cover?

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. Yes, there are. And there's one further thing I'd like. We also produced a book called so youo Think They're Left Handed with a question mark at the end.

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. 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.

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. 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.

So building these things up and there's a little letter at the end they can pass on to school as well. So trying to get this movement up. So you know if nurseries are where then they can tell that the primary school. And so the help hopefully will, will go up and raise the awareness as well. 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.

There are corkscrews, there are tin openers that are very popular. Oh, corkscrews. 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. You can have great fun with that. 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? I said yeah, that's fine.

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. Darn thing doesn't open. Turning and turning and turning. And then the guy obviously said actually it's a left handed one. And you go. But it, it amused me anyway so, so there you go. And there are things like secretaries, left handed secretaries. There are the rulers, pencil sharpeners, pencil grips. What else have we got?

Gosh, all sorts of different things. Cake forks. Left handed cake forks have been. Been very popular. Yeah, you don't, don't think about. Yeah, and peelers and things like that, which I guess are kind of really important. 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. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So how, how's it been sort of going from the brick and mortar to the online world?

Was it? I mean, I guess it happened through Covid anyway because that was the way that everybody was doing it. But have you sort of enjoyed that transition or is there any elements that you miss? Yes, and yes, yes, I, I have enjoyed it. It was relatively stressful having having the two businesses.

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. And it was time for us to, to close that and we moved back and in fact we moved into our. Move the business back home from our cellar which actually is a bigger office than I had at the shop. So that's nice. So it's worked as well as I would have hoped for. Certainly we've been busy, but not too busy, which is good from my perspective.

The one thing I do miss is actually the contact with the people and helping the. That's what I really missed but I can't do anything about it really. That was useful both from my perspective and the business perspective. 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. That's really rewarding on a purely business perspective.

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

So we've now got a downloadable interactive training video which I'm delighted to say is up and running and on the website. 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. You know this, this would be a really good thing and obviously it can be used anywhere in the world, which is incredible. Absolutely incredible. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. How these things have changed.

Like you say the perspective and also the. The. The attention of people from like say wherever they happen to be around the world and the interactivity of those things as well. And have you ever tried doing an online live session as it were? So sort of having a group of people watching you into a workshop in that way around. I just wondered how that works from a kind of a mirroring point of view or the sort of face on point of view. Good question. I did do one in zoom and in Covid on zoom.

It didn't really work to my satisfaction. It's. The training is very practical and getting the. The sort of camera and all that sorted out to get the right angle, the correct angles and all this sort of thing. It. It was just. Yeah, I. I found it pretty. Pretty stressful to do and say it wasn't fulfilling what I really wanted to do. Hopefully the. The video is that there's.

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. So the people who view the video have to have pencil, paper and if possible a pair of scissors. So. And you can actually stop the video at various points because it's all in sort of chapters as it were. So if you want to go to laterality questions, chapter two go to cutting out chapter whatever. So you can.

You can stop and start. It's not. You have to watch the whole thing all through but. And even. Even helping children. I've helped one or two on zoom and it's really isn't the same as doing it in person. It. I guess it's as good as I can do but doesn't. Doesn't really satisfy my need for really understanding and getting that. 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.

You're sort of limited to a certain degree. Yeah, I can completely identify with that. Yeah. I mean it's a. 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. In person is very different when it's online and the expl.

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. So, yeah, is there a piece of advice that you'd like to share with us? And that can be anything personal or professional, but. Or maybe something, a piece of advice you might give your younger self. Now looking back my younger self. Stick with it, stick with it, persevere.

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. 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. And I used to go down Worcester High street with a banner and say, left handed, come and see us. You know, all sorts of things.

So yes, if you're starting a business, be prepared to work at it, work hard at it, give it everything you can. I would. I'm absolutely flabbergasted that 30 years later we're still going, which is absolutely brilliant. It's been an amazing journey and hopefully it'll be going a bit, bit more than that. So, yeah, I think perseverance and, and. Help so many people, which is, which is, which is incredible. If you could, you know, just the, the journeys of those people as well is incredible.

Is there a resource you'd like to share? And I know there's sort of something related to what you've been producing that you can tell us as well. 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.

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. Hopefully things are going to change. But yeah, and do something about it. If you're a parent of a left handed child, go and speak to the teachers and the teachers do something about it.

Don't just talk about it, do Something about it, make it make that difference. Because you know this, that, that little help can change a child's life. 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. Look. 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.

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. I'm already maybe doing it at home. I've been experienced. I heard it on a podcast. Let's see if we can bring that into the classroom. So yeah, it's absolutely amazing. Yeah, it's been a fascinating few last couple of years.

I'm a co founder of a global group that's really starting to make things move, which is really interesting. 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. But there's a great awareness going on and I think things are starting to change. Certainly our group is helping raise awareness and hopefully changing children's lives. Yeah, Incredible.

Obviously the acronym FIRE is important to us here at Education on far. And by that we mean feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment. What is it that strikes you when you hear those? And I'm imagining the resilience is definitely one of those, like you said in terms of that business point of view. And also like I say, in any kind of struggle. Gosh, yes. I mean all of those. I mean I've given some feedback from the teacher and head teacher. Inspiration, interesting one.

Resilience, certainly. And empowerment. 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. So. But yeah, I think that's. Yeah, I think that's where I go with that. 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?

Where, where should they go and look? Okay, thank you. The website is leftshoponline.co.uk. and if anybody wants any help or advice, more than happy to help. Brilliant. And we'll have links to all of those things on the show notes as well, so people can click through. 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.

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

And millions of children that need this support on a regular basis is an important thing. And I'm so glad we've been able to share it. So thanks so much, indeed. My pleasure. Thank you, Mark. Much appreciated. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.