Foundation of the British Ambidextral Culture Society

In 1903, John Jackson, a grammar school teacher in Belfast, founded the British Ambidextral Culture Society, whose goals he defined in Ambidexterity, or, Two-Handedness and Two-Brainedness: An Argument for Natural Development and Rational Education (1905).

Here, Jackson blended Wigan, Brown-Séquard, and Tadd to elaborate a neuroeducational system that would improve the functioning of both hemispheres (Harrington 1987; Harris 1980, 1985). Future generations, he stated, quoting a member of the society, “must utilize to the utmost every cubical line of brain substance, and this can only be done by a system of education which enforces an equal preeminence to both sides of the brain in all intellectual operations” ( Jackson 1905, 103–104). The implication was that we do not use all of our brains and that individual and social progress depends, at least in part, on no longer wasting our precious cerebral substance.

Jackson even imagined that training both cerebral hemispheres would not only increase brainpower but also lead to the growth of new language centers in the right hemisphere, thus preventing aphasias and hemiplegias.

Vidal, Fernando and Ortega, Francisco. Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject (Forms of Living)....