For Teachers, part 2:
Defining the Goal what are we
aiming for?
For recap, we can agree on a few things ~
- "Everyone (including the teacher!) is doing their
best to do their best. No-one is intentionally,
consistently doing the harmful or non-beneficial thing
thinking it's the beneficial thing to do."
- Repeatedly telling someone "here's the bulls eye, hit the center of
it" does not automagically give them
the skill set to hit the bulls eye in the
center.
- Micro-managing a situation also does not give
someone a skill set, and has (imo) a certain violence to
it that dismisses the student's ability and method of
learning as well as robbing them of learning something
deeply.
- Teachers want to facilitate learning.
With that all in mind, what is the answer to the
question: "Why is a person
doing something that really just isn't helping themselves
or the horse?"
I am wondering if these three things may come into
play:
- the student doesn't know what the goal is, actually
- the student doesn't know what they are doing really
- there is some influence that is interfering with
everything.
What is the goal? What are we aiming for?
Truthfully, in riding, the bulls eye, can be a
complicated thing. There are really two bulls eyes --
one for the rider and one for the horse. The
bulls eye needs to be described well enough that the rider
or horse can discern when they've hit the bulls eye and
when they've missed. Until someone says, 'hit the red
x' it's all a funny looking bunch of circles. Unless
the goal is defined, the rider and horse will be aimless.
I further submit that understanding and achieving the bulls eye
for the rider is the one more under control of the rider,
and while the horse can sometimes be used as a measure of achievement,
it is better to have an internal measure. But first
one must know what it is one wants to achieve!
If the goal is to 'ride quieter' this sounds lovely
but is not very measurable as it is stated. A more
attainable goal would be something like 'the rider's seat
remains in the saddle' or 'the rider's legs drape around
the horse.' These second statements can be
objectively observed. For instance, the rider's seat
is / isn't in the saddle; on a scale of 0 = no movement and
10 = lots of movement, one can 'measure' how much movement
is happening.
As to what that the horse is meant to be doing, many of the books tend to
devote much of the writing to what the horses needs looks
like. Which can itself provide contradictions -- as an example, for 'shoulder-in' we have different attempts
at describing what it is exactly:
USDF Definition of the
Shoulder-In: A shoulder-in
is performed in collected trot. The horse is ridden
with a slight but uniform bend around the inside leg
of the rider, maintaining cadence at a constant
angle of approximately 30 degrees. The horse’s
inside foreleg passes and crosses in front of the
outside foreleg; the inside hind leg steps forward
under the horse’s body weight following the same
track of the outside foreleg, with the lowering of
the inside hip. The horse is bent away from the
direction in which it is moving.
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Current Wikipedia, In the
shoulder-in, the
shoulder of the horse is brought to the inside,
creating a 30-degree-angle with the rail, with the
neck bent only the slightest amount, only softening
in the jaw so that the corner of the eye is visible
to the rider. The horse's hind legs track straight
forward along the line of travel while the front
legs move laterally, with the inside foreleg
crossing in front of the outside foreleg and the
inside hind hoof tracking into or beyond the
hoofprint made by the outside foreleg. Because the
horse is bending away from the direction of travel,
the movement requires a certain amount of
collection. The shoulder-in can be performed at any
forward gait, but in dressage competition it is
usually ridden only at the trot.
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From Riding Logic, In the shoulder-in, the horse
is positioned as in bending, but he is bent more in
the ribs and his fore legs re, therefore, off the
track so that the inner leg follows the outer fore
leg.
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And, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand
words:
and from my own workbook:
So the first order of business is to decide what it is
one wants to be doing. Both in the horse and in the
rider.
Setting aside for the moment that anyone of these
aspects can be hotly debated, if the teacher has an idea of
what they wish to impart, it is useful to make sure the
student has a clear idea of what that is and has, in some
fashion, agreed to do it.
One time after like 30 minutes (way too long, btw) I
finally asked a student, 'Could you tell me what you're
doing?' She relayed this information and much to my
dismay it had very little to do with what I'd said. I
asked her about that and she cheerfully told me she was doing
what her last instructor had told her to do. Which,
indeed, she was. Lesson learned on my part!
More thoughts on this to come ...
L
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