Horse Sense and the Start of School
And so we arrive at the moment of renewal, the start of the school year. During August and the beginning of September, children all over the United States pack up fresh notebooks, new pens and pencils, and perhaps even a computer, and begin a new year of learning, challenge, and growth. New faces, new teachers, new rules, new expectations — the summer morphs into a daily organized plan.
Before we begin this year, I turn to a lesson learned this summer, a new term from a wise horseman. Allow me to explain:
Like many humans, horses enjoy the leisure of the pasture to the burden of work. When it comes time to ride, they do so, obeying the commands the rider delivers with the legs and hands. Last week, I rode a mare named Cruella, a white horse with blue eyes that did everything I asked her to do. We crossed streams, trotted up steep slopes, and walked through a forest of aspen trees. I doubt she enjoyed my constant shifting of weight and inconsistent tugs on her reins, but Cruella patiently endured my awkwardness.
Our guide, my wife’s cousin Will, part singing aficionado, part horse sage, led us through varied terrain and tolerated my inexperience as patiently as Cruella. He sang trail songs and complimented us on how well we rode. As we turned toward home, with my back twisted into knots and other body parts aching and sore, I could think only of my delight at arriving back at the cabin. I couldn’t wait to get off the saddle.
Then Will said, “It’s very important, no matter how tired you and the horse are, that you don’t ride home fast. It makes them barn sour.” He explained that when you ride home quickly, the horses know it, and then they will always want to return to the ease of the barn. Over time, once they know the way home, they will not ride as well on the trail. A barn sour horse thinks more about home than work. A barn sour horse likes the easy life.
Like riding a horse, learning is gritty work. As we progress from a state of unknowing to knowing, we move through confusion to arrive at understanding. Think of the times you worked to master some intellectual idea or a skill, those times of frustration and uncertainty. If you persist patiently, most of the time, you can master the concept, but you must, at one point or another, not know what you are doing. The process should be hard.
After Will taught me the meaning of “barn sour,” I began to think of it in terms of school. If school is easy, do students become educationally barn sour? A recent article in the Atlantic entitled “The Coddling of the American Mind” makes a similar point — that by using the umbrella of political correctness, colleges protect students from offensive ideas and speech. I wondered if making things easy really makes things hard later on.
There have always been complaints about schools — grade inflation, teacher incompetence, student laziness, parental control, governmental interference. In truth, schools are marvelous places, populated mostly by people who care about learning. The great teachers don’t want their students to become barn sour. They want them to share in this wonderful and difficult process called learning. Let us celebrate the arrival of the school year.
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photo: Author’s own
