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One of the reminders I offer most often when working with horses, is “teach, don’t expect.” This mantra is equally helpful to human students—not just those learning to ride, but also those learning any number of skills in daily life.
Riders, and too many trainers, often expect horses to just figure skills out. A young horse doesn’t even know how to turn a corner in an arena—he walks down the long side next to the fence and stops when the fence turns a corner in front of him. The same is true for grooming, saddling, and mounting a young horse; for traversing a pole on the ground without touching it; for riding on forest trails or in indoor arenas; for racing across a polo field or pulling a holiday sleigh. Many trainers assume the horse will figure out these tasks with experience, and eventually he does. But why not save human time and equine patience… and teach him instead?
Riding students and children often experience the same attitude: Slap the newbie on a horse and tell him to get to the other end of the riding ring—he’ll figure it out. Toss a child into the playground melee, and she will figure out how to share toys, converse with peers, and play together. Later, throw that young teen into adolescence, where she will fumble around to discover how to date, how to study effectively, how to excel at a sport, how to choose supportive friends. But why not teach her? Trial and error in dating, for example, can be a wicked game—one that isn’t harmed by a little instruction in advance.
As a lifelong educator in one form or another, I’m often surprised at how seldom we teach our family members how to treat us, our employers how to motivate our performance, our clients when to arrive for appointments, fellow drivers how to stay in their lanes. They’ll figure it out, right? Well, maybe. But how long will that take? And what needless errors will occur in the meantime? How dangerous will those errors be, to us and to them? Why not just teach?
One reason is that we hesitate to instruct those who are older or socially superior to us, because doing so seems presumptuous. Another is that we don’t always know how to teach—how to phrase our suggestions in a gentle way, for example. A third is that the culture of instruction, once so popular, has vanished into a “figure it out” mentality in which no product comes with written guidance. But by far the most common reason—in horses and humans—seems to be that we simply don’t think of it. We don’t realize that the animals around us might need instruction, that the people in our lives might in fact appreciate a tip or two. The thought never occurs.
Try teaching for a few days, and see whether it works for you. “Teaching” can be as simple as complimenting a child privately on her social acumen after she offers a hand to a friend. It can take the form of a gentle smile when a spouse lends help. It can be a pause in an argument, after which you attempt to explain yourself in just a word or two rather than wielding the sledgehammer of lengthy exposition. It could be advance planning before Grandpa shares his political views at the holiday dinner table. Try teaching, and you’ll be surprised at how well it works. You might learn something, too!
