For the purposes of teaching, that is. I am attempting to give campers basic knowledge of horsemanship and create in them a spirit of proper western pleasure riding, and in this task I have found that girls are by and large the superior students.
First, the age group. The girls I had last session were ALL crazy about horses. Remember when Elena wanted nothing more than her own pony? I was teaching seven such girls. As long as I was talking about ponies, they were interested. They wanted to pet ponies, ride ponies, learn how to care for ponies, anything! I could not have asked for a more enthusiastic class. I could say the most boring, pointless things about saddles, bridles, and tack but they would hang upon each and every word.
Secondly, girls are much less familiar with the "cowboy culture", which is actually a gross misconception of real cowboy riding. Real cowboys were the most phenomenal horsemen seen since medieval knights. A cowboy would never whale away on a horse's sides with his spurs or sit slumped in the saddle! No, you couldn't see him move when he told his horse to go and they loved their horses to death. But in popular Westerns (especially bad Westerns) you see all that - bad posture, poor cues, etc. Girls are largely ignorant of this, so it is far easier to correct their posture errors. "Sit up straight! Relax your back! Don't grip with your knees! Heels down! Make a straight line from shoulders, hips, and heels!"
Third, girls have far less of a speed demon. This is a good and a not-so-good thing. They are largely content to walk and trot, accepting my reasons for forbidding them to canter. (my reasons are posture-related, not safety-related. If you cannot ride flawlessly at a trot, why should you be cantering or galloping?) They would never think of ignoring my command to slow down.
Fourth, girls listen better. I don't have to bribe them with candy or rewards in order for them to pay attention while I teach them about the Natural Aids. They sit quiet, absorb the information like a sponge, and then regurgitate it finer than I have ever seen it before. The result is that they go through the entire Basic material in three lessons and move on to the Intermediate material.
Thus, because I like easy work, if you give me the chance of teaching seven Basic boys or seven basic girls, odds are I'd choose the girls. On the other hand, it is awesome to see ten year old boys crack down and learn horses well and become fantastic riders, just like it's awesome to see them become dedicated pianists. So why does it seem like girls learn and behave better than their apish opposites?
6 comments:
Oh Tim, you have hit upon the very thing that drives mothers and teachers wild. I remember Gregg Harris saying, "Most mothers' idea of a good little boy-- is a little girl."
Boys are (biologically speaking) less mature than their female agemates. This means girls are better at 'classroom' things, like sitting still, listening, paying attention, etc. You could compare 8- year old girls with 6 year old boys and it would be more fair. Kindergarten teachers always end up punishing the boys because they can't sit still, can't keep their hands off their neighbor, etc. By the time the boys 'catch up' socially, they have a Reputation as misbehaving, which could be avoided if they were kept home longer and started in formal training a bit later.
I could go on but I think you get the idea.
Does this mean you have a class of BOYS this session?
hang tough, cowboy.
There are various schools on the east coast whose modus operandi is that the early differences between the way female and male children learn and interact with their world necessitates their separate instruction. For example, girls and boys have different sensitivities and responses, both positive and negative, to different kinds of light.
Ultimately the most fundamental difference between the two brains is that the boys' brains are marinating in testosterone, and they tend to learn best in action-based environments.
Testosterone on the brain tends to encourage behavior that is considered "bad" in the class room: hyperactivity, aggressiveness. Extremely high levels of the hormone have been demonstrated to have a strongly negative effect on neuron viability.
This shouldn't be particularly surprising given our hunter-gatherer history.
As it pertains to the classroom, though, it places more weight upon the instructors to be accomodating in their methods and see behavior through the lens of our natural history.
p.s
I never wanted a pony-it was always a horse. ALWAYS.
1. Ponies sound cuter than horses and they tend to be less lazy.
2. I wonder if there are other factors as well. When little boys spend 4-6 hours a day either watching TV or playing Halo (during which activities they are tremendously and continuously stimulated on all levels) it's gotta drive them stir-crazy, sitting absolutely still through all that stimulation. Combine that with our new city life of total avoidance with the outdoors and it's no small wonder that they're overmedicated (double digit gains in the number of HR campers "diagnosed" and treated with respect to ADD, ADHD, and plenty other disorders) and hyperactive. I wonder if our way of life is affecting boys as much or even as more than the differences in the two brains by nature.
1. Irrelevant. I wanted a horse a horse a horse.
2. modern environments are conducive to hyperdiagnosis, agreed, but that doesn't change the simple fact that boys' brains swim in testosterone.
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