This message is from: "Gail Russell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> This is the second message. Apologies to Starfire Farm...to whom I sent this message thinking I would not get permission from the author to post it to the list....and then got it.
Gail Earlier I wrote: > Horses are not bicycles. They have their own sense of balance, and > the better it is, the easier the "movement before balance" method is > going to be. > The Germans are, not coincidentally, selectively breeding for > extraordinary natural balance, and awe-inspiring movement. It suits > their theory, and makes perfect sense. > The "rules" of the French school we've been discussing are directly > from Baucher, who is not the only influence on the school, but an > undeniable one. He did not have horses that suited his theory - his > theory was developed from the horses he had available. It works > with "whatever" amount of inherent balance a horse has. I needed to think further on this, I sort of stalled out this morning. What I want to clarify here is that both schools work, but with some notable differences beyond theory . I think one can use the example of public schools versus private schools. Public schools are primarily interested in educating in numbers. By that I mean, the idea is that as a whole, the system must be successful in a population. If a majority of the population is served by the system, i.e. "educated", then the system is judged successful. If the individual fallout within the system is within acceptable levels, the value of it is proven. The concern is with population as whole, not the variability of the individual. The private school emphasis is to minimize the individual fallout from a system. It addresses the problem of education with the idea that the principles /structure of the education "work", or are "proven" because they encompass as much individual variation in learning as possible. The emphasis is just "from the other end" - if individual fallout is present, the system is at fault, not the individual. We can look at the equine "population" two ways. We have a vast number of "given" horses, many of them not bred (specifically intended) or conformed physically or mentally for "dressage". This is the "private school" approach - and the one Baucher addressed. The problem is that the private school approach with emphasis on the individual does not lend itself easily to educating entire populations, which probably accounts for the reason why the French cavalry could acknowledge what Baucher was doing as having value, but did not adopt it as an educational system. The German approach is more "public school". As long as the system is working for a majority of horses, the system is successful. Individual fall-out means the horse was not "suitable" for the work intended . Too much individual fall-out is addressed, not by changing the system of education, but by enough selection in the population. The Germans work both ends of the spectrum, as Sharon would say. Their "system" is not just concerned with the most efficient way to teach a large population of horses and riders, it also addresses the APTITUDE of both for the work at hand. If you don't thrive in the system, you need to be somewhere else, doing something else. This is why some historical and cultural backround is important. Also another reason why clicker trainers, I think, should at least look into the French school. A lot of us are here on the clickryder list because we have "children" who need to go to private school! Jord-Ann No Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Clickryder Website: http://clickryder.com Archives: http://escribe.com/pets/clickryder Posts must be edited. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/clickryder/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
