as I recall all the junior hj girls had very forward jumping saddles. I had a combined saddle for jumping and dresage. He really got after the girls for not having dressage saddles. As this was so long ago, dressage was relatively new. No way would those girls have that sort of a saddle. He sneered at my saddle for jumping. He said I wouldn’t ride in it. I did say YOU don’t have to. But he did in the end complement my on my grade mare. I think some just don’t have the patience for teaching newbies. Those girls were problably there to fill some spots.
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When I first started my PhD, I ended up with a supervisor who would rip into me for completely BS things, like ‘not looking interested enough’ in some guy’s work when a whole bunch of academics and students went to the pub after a talk, and the guy was chatting to me in aforesaid pub. What? She justified her behaviour, saying, “It’s like the army. I’m knocking you down so I can build you up.” I’m sorry lady, but a PhD in the history of medicine in 18th/19th century Scotland is, on no planet, nowhere, like the army. I ended up changing universities so I could continue with a different supervisor.
Unlike history PhDs, horses are a little bit dangerous. One of my scary, hardass instructors would scare the bejeesus out of us kids for any safety infraction. Leave a halter hanging loose from a hitching post? Hell hath no fury. I get it. She instilled some best practices in us that we never forgot (I still never leave halters dangling and get annoyed when other people do). But applying that same fractious, drill sergeant approach to learning how to do a turn on the forehand was less than helpful. If the student is muddling their aids, yelling louder won’t suddenly make them into Steffan Peters.
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Maybe not “necessary”. There are times when saying nothing says the most.
Let’s acknowledge the difference between speaking up for attention and speaking up with intention.
Speaking up for oneself- isn’t that what we want?
The truth is older generations have been accusing the following generations of being lazy, entitled and self-obsessed for centuries. We seem almost compelled to judge people who grew up in a different time to us – and of course- we had it worse and did / do it better. 
I think the article could have been more generalized instead of pointing to a specific person(s). But Mrs LL is not know for her tact, like it or not, so she posted a commentary/opinon piece with identifying information. Heck yes the person had a right to voice HER side.
On a personal note, as an older ammie, I already have massive self doubt. I switched disciplines at 51 years old. I go to clinics because I want to learn. Learning can be ugly, but sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. People do not want to be ridiculed for trying to better themselves.
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I went to a particular clinic with a big name instructor, and he pegged me apparently from my introduction as some spoiled rich teenager and treated me with all the dripping disdain of the original article. I don’t know why he thought that - I was in my 20’s, on a horse more experienced than me yes, that I bought with my own money from my own wages, and I was there to learn. I took several days off from work to be there. I grew up a barn rat, riding every horse I could, including some horses that today I think, just no, should not have done that!
But he decided I was some sort of dilettante that oddly had nothing better to do than to come to this other facility and watch his clinic all day, then ride my horse in a session. I even jump crewed for another session. He belittled me the whole time, gave me contradictory instructions, berated me when I followed them. He yelled that I hadn’t approached the obstacle straight when from my perspective I had exactly bisected it on a perpendicular. I asked my fellow riders in my confusion and they did not get what he was on about either.
This is someone who will say again and again that you give the horse the benefit of the doubt, but could not give a person the benefit of the doubt. No recognition that maybe the person had come there to learn.
Thank goodness I’ve had many other clinic experiences that were much better, and some great learning opportunities. (I’ll never forget how kind Jimmy Wofford was to me when I came to audit a clinic with a toddler in tow - he went out of his way to honor me and my clear interest in being there with just a few comments.)
The original article is so over the top, going down a tangent of kids using cell phones when she never saw the riders use a cell phone at all except in her imagination.
And there are no solutions, just grousing about her own lack of a sponsor. Suggestion: “olds these days don’t know how to act respectfully to a community that might sponsor them.” 
Or maybe that’s over the top? 
Clinics are a place people go to learn. If they aren’t great riders, then all the more reason they should go to those clinics, to find out what they don’t know. The more people you learn from the better. The more opportunities you have to measure your current coaching, the better.
(That said, if they jumped jumps perfectly as stated, maybe the riders aren’t so useless.)
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The same thing happened to a friend of mine who went to spend a week riding with a big name jumper trainer. My friend has a last name that makes people assume that she comes from old money, so she had to schlep trunks, clean buckets and tack, and muck out for the first three days of training that she’d paid for, before she was allowed to have a lesson. Everyone else got lessons on their first day there.
Apparently my friend had to prove her worth, just because of her name.
I don’t care how good the instructor is. I would not give my money and time to someone who has already decided that I’m not paying attention, or that I 'm not worth their time because of their preconceived ideas about who I am or why I’m there.
Training horses and riders is a system. You can always find someone who knows how to teach without being a jerk.
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I’m not an eventer but I am really sick of “kids these days” BS. Times change, the previous generation always laments how the next generation isn’t as x,y,z as they were, blah, blah.
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Every time I hear about “kids these days” and “participation awards” and so on, my first thought is who raised them that way and gave them such awards? They didn’t grow up in a vacuum and didn’t give themselves participation trophies.
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Was this by chance a very well known HJ clinician? Bc I had the EXACT same experience as a teenager with a very big name HJ clinician and it was so ridiculous. He absolutely put on a show at my expense. I was a 16 year old on a horse (difficult chestnut mare mind you) who my mom and I had started and brought along on our own. Of the 8 or so horses I have bought, one was trail broke, one was green broke (poorly) and one was an OTTB straight from the track. So being yelled at by a BN trainer in front of a crowd and being accused of something that was completely untrue was just horrifying to me.
To the original article- I wish I had known when I was a school teacher that you could judge how much a person was learning just by looking at their expression. Would have saved me lot of time and effort testing students and GRADING. Damn,
I absolutely detest the whole “kids these day” line. Fix the issues you see or let it go. My barn is primarily kids, there are about 4 of us adults who ride, while the rest are kids. Most of them are lovely, hard-working kids. They care for the animals and are generally good students. Are some more serious about horses than others? Sure, but that’s normal. The ones who are super serious want to talk about their training on their horse, and what their plans and goals are. They ask about my own horses training and what my plans are for him.
What I can give back to the younger generations is my time and knowledge, and the opportunity to ride my big, athletic horse occasionally.
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For me it’s the “god they have it so easy”.
Off the topic of this thread, but I am SO DANG GLAD I grew up before smart phones and social media became pervasive to the young generation. What a nightmare that must be, at such a vulnerable time of life.
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Not to mention the fact that if we’re going to talk about “kids these days”, kids these days…impress me. They are so much more aware than my generation. Aware of privacy, or lack thereof. Aware of mental health issues. Aware of each other. Aware of the planet. etc. It’s incredible to see, and I’m grateful to know the ones I do. I try to apply plenty of what I see from them to my own life.
Are there are many kids around that seem to have grown up on farms? No, and I do think that’s tragic, but it’s hardly their fault. There aren’t as many farms these days. All we can do is try to give the ones who are interested as much access as we can.
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exactly- not to mention that between Safe Sport, liability issues etc, the “barn rat” type oppurtunies that many of us grew up with aren’t available any more (not saying these are bad things- they aren’t at all, just saying that they cause changes in how things are done)
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I can’t love this enough. So, so true.
Don’t we all have that one photo by a professional show photographer where we look like we’re seconds from peeing our pants? Or bursting into tears? Just got a weekend phone call from our boss?
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Most of mine look positively homicidal, when in fact they are depicting what is or is seconds away from being some of the happiest moments of my life. Which I suppose could fall into the last category you mentioned, depending on your definition!
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The one a friend just shared with me from this weekend looked like I was about to throw up, as we had just gotten caught in a freak torrential downpour that was not forecast before I got in the saddle.
I sent that plus another one (taken from behind the horse, not head on) to my husband, and he said, “this one is so much better because you can’t see your face.” Um…true…but, still. 
I did look pretty awful in the first one.
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I think some of this isn’t just “kids these days” but the fact that it’s impossible to know EVERYTHING about horses, especially between disciplines. I was taught how to do a turn on the forehand at both a Pony Club barn and at my dressage barns, but at the h/j barn I rode at, I’m not sure it was taught to the kids.
On a much bigger level, I knew a very accomplished trainer who was left a young Thoroughbred in a field by her mother-in-law when the woman died (long story). It turned out the horse was…not as broke as she thought, so she bought in a guy who was an expert in breaking. She had experience with young horses, just not as green as this horse. Not only did the guy get the horse manageable enough for her to take over, but she gave him a few jumping lessons in return, since he actually had never learned to do that (his background was on the racetrack).
There are some people who have a massive, deep toolbox in many disciplines, but it’s easy for a hunter rider to look at a dressage person and sneer at her position over a small fence, or a dressage rider to pick at a hunter rider’s flatwork, or whatever. I know that the kids being criticized largely came from the showjumping world, which may have affected what they were exposed to rather than being “rich.”
I mean, the ideal may be to produce a young horse, ride it yourself, and bring it up the levels, but it’s also true some people are better horse trainers, some people are better riders, and some people are better rider trainers. Everyone needs help at some point doing all this stuff.
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I have RBF the entire time because I get really intense trying to do the things and I have a lot of anxiety and sometimes I can’t do rhe things. I once had a trainer ask me if I was autistic.
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Great point. Someone upthread mentioned polo wraps as an essential skill that “the kids” are all missing these days. I grew up riding hunters and didn’t encounter polos until college, and even that was just for one horse who happened to go in them. I asked my coach to show me how and I practiced the next few times I rode that horse - and then he left the barn and I promptly lost any muscle memory I’d built up. Even since switching to eventing and dressage I’ve never had to deal with polos since. It’s not like someone teaches you something one time and then you’re set for life, it’s so easy to lose skills if you don’t have an opportunity to practice.
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Oh, this is so true. I am similarly polo-challenged!
This always makes me laugh. A standing bandage might be a valid argument of a skill that is actually necessary - but polos? Polo wraps provide almost no benefits (no support or protection and most trap ungodly amounts of heat), and are little more than a fashion statement. Who cares if The Kids don’t know how?
I think being able to lunge safely, do standing wraps, give an IM injection, or some other horse care skill would be a more valuable divining rod for general level of education.
*Caveat: I am aware that dressage bandages are often different, and supposedly offer some benefits, but they are not necessarily polo wraps, IMO. And, I can do a very pretty set of wraps or bandages, if I do say so myself
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