[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Wizarding Education (number of students at Hogwarts followed by long digress

[Shaun Hately]

On 18 Jul 2004 at 1:08, Catlady (Rita Prince Winston) wrote:

> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at a...>
> wrote:
> 
> > I confess to being just slightly annoyed with HPFGU at the moment - 
> > I sent a very large post, which I put a lot of research into, to 
> > the main list last week, and received virtually no comments about 
> > it at all. No reason I should I suppose... it's just very 
> > disappointing - especially when I see that far less detailed posts 
> > on the same types of issues spark a lot of discussion.
> 
> Was that your post on MQ? Or maybe I haven't gotten to it yet -- I'm
> still more than 1000 posts from caught up. The MQ post was very good
> -- one problem with covering topic thoroughly is that there isn't much
> left for people to say in reply. Like "Oh, the wizarding world is not
> quite as corrupt as I thought: it admits children to school based
> entirely on merit and not on their parents' political influence"?

No, it's a post sent about a week ago "Hogwarts School of 
Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Context of the British Public 
Schools."

Came it at about 5000 words, all properly referenced - I was 
working on it for months.

> As for my model of wizarding education, I have always figured that
> wizards would be more advanced than Muggles in many things,
> considering that they founded a school, built a castle, and put flush
> toilets in it more than a thousand years ago. And have been making
> wands (and keeping track of calendars) since 237 BC. But I could be
> wrong ... May's Wizard of the Month, Felix Summerbee, invented
> Cheering Charms in IIRC 1447 -- anyway, so recently that I was totally
> shocked. Maybe they are far more primitive than I thought, and
> distinctly behind us Muggles.

I don't think it's  "primitive" as such - it's a matter of cultural 
choices. 1950s Britain wasn't primitive - it's educational choices 
were based on what the society needed. That's how most societies 
have been historically. Universal education only becomes common 
when a society sees a reason to have a universally educated 
populace - and the Wizarding World, to me, doesn't seem to be such 
a society.

There are actually Muggle schools in Britain that are older than 
Hogwarts - not many, but a few.

Part of the point of my long essay was looking at the idea that 
Hogwarts developed as a part of the British education system - it 
has so many characteristics that are so similar to the oldest 
schools in Britain that it seems likely it evolved in very much the 
same way.


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia