Wizarding school

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C5389
From: catlady_de_los_angeles
Subject: Re: Wizarding school
Reply To: [Yahoo! #5368] Re: Wizarding school
Date: 7/30/00 10:33 pm  (ET)

> I wonder where the kids get more education in the reading, riting, and
rithmatic area. We don't see any professors teaching algebra or literature
or other things like that. I mean, these kids aren't learning anything
past elementary school stuff. Is this just an oversight on JKR's part?

There are only so many hours in a day (except for time travellers),
and Hogwart's students have so many magical subjects that they have to
learn that they have no time to waste on trigometric proofs or memorizing
the names of characters in Shakespeare. In fact, I bet that wizards who
don't associate with Muggles don't even recognize the name 'Shakespeare',
even tho' he had contact with wizards and witches of his day.

A point is that most of the school subjects that every students has to
take are really of very little use to anyone. For example, the mandarin
class that ran the Chinese Empire for centuries and had to pass Civil
Service exams to get their jobs -- studied obsolete Chinese poetry and
that was the subject their Civil Service exams tested. Having passed
an exam on poetry in order to become Junior Commissar of Irrigation
Ditches, one would then learn about irrigation ditches on the job. And
the executive class who ran the British Empire when the sun never set
on it had never studied trigometry or chemisty or physics or Shakespeare
(maybe some practical trigonometry if they studied artillery at military
college after leaving school): they studied the Greek and Latin Classics.

There are a lot of purposes for which it doesn't matter WHAT the school
subject is, just that everyone takes the SAME subject: to learn how to
learn, to sort students by academic intelligence, to give all the people
an experience that they have in common.