(long) Re: Schools all around

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 6076

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, Christian Stubø <rhodhry at y...> 
wrote:
> The matter of schools is indeed interesting.  It isn't only a
> linguistics game, but also a numbers-game. Alas, I think it 
> unlikely that there was ever a noveauxbatons, as there would be 
> very few French-speaking wizards in North America.

In my universe, no English speaking or French speaking wizarding 
school was founded in the Americas before 1946. Let me explain.

I have some very strong opinions about wizarding in the New World in 
MY universe,tho' many people claim that my universe is different from 
the real universe. Let me babble one about my universe. North of 
Mexico, the Native American wizarding folk, seeing what Euro-American 
Muggles had done to Native American Muggles, to this day keep 
themselves hidden and secret from Euro-American wizarding folk. 

In Mexico and Central America, the long-established Nahuatl wizarding 
school in central Mexico and Maya wizarding school in Guatemala 
admitted and educated all wizarding children born in their territory 
regardless of race. In South America, wizarding schools were founded 
by mixed groups of founders, some trying to emulate the European 
schools, some trying to emulate the African schools, some trying to 
emulate the South American methods of teaching by apprenticeship. One 
of them is the wizarding school in Brazil where Bill once had (said 
Ron) a pen pal.

I say, very very very few wizarding folk emigrated from Europe to 
the New World (with the possible exception of Iberian wizards and 
witches, whom Ebony suggested had fled extermination by an alliance 
between Torquemada and that era's version of Voldemort. If so, they 
may have influenced the curriculum of the Nahuatl and Maya schools in 
an Iberian direction). I think that African witches and wizards 
avoided the slave catchers, but Ebony knew enough African-American 
oral tradition about them that I might be wrong.

So, in my universe, among white and black people in North America (I 
said norteamericano to show that, to me, 'North America' means North 
America minus Mexico), wizarding children would be born to Muggle 
parents, because that happens, but they would have no one to tell 
them what they are, let alone educate them to use their magic. Thus, 
they would live in the Muggle world as Muggles around whom strange 
things sometimes happen. Thus, no Ministry or Department of Magic to 
make laws and no American Wizarding Association to enforce 
'professional ethics'. North America as the wizarding Wild West. 

This came to the attention of the British and French wizarding 
communities during World War II, when they detected 'wild wizards' 
among the American soldiers. Dumbledore (the auburn-haired Dumbledore 
of Tom Riddle's diary) took time out from fighting Grindelwald and 
teaching school to pursuade some witches to start a good-works 
committee to provide wizards among the GIs with wands and basic 
education. This led to a few marriages between American wizards and 
British witches (maybe some between American witches and British 
wizards, as there were WACs and nurses), which led to some Hogwarts- 
educated witches moving to USA with their husbands, and they wanted 
proper wizarding schools for their children, so they founded them. 

I believe they founded four Hogwarts-inspired schools, one each in 
New England, the South, the Midwest, and California. (I think English 
speaking Canadian students go to the schools in USA.) The New England 
school IS named New Hogwarts (and might be wittily located in Salem 
MA, altho' I suspected Levettown NJ) even tho' it wasn't named by 
Puritans. The California school may be named Hogwest (and is said to 
be located in the Northern California redwood forest, altho' I 
suspected the vast suburban sprawl of the San Fernando Valley). The 
recent success of MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL suggests 
that the Southern school might be in Savannah GA and I have no idea 
of its name. ("Southern School of Sorcery in Savannah" would 
alliterate.) I have even less idea of the Midwestern school.

Wizarding folk in re-building France observed four British-style 
wizarding schools founded in USA and nationalistically felt that the 
honor of France was threatened and sent educated widows to start 
Francophone wizarding schools in New Orleans and Quebec. Joywitch 
said the location of Nouveauxbatons is secret so she can't tell me 
whether it is the one in New Orleans or the one in Quebec. The point, 
however, is that it doesn't matter if the New Orleans school can only 
scrape together enough students to have graduating classes of 2 or 3 
students (in fact, they would boast of such personalized education!) 
because the school was founded and funded for nationalist pride, not 
for an unfilled need in the marketplace.

> The number of students at school, however, will in some countries
> differ from the Hogwarts-number.  In  Norway, for instance, the
> educational system is different from Britain, with the result that
> Norwegian magical children would have to go magical school from
> they are 6 years old (7 years old before 1997), and stay till they
> are 19 years old.

Surely Norway has some way for children to transfer from one school to 
another when their parents move house. When they're old enough to go 
to wizarding school, their old Muggle school can be given 
paperwork indicating that they moved out of town.