Salem (was: Schools all around

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 6147

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, Christian Stubø <rhodhry at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> Was not a Salem Witch Institute mentioned if GoF?

At the Quidditch World Cup campground, there were several 
middle-aged witches on beach chairs under a banner reading SALEM 
WITCHES' INSTITUTE

A lot of people seem to think that that would be some kind of school 
(then why only middle-aged women, no students?). *I* think it is a 
pun on WOMEN'S INSTITUTE, which I have learned from Agatha Christie 
mysteries and similar reliable sources is or was a kind of club for 
rural women in England. Remember, the description of Ron's Chudley 
Cannons poster: seven wizards and witches, where us Muggles would 
have said seven men and women?

I gather that early in the 20th century, some upperclass ladies 
decided, as an act of charity, to start an organization to which 
lowerclass women would come on the lure of socializing with each 
other and spending a couple of hours away from husband and children, 
and there be taught classes in Home Economics, Nutrition, and other 
modern scientific theories of how to do all the jobs that their 
mothers had taught them how to do. Mystery novels set in rural USA 
have the wives running off to Eastern Star or their church's Women's 
Alliance instead.

> Running such a school, however, would be frightfully
> expensive, compared to its output.  I do not see it as
> something a government would be willing to pay for on
> a longterm-basis.  You would need teachers in Potions,
> DADA, Astronomy, Transfiguration, Care of Magical
> Creatures, Magical History and Arithmancy, at least,
> and possibly Divination as well 

Part-time teachers. The community colleges here in California save a 
great deal of money by using part-time professors. I was very glad to 
be taught COBOL, JCL, and other computer job skills in the evenings 
by people who spent their days doing those things at their jobs, and 
the college was very glad to pay them small wages: they didn't need 
the money to live on because they had their day jobs, and they didn't 
need big money to motivate them to teach because the money was only 
one of their motivations, others include the joy of teaching and it 
looking good on their resumes. 

However, the community colleges discovered that hiring four part-time 
professors to carry the same teaching load as one full-timer costs 
less than hiring one full-timer (among other things, no health 
insurance or other benefits), with the result that many young PhDs 
teach 'part-time' at four or five community colleges, just as much 
work, much more commuting, and much less pay than teaching 
'full-time'. 

I mean the part-time teachers at small wizarding schools to be true 
part-timers. With few enough students, the teacher might teach one 
day a week, one hour per each grade (year). Seven hours of teaching 
and the rest of the week to correct homework, make lesson plans, and 
so on. The kind of traditionalism we have seen in the British 
wizarding world suggests that the part-time teachers might be 
housewives whose children have grown up. They might do it as 
volunteer work, no pay at all. Maybe they are retired witches and 
wizards.

The full-time staff would include foreign young graduates willing to 
teach for just their room and board, the chance to see USA, and being 
able to put a line on their resumes. 

This does give one to wonder how good an education students get at 
some proud institutions as The Lone Star School (Texas), L'Academie 
Nouveaxbatons (New Orleans), La Lycee Magie du Nord (Quebec), etc.