A Hogwarts education, was "Mad-Eye Moody" - Character Sketch (long)

[atelecky at mit.edu]

No: HPFGUIDX 6181

> Wonderful and thought-provoking post...but why do you call Madam
> Pomfrey the "school nurse"? Does JKR..I would think witch doctor 
> might be more appropriate.
> 
> Susan

This is true--I just ordinarily think of the person who takes care of 
the students' minor health issues at school as the "school nurse", but 
then I never knew the health clinic at my high school to deal with 
broken bones or anything more serious than headaches and colds. In 
fact, the main function of the health clinic seemed to be judging 
whether or not a child needed to be sent home. Madam Pomfrey fulfills 
more the function of the Med Center at a University, which must deal 
with far more urgent conditions in its students, and is staffed by 
at least some fully qualified doctors rather than only nurse 
practitioners or assistants. While I have some considerable experience 
with the former, I have so far only (thankfully) once made use of the 
latter, when I tipped my chair too far back a couple of weeks ago and 
whacked my head into the corner of the wall :). 
Hogwarts being a boarding school, it is probably a lot more like a 
college or university in many aspects than my high school was. They do 
call their teachers "Professor", which I never did in high school 
though I do now. Then, of course, my roommate went to a boarding 
school, and refers to her old teachers in that way. Did I hear on this 
list that JKR has said that there are no wizarding universities? I 
suppose that, if Hogwarts takes up some of the ordinary functions of 
colleges, Snape and McGonagall and the other professors, like at a 
university, also spend time on their own research. It was mentioned in 
Book 1 that Dumbledore has researched alchemy and also discovered the 
twelve uses of dragon's blood.
Incidentally, I haven't ever seen any evidence of any education in 
music or art at Hogwarts--nothing like a band or an orchestra. 
Dumbledore apparently likes chamber music; you would think he would 
encourage music learning at his own school :). There are probably all 
sorts of interesting possibilities in the arts opened up by magic. 
Architects could completely disregard worries about structural 
stability; one simple charm and you could have any kind of crazy 
building stand up. A person could play violin and viola at 
once--though even magic might not allow you to split your 
concentration between the two; you might have to just have one of the 
instruments playing "on automatic" like a music box, which wouldn't 
really be music. 

Not much of a thread, but can anyone think of some other things 
Hogwarts might be lacking in? Right now its a bit of a one-dimensional 
school--there's no philosophy or literature-- I suppose magic takes 
the place of science classes, and Hermione is taking Arithmancy, so I 
guess there's some version of math in the magical world? Of course, I 
suppose you might say equally that Muggle schools are limited in scope 
for failing to teach magic. But might some wizards go on to study at 
Muggle universities, maybe to take a music or architecture major? Some 
aspects of Muggle learning at least seem entirely compatible with 
magical learning; one would enhance and inform the other. Others, of 
course, seem mutually exclusive, such as most of Muggle science and 
much of what Harry is learning about making things pop out of thin air 
and levitate :). I wonder if there is much if any overlap between the 
Muggle world and the wizarding world. 

Any thoughts on this?

Alexandra