Number of teachers

[rhodhry at yahoo.no]

No: HPFGUIDX 12919

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Simon wrote:
>  
> > I decided that being generous on the number of teachers we could 
> possibly
> > get to around 20 at the head table. This is the start of year 
feast 
> so most
> > of them will be there, with the exception of Trelawney (and her 
> foggy inner
> > eye). Still no where near the 100 that you would need for a 
school 
> that
> > side, when they are mainly taught in class sizes of 10.
> 
> (sighing and dragging out a worn copy of "Hogwarts: A Mathematics 
of 
> Course Scheduling")
> 
> Hermione here to say again that even if there were only 280 
students, 
> the usual low-end guess, 12 teachers would not be enough.  There 
are 
> 28 divisions of students: 4 houses x 7 years.  Some double up for 
> certain classes, yielding, say, 20 groups.  One teacher simply 
cannot 
> cover 20 sections of Transfiguration, or Potions, or any other 
class 
> that every student takes every year, the way Muggles take English.  
No 
> matter how small Hogwarts is, JKR is taking some artistic license--
or 
> else McGonagall magically enables herself to teach 20 sections of 
> Transfiguration each term without going nuts.  (We might have the 
> explanation for Snape's chronic grumpiness here, come to think of 
it.)
> 
> Amy Z
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
>  "We could all have been killed--or worse, expelled."
>                    -HP and the Philosopher's Stone 
> ------------------------------------------------------

I quite agree - the abrest minimum of teachers is fourteen plus 
Professor Dumbledore.  This assumes that at no time are more than two 
classes taught in parallell in the same year, giving fourteen classes 
taught at the same time.  I doubt greatly that they do clever 
scheduling to have one year not having classes at any given time - it 
would be much more advisable to hire an extra teacher or two.  To 
take a muggle example:  when I started elementary school back in 
1981, I started at a school teaching seven years, one class for each 
year.  Students up to fourth year had Thursdays off, and had no more 
than four periods per day.  There was never more than one teacher per 
class.  The school had fifteen teachers.  

The problem with student-numbers is that no matter how you look at 
it, or whether you support low or high numbers, it does not 
completely add up.  But with only 300 students, that would mean about 
one sixth of the worlds wizarding population went to see the world 
cup quidditch finals (and that there were only 400 Irish supporters 
at that game, as that would be the entire Irish population of witches 
and wizards - Luxembourg (who slaughtered Scotland) would only have 
around 60 witches and wizards in its entire population).

The above is based on the average witch and wizard living twice as  
long as the average muggle.  In a muggle population, children aged 11-
18 constitute ca. 1/10th of the population - assuming linear 
expansion, children aged 11-18 would constitute 1/20th of the 
wizarding population.  with Hogwarts the only school for Britain, and 
possibly Ireland, Great Britain gets a population 20 times that of 
Hogwarts.  Great Britain and Ireland together have 60 million 
inhabitants, constituting 1/100 of the world population.  With 300 
students at Hogwarts, 6000 witches and wizards total (all ages) in 
Great Britain and Ireland, you will have (assuming identical 
distribution) a world population of 600 000 witches and wizards.  USA 
will have ca. 28 000.  The British wizarding society is, IMHO, not 
self-sufficient enough to support at least one newspaper, one weekly, 
one scientific periodical, multiple professional quidditch-teams, a 
large number of industries, etc.  I live at an island with 10 000 
inhabitants, and we have a smaller economy than what is evident in 
the books.