movie picture of the Sorting/number of teachers

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 12923

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Jim Ferer" <jferer at y...> wrote:
> 
> I don't think anything from the movie set can be evidence of 
anything 
> remotely approaching a "fact".  We'd only see the number of 
teachers 
> they wanted us to see if was a Head Table at UCLA.  The only things 
> that count are the canon and things JKR says.

I understand that, believe me, I'm a great defender of canon. I 
didn't mean to imply that I will be treating the film as canon, 
because I don't and won't. But I do see the film as giving us 
something of a window into JKR's actual vision, since she has so 
heartily endorsed the film. If it looks right to her, that does give 
us some idea of what she's thinking. Does that make sense? The 
pictures from the film fit with the way I've been imagining Hogwarts, 
and I'm a proponent of smaller student numbers. The fact that the 
movie seems to bear that out and that JKR approved the movie doesn't 
canonically PROVE anything, but it does suggest that the smaller 
student concept has merit.

As for conjectures about total wizard populations of various 
countries etc. being based on student population, I have to go along 
with what someone said a long time ago now, that all wizard kids 
don't go to school in the traditional, Hogwarts fashion. JKR says 
that Hogwarts is the only such school for Britain, but from that we 
can't infer that there are only that many pre-teen and teen-age 
wizard KIDS in Britain. It wouldn't make any sense if it that were 
true. There is no way that even a thousand kids could represent a 
population that supports all the stores, businesses, magazines, 
transportation systems, governmental organizations, sports teams, 
etc. that we see with the Wizarding World. There MUST be more people 
than that.

If you look at the culture of the Wizarding World, you see a modern 
version of a medieval system. In that system, the majority of kids 
didn't attend a formal school, they were trained either at home or in 
small group schools and then apprenticed into trades. The Wizarding 
World must work along those lines for it to be the culture we see in 
the books. Most kids end up in trades without going through advanced 
magical training. The brightest and more magically-advanced (and 
occasionally the most well-connected) go to Hogwarts. It just makes 
sense, not only with the numbers we see but also with the way the 
culture works.

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon