Wizard society/magical ability/Arthur's house/Widow

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 13019

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Rina Stewart" <rina at l...> wrote:

> Well, but if we don't get accepted to Oxford or Yale, we have other 
choices! We can go to the state school, or tech school, or community 
college. Isn't Hogwarts the only magical school in Great Britain? JKR 
has also said that there isn't school before Hogwarts or after, so if 
they don't go to Hogwarts, they don't go to school? That's what is 
hard for me to reconcile. If Hogwarts is it, and only the best of the 
best go there, that leaves a hell of a lot of uneducated wizards 
running around.

Uneducated? Maybe in Muggle terms. But what constitutes uneducated in 
the Wizarding World? They don't need the level of science and tech 
training we find essential with our Muggle world/life view. They 
don't need the level of math, certainly. Much of our educational 
system is designed to prepare us to operate in our science-based 
Muggle society with its specific world and life view built in. The 
Wizarding World has an entirely different way of operating. You don't 
need all that stuff to function in the Wizarding World. You need 
basic skills in reading and writing and math and so on, then you need 
basic magic training so you understand the nuances of magic: it's key 
components (inate magical "power" and intention) and the methods of 
directing that power and intention toward specific goals (wands, 
words, and actions). You might also want to understand the basics of 
potions, but generally speaking you won't need higher level 
understanding because you don't have the higher level magical ability 
to use it anyway. You then move into a trade of some kind and are 
taught whatever magic is needed to do that trade (the "tricks of the 
trade," I suppose). And that would be pretty much all you'd need in 
the kind of society we see. Basic level magic spells will take care 
of most of what years of schooling do for Muggles. 

Of course, Wizard Folk would really have a hard time functioning in 
Muggle society, wouldn't they? They wouldn't understand the basic 
underlying world and life view. And in fact, this is exactly what we 
see in the books. Wizard Folk can't begin to understand how Muggle 
society operates without magic. They could probably be trained to 
think like a Muggle, but then might they not find themselves doubting 
that magic can work, since it isn't scientific or logical, and as a 
result might magic STOP working for them?

And, then, would that explain why all of us REAL Muggles can't cast a 
simply "Lumos" spell, no matter how hard we try? We just don't 
believe. So Muggle-born kids with magical power might never develop 
much of that power at all as they grow up; they would even lose it 
our Muggle schools educate the magic out of them. And might that be 
why advanced education of the kind we think is so important might 
actually be HARMFUL to a Wizard child? It would disrupt the 
philosophical underopinnings of Wizard society and turn them into 
(shudder) Muggles?

I think that would suggest a more urgent reason for separation of the 
two societies and possibly explain some of the prejudice some in the 
Wizarding community feel toward Muggles. Muggles are a real threat to 
Wizard culture, and not because they might burn someone at the stake 
or force them NOT to read fantasy books in school...

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