Hogwarts population and Wizarding culture

[rhodhry at yahoo.no]

No: HPFGUIDX 9787

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Steve Vander Ark" <vderark at b...> 
wrote:
[snip]
> Even a thousand kids is too small if you think of the whole of the 
> wizarding world in Britain. I would argue that demographic 
> information  and guesses don't really suggest much about the number 
> of students at Hogwarts. Not all kids from the wizarding world GO 
to 
> Hogwarts, not NEARLY all. By far the most move into trades (e.g. 
Stan 
> Shunpike, the manager of Flourish and Blotts). It's not that they 
end 
> up uneducated. 
 
[snip]

Add to that our assumption that we impart this education 
> to ALL kids, regardless, which they clearly don't do in the 
Wizarding 
> World, where you have to have a certain level of magical ability to 
> get into the school (e.g. Neville).
> 
> So about Hogwarts: in the Wizarding culture, the kids with the most 
> inherent magic go to Hogwarts (they're the ones who the magic quill 
> chooses), while the rest, with lesser magic abilities, are educated 
> in other ways and apprentice into trades.

But do we know that there is a divide between those with enough and 
those with not enough magical ability, rather than between those with 
and those without any magical ability?  I think that if they have 
magical ability, there would be a need to teach them how to control 
it (to avoid blowing up obnoxious aunts, for instance, or setting 
loose snakes), and while they could be taught that in 
apprenticeships, I believe the ministry would want it done in an 
environment with quality-control (i.e. a school).  This would 
particularly be true for people with magical abilities born into 
muggle-families.

I also took the Neville incident to mean that they were delighted to 
find that he had magical ability at all, and thus qualified for 
Hogwarts - that is how I remember it, at least.  Where is that 
Neville-incident mentioned, btw - I do not have the opportunity to 
check it right now, to control whether or not my opinion was correct.