HI from the shadows/Wizarding Education

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 10899

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Jenna Tichon <jtichon at y...> wrote:
> 
> Then there are my few questions I have on this wizarding world:
> 
> 1)Where do wizards get any excercise? The only sport that they
> seem to know is quidditch which isn't much on the cardiovascular
> side and not too many people seem to play it. They just observe
> it. So how do they stay in shape?

The kids at Hogwarts have to walk/run/climb many miles a day 
just to get to their classes and dorms. EG, the trek to the 
Divination classroom! Perhaps that is enough to work off all the food 
they eat and stay beautiful. Maybe the grown-ups (ones who can afford 
it, not Molly and Arthur Weasley) have stay-trim-and-attractive 
spells. 
> 
> 2)Where's the culture? (snip) There's no one who seems to draw
> or anything.

Dean Thomas 'who was good at drawing' drew the Gryffindor Lion on one 
of the pro-Harry banners for his first Quidditch match. Of course, 
Dean was Muggle-born. However, this does hint that they don't have a 
Charm to make nice pictures appear without the chore of drawing them. 

> 3)What happens for education before Hogwarts? This question has
> been asked atleast three times since I've joined and no one's ever
> discussed it.

We discussed this to death 'way back in the old Yahoo days, and 
people failed to agree with my obviously correct theory that most 
wizarding children attend small, local, wizarding primary schools 
that are private schools (in the American sense) and charge tuition. 
Families who can't afford the tuition have the choice of home 
schooling or sending their children to Muggle primary school. The 
Malfoys use an expensive type of home schooling, in which they hire 
several private tutors, specialists in various subjects, to teach 
their son at home, and also invite some of their friends to send 
their children to share the education: the young Crabbe, Goyle, 
and Nott. Maybe the young Pansy Parkinson, too, if the families were 
already trying to match-make them.

People generally assume that the Weasley crowd was home-schooled, 
because if they had gone to Muggle schools, they would know more 
about telephones and 50p coins, and their parents would have have 
trouble paying that many tuitions.