Where are sqibs schooled?

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 42104


Karen said:
> What I was wondering is, where are the Wizarding children who 
> turn out to be squibs educated?  Are they educated at all and if so, 
> what are they taught?  I'm asking because it seems that the 
> curriculum at Hogwarts is designed to teach those with magical 
> ability.

jferer wrote:
> Good point, but there's a lot of holes in our knowledge of education 
> in the wizard world. We've been told by JKR that Hogwarts is the only 
> magical school in the UK, yet estimates of the number of students 
> ranges from 300-1000. My daughters' elementary school has 460 
> students; it's one of eleven such schools in a town of 60,000 people. 
> Work it out, the wizarding population is small, small, small.
> 
> If Hogwarts wasn't the only magical school, the problem would go  
> away, but we've seen no evidence of it, and JKR denied it.

There is a third posibility, that was first thought of as a way to tie 
JKR's 1000 students figure with the 300 students figure the book gives, 
but that it's very logical if you think about it for a while: 
distributed campuses. According to this theory, there is only one 
"Hogwarts school", but, to prevent muggles from noticing a magic 
school, it has been divided in a series of campuses that have been 
distributed all over the British Islands.

With this theory, that fits rather nicely with the International 
Statute of Wizarding Secrecy act, the Hogwarts we know would be an 
"elite" place, where only the most apt students would go (to explain 
Crabbe, Goyle and Longbottom, we could also include a family-preasure 
into the equation: important families that have lots of money or 
potential -like the son of aurors- can also have their children 
admitted). One of the other campuses would have a special section for 
squibs (the lowest ranking in the power level), where they would be 
taught how to survive in a wizard world without powers.


Karen also asked:
> Also, does anyone have any idea what the rate for sqib births 
> are in comparison to births of children with magical ability? Are 
> sqibs rare or fairly commonplace?"

To which jferer answered:
> They are commonplace enough that there's a business ("Kwikspell") 
> that caters to their desire to fit in to the rest of wizard society.  

They cannot be that common, and they are definetely more uncommon than 
wizard and witches from muggle families. Note that "Kwikspell" is not 
oriented at squibs, but at people who are not good with spells (unless 
there is a section for prestidigitation). A squib is basically a 
muggle, and no amount of correspondence courses will wake any sort of 
magic in him or her. That adds to the fact that I would take that 
course with a grain of salt, since my experience is that those sort of 
courses don't normally work (like "five kg in five days, and such, 
complete with people you don't know talking about how it did work for 
them).

> And what are  Stan Shunpike and Ernie Prang from the Knight Bus? 
> Squibs or something else? Can you picture them as Hogwarts students? 

They might have been students, only from one of the lesser campuses, 
with little or no magical power to speak off, but enough to get a job 
in the magical world.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf, who borrowed the "several campuses theory" from Catlady de 
los Angeles, and who hopes he got nothing wrong with it.