[HPforGrownups] Hogwerts Classes - No math or history?

[Jenett]

No: HPFGUIDX 34587

At 6:40 PM +0000 2/3/02, uncmark wrote:
>Are these classes not taught in English secondary schools? I wouldn't
>think highly of all the young wizards trying to make a living. I
>considered Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang the best of the
>best, but you have to wonder.

This question has come up here several times while I've been reading 
(since November) but I've got another thought, triggered by someone 
commenting that a lot of Rowling's descriptions of the school seem to 
be old-fashioned *anyway*.

Both my parents were educated in British educational systems (both of 
them at good day schools for their high school years) - my father was 
born in 31, and my mother in 36, so they were in the upper years of 
primary school in the fourties and early 50s.

At that time, both their schools forced a fairly strong 
specialisation - both of them tested out very bright on their 11+ 
exams (used to determine what kind of high school they went to), and 
in my father's case, he was given really no choice about what he was 
going to study. He was bright enough to learn Greek and Latin and 
focus on Classics, and so that's what he was going to do. (My mother 
had a few more options, for various reasons, but she focused on 
English, History, and modern languages.) Once they specialised, 
though, that was it - if you did Classics, you might get a bit of 
French and English literature and history for a few years, but you 
wouldn't go near classes in math and science.

(It's also my understanding that Germany still does this to a large 
extent, though the break is slightly later in time, and it depends on 
which kind of high school you go to.)

Anyway, my parents had picked up a fair bit of the basics by the time 
I came along (I have two much older siblings), but neither of them 
was ever even particularly able to help with things like pre-algebra 
or geometry without them learning the subject before I needed help 
with it (these are courses I took at the ages of 12 and 13)

And by the time I was at the high school level, they *really* 
couldn't help with science and math questions. They could help me 
with non-information specific questions (like helping me with the 
basics of doing research), and they were very proactive about helping 
me find help if I needed it - but they couldn't do it themselves. It 
wasn't that they'd learned it and forgot it, or that information had 
changed - it's that they'd never learned it in school at all.

And.. you know what? Other than what my father needed to learn for 
his own hobby (model railroads, which involve some engineering stuff, 
like how tight the curve ratio of a train track curve can be before 
you have trains starting to derail), they really never needed that 
information.

They could certainly do daily math problems (dealing with finances, 
taxes, etc.) but they couldn't do things like algebra or trig or 
calculus. I know *I* learned all the basic math needed to do those 
things before I was 11 - my elementary school actually made a point 
of us applying what we learned to daily situations (but even then, 
it's a pretty simple thing to pick up, and I think Hogwarts would 
cover most of it tangentially anyway, what with people needing to buy 
potion supplies and do measurements). They were also perfectly 
capable of reading articles about new developments, as well, if they 
were written in non-technical terms, or talking about theory as 
opposed to scientific proofs.

That closed off some potential avenues of employment for my parents - 
but they didn't particularly mind. I *did* have those potential 
avenues much more open to me (I went to schools which required me to 
go through at least pre-calculus and trigonometry, and which were 
very enthusiastic about people doing more than that.) and I chose to 
pursue areas of study where that wasn't important to me.

I'm not saying that upper-level math is *bad*, by any means (I have a 
great deal of respect for the people I know who have upper level 
training in it.) Just that I think it's also possible to be an 
educated and thoughtful person without it, and not have it have a 
huge effect on your life, unless you want to go into a field where 
it's important.

All of this bringing me to: there doesn't seem to be a lot of 
positions which *require* upper level math or science in the 
wizarding world. No engineers, doctors qua doctors; etc. There are 
some fields that come close - potions, for example, or the kind of 
training Madame Pomfrey had or the technical process that goes into 
making flying carpets or brooms, perhaps - but it seems like any of 
those could easily be covered by apprenticeships or a post-school 
training period, rather than a long progression of subject-specific 
courses. They all seem to require magical training far more than 
specific mathematical training, and there seem to be relative few 
positions like this *anyway*. (Unlike the modern world, where it's a 
much bigger issue.)

It therefore makes sense to me that the main courses that are offered 
are pretty basic to the understanding of the society or basic skills 
(Charms, Potions, DADA, etc.) or electives. It might be that there's 
an elective available later that deals with more practical 
applications, but even if there weren't, it'd be pretty simple to 
deal with in an apprenticeship structure.

Sure, some of them aren't taught as well as they might be (History 
springs to mind, more than anything) but I think the content is still 
reaasonably important (especially with a somewhat sizeable population 
of either people whose parents are Muggles, or people like Draco, 
who've probably been told a somewhat skewed version of at least 
recent history at home).


-Jenett
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