Why so many unpopular teachers at Hogwarts?

[jenny_ravenclaw]

No: HPFGUIDX 32825

 Edblanning at a... wrote:

> Dumbledore doesn't seem terribly concerned about what the rest of 
the world would consider as ideal qualities in teachers: he seems to 
have a realistically resigned attitude towards Trelawny, puts up with 
a History of Magic teacher who bores his class to sleep and as for 
Lockhart..... words fail (granted, he didn't have much choice, 
assuming as I do that Snape didn't want the job).>

There may be other reasons why some of these teachers still work at 
Hogwarts.  I'm thinking as a teacher here, and as someone who has 
colleagues who make Professor Binns seem innovative and exciting in 
comparison.

I'd love to see what teachers like Snape, Trelawney and Binns were 
like when they started out.  Trelawney has an enormous ego (much like 
Lockhart, IMO) that often gets in the way of her teaching.  She 
*wants* her students to idolize her, to run to her for answers, to ooh 
and aah over her.  Her ego almost prevented Harry from going to 
Dumbledore when he had that dream in her class in GoF, because she was 
more concerned with proving what a great Seer she was than in finding 
out if Harry was okay.  When she first started teaching, I bet her ego 
wasn't so big.  Like many others, she developed a reputation (from her 
occasional true Seeing moments and from her students being fascinated 
with her) and began to rely on it.  Also, as was mentioned by someone 
else, she is quite capable of teaching her students a whole lot about 
Divination, even if she is personally full of sh**.

Binns I imagine, has been at Hogwarts for a veeeeerrrrrryyyyyyy long 
time.  He may not be interesting, but he gets the facts out that his 
students need to know.  He's also dead now, but when he first started 
teaching, he may have had more energy.  :-)  

Snape, while not nice, actually seems to enjoy teaching Potions.  His 
introduction speech to Harry's first year class was quite poetic.  
There is also never a mention of Harry and his peers being bored with 
or disbelieving of the things Snape teaches.  Evidence of Snape's 
success at teaching, IMO, is when Hermione makes the Polyjuice Potion 
in CoS.  Snape may not have taught that in class, but Hermione knew 
enough about potions at that point to be able to brew a pretty 
complicated one on her own.

The other thing I wonder is if teachers at Hogwarts get tenure the way 
we do here in the US.  If so, it is hard to fire them, resulting in 
some pretty poor teachers staying around for a long time.  JKR seems 
to have set up Hogwarts very traditionally, which includes teachers 
instructing and students taking notes or following directions.  In my 
school, sometimes we have discussion, sometimes my students work in 
groups, sometimes they do individual projects and *sometimes* I put 
notes on the board and they copy them in their notebooks.  I can't 
really see Snape or Trelawney saying "Okay, everyone. Let's talk about 
that article in "The Daily Prophet" about Sirius Black.  How do you 
think he escaped?"

--jenny from ravenclaw, who left out Hagrid's methods because I really 
don't have anything nice to say about them 
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