Melody / Number of Students & Wizarding Education / Ron / Justin / Seamus

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 46502

Melody wrote:

<< So my question is what does "at the moon?" mean? >>

I was making a little, intended to be harmless, joke about "baying at 
the Moon", which is what wolves do, but I didn't have a reply to Grey 
Wolf to attach it to. Sorry.  

Lexicon Steve wrote:

<< Even with that number, I wonder how the kids at the back can 
possibly hear Dumbledore's speech. >>

Either there is magical amplification (oh, Chris Nuttall said that 
before I did), or the hall has very superb acoustics, like some 
cathedrals I have heard of where a whisper on one side is echoed by 
the dome so that it can be heard on the other side.

Pickle Jimmy wrote:

<< [do] squibs attend muggle schools >>

Ron said Squibs are very rare. I think they might be very, very rare, 
such as one Squib born per 100 years. (My theory of why some people 
are born magic and some are born Squibs is in 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/41509 ) If 
neither of the Squib's parents is Muggle or Muggle-born, the parents 
probably are way too ignorant of Muggle life to send their child to 
Muggle school. Look at poor Filch, stuck as a school custodian in the 
wizarding world because he has no training for a Muggle career.

<< Point 3. I'd assumed that Durmstrang and BeauxBattons were both 
outside the UK - even though we are not told exactly where they are. 
If there were other UK wizarding schools, wouldn't they have competed 
in the Tri-Wizard cup? >>

Presumably Hogwarts (orginal campus), Durmstrang, and Beauxbatons are 
the three most prestigeous wizarding schools, so any other, less 
prestigeous schools aren't invited to compete.

<< Point 4. And here's my question - Where do magical kids learn the 
3 R's (Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic)? >> 

My post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/44028 
includes:
"I believe that the wizarding parents are responsible for their 
children's elementary education. They can home-school, hire tutors, 
send the child to a Muggle school (if they can do so without breaking 
the law of Wizarding Secrecy), or send the child to small, local, 
private, wizarding elementary school. I believe that MoM never checks 
on whether the children are going to school and has no rules for 
credentialling elementary schools, but if the children don't have 
enough basic skills when they enter Hogwarts, the parents are fined 
and are disgraced by having their names listed in the DAILY PROPHET 
as "parents of stupid children". "

<< At 11 these kids focus on classes that deal only with magic, do 
they learn all the mathematics, history, geography, sciences, 
languages, etc that they will ever learn by this time? >>

(Yes, Pip!Squeak answered already.)

They learn all the mathematics and sciences that they will ever need 
in primary school. Arithmancy and Theory of Magic are more useful to 
them in wizarding life than math and science.

They learn History and Geography from Professor Binns's History of 
Magic classes. They don't need to learn history of Muggle kings,
wars, 
and inventions anymore than I need to memorize the Presidents of 
Mexico <snerk>.

I *don't* understand why they don't learn languages at Hogwarts.

<< is it only the top 40 'student wizards' (including any magically 
inclined muggles) that get in to the prestigious Hogwarts? And if 
this is the case, what happens to the rest of them? >>

I say they go to other, lesser campuses of the Hogwarts System. One 
listie presented arguments that they go to Schools of Magic (which, 
he says, are different from Schools of Witchcraft and Wizardry 
because they only go up to OWL level). Another insists that they go 
straight into apprenticeships without any secondary school.

<< And why is it that any child (Neville Longbottom) that actually 
got in to Hogwarts would suffer from a magical self-esteem problem if 
they were indeed one of the top 40 magical 11 year olds in the whole 
of Great Britain? >>

Self-esteem is psychological. I used to know a top-ability 
mathematician at JPL (he's dead now) who was *convinced* that he 
was nothing special and JPL only hired him out of pity.

Darla wrote:

<< Also, if Ron were to die, what would happen to Harry's contact 
with the Weasleys? I LOVE them, lol, plus the books would be no where 
near as funny if Ron weren't there to show us the muggle world 
through his purely wizarding-no-experience-of-muggles eyes. >>

Ginny could replace Ron as Harry's link to the Weasleys and his 
wizard's-eye view, altho' probably she couldn't replace Ron's 
deliciously snarky saracasm and boy talk.

Phyllis wrote:

<< In CoS, Justin Finch-Fletchley tells Harry, "My name was down for 
Eton, you know. I can't tell you how glad I am I came here instead" 
(Ch. 6). Which suggests that wizards can and do go to Muggle schools 
if they so choose, or if they're not chosen for Hogwarts or another 
institution of higher wizarding education. >>

I thought Justin was Muggle-born. The next sentence of his quote is: 
"Mother was slightly disappointed, but since I made her read 
Lockhart's books I think she's begun to see how useful it'll be to 
have a fully trained wizard in the family . . . ."

Tim tmarends wrote:

<< The three symbols you can see in the middle column seem to be a 
star, a star with a circle around it, and a "N" in a box. Hermione 
and Justin Finch-Fletchley have the "N", Seamus, Crabbe, and Goyle 
have the star with circle. It's got to mean something... is Seamus 
going to suffer the same type of fate as Crabbe and Goyle??  >>

I believe there is Something up with Seamus, because the Sorting Hat 
took "almost a whole minute" to Sort him. If the symbols mean which 
side of the Second Voldemort War the person joins, Seamus *could* 
sell out. However, people have speculated that the symbols mean N for 
Muggle-born, star for Half-blood, and circled star for pure-blood: 
does that mean that Seamus was lying about being half-and-half? 
Perhaps he was already at age 11 a Junior Death Eater deliberately 
infiltrating Gryffindor ...