Slytherin House

[Tim Regan]

No: HPFGUIDX 46956

Hi All,

--- Ashfae wrote:
> Slytherins are NOT necessarily
> evil, any more than Gryffindors are necessarily good or Ravenclaws
> necessarily indifferent to morality. People who end up in 
Slytherin House
> value cunning and ambition above other virtues. People who are 
excessively
> ambitious are more likely to do evil than people who value, say, 
honesty
> or courage. BUT someone who is ambitious is not necessarily evil

I agree. If the line from Hagrid is true "There's not a single witch 
or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin." (PS, UK paperback, 
p. 61/62) then Sirius Black was from Slytherin. Now we know (as 
Hagrid didn't) that Sirius is lovely, not bad. (This has been 
discussed loads on the list before).

And Dumbledore's characterization of Slytherin's hand picked 
students: "resourcefulness 
 determination 
 a certain disregard for 
rules" (CoS, UK paperback, p. 245) sounds positive.

But even if we decided that Slytherin's were dangerous, where would 
we want them educated? The parents of key Slytherins already 
considered Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts due to their Dark Arts 
focus ("Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang [
]", 
Draco, GoF, UK Paperback, p.147).

It reminds me of the allies' treatment of Germany after World War 
One - and look where that lead.

I think it is much better to embrace and educate the Slytherins in 
the Hogwarts' way than risk their education elsewhere.

There are some problems with this, in that it relies on Dumbledore 
and the Hogwarts' governors employing teachers who will try to 
instill Dumbledore's values in the students. Snape and Lockhart 
don't seem good examples. But Dumbledore may have had little choice 
for his DADA teacher, and there's a trade off between a professor 
who is good at teaching, and one who is brilliant at the subject 
being taught. Snape is certainly brilliant at potions.

However, re-reading the original post:

--- "wittchway" wrote:
> The question was why keep Slytherin house around? Couldn't the 
school 
> work just as well with three houses? Wouldn't the sorting hat pull 
> other strengths the students had and place them appropriatly? 

That's a different question. We could still keep the students with 
Slytherin qualities without having a house called Slytherin. 
This kind of dilemma happens in the Muggle world too. For example, 
Thomas Jefferson is considered a great historical figure, and 
probably has school houses named after him, but he refused to free 
his slaves (I think that's true, I'm English so my US history is 
shaky). Do we deny his value because of this act we would now 
consider evil? No. Partly because we've lost sense of good and evil 
as moral absolutes, i.e. he was a man of his times, but also because 
the good he did was amazing. Slytherin's evil act, the creation of 
the Chamber, was considered an unfounded myth until now. He left the 
school, he wasn't chucked out: "He disliked taking students of 
Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy. After a while, 
there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and 
Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school" (CoS, UK Paperback, p. 
114). Similar arguments (minus the "untrustworthy" bit) happen today 
in the Muggle world about exclusive religious schools. 

Post CoS we know Slytherin did at least one very evil thing, but 
Dumbledore tends to see the good in people so I doubt he'd disband 
or rename the house.

Anyway wittchway, let us know if your friend is swayed by all these 
arguments.


          Cheers,


        Dumbledad.