[HPforGrownups] Re: Why Can't Hagrid Be Readmitted to Hogwarts? (WAS: Why can't Hagrid do magic?)

[Pen Robinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 43886


candlewick4 replied:

>  "erisedstraeh2002" <bdmorrp at b...> wrote:
>   In the US,
>> people go back to school at all ages - even into their nineties.
>> Hagrid is probably in his mid-sixties (assuming he was 13 at the
> time
>> he was expelled, which was 50 years ago), and given a wizard's
>> extended lifetime, he has plenty of years ahead in which to put a
>> Hogwarts education to good use.  Is this a cultural difference,
>> perhaps - is it not as readily accepted in the UK to go back to
>> school in later life as it is in the US?
>
candlewick4 replied:
> Isn't Hogwarts the US equiv. of middle/high school?  In the US, you
> don't see 60-year-olds roaming the halls of the local high unless
> they're teachers.  Once you're over 16 and drop out of school, it is
> my understanding that "night school" and GEDs are your best chance of
> getting a high school diploma.  Maybe Hagrid is going to "knight
> school" (like the "knight bus", not to *be* a knight).
>

That's right.  In the UK, it is common for people to go back to 
education of some kind after a period away from school.  But they don't 
go to *school* to do it.  I myself am taking an A-Level next summer, but 
that doesn't mean I can tootle off to the local comprehensive with my 
children and sit in classes with seventeen-year-olds.  I could have 
studied at the nearby college of further education, but they didn't 
offer the kind of course I wanted, so I'm doing it by correspondence.  
However, colleges of further education are for people aged 16+, whether 
they come straight from school or have just started drawing their 
pensions.  Universities are also willing to accept older students as 
undergraduates, and we have the Open University which is a nation-wide 
programme in which students study by correspondence and via television 
programmes, with summer courses to be attended in person.

I think the use of the word 'school', so simple in British English, may 
cause confusion?  There seem to be many different breeds of 'school' in 
the USA, up to and including university.  Hogwarts covers students from 
11 - 18.

In Hagrid's case, the only options would seem to be (a) forego magical 
training, (b) do a correspondence course on the quiet, or (c) get some 
private tuition from the Hogwarts staff.  We have canon evidence that 
the first two are possibilities, and it makes sense to me that (c) ought 
to be possible, now that Hagrid has been vindicated.  But it's possible 
that he has little need to use personal magic, most of the time.

Pen