Magical Quills (Was: Teachers' workload)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 87002

Beverly wrote:
<snip> And maybe all the teachers have magical 
> quills to keep up with all the grading and writing they have to do.  
> Does Snape's quill have a thing against Harry's papers?  After all, 
> in OotP Harry gets a "D for Dreadful" mark on his paper for Snape.

Carol: 
Having been a teacher myself, I'd like to think that the Hogwarts
teachers have magical quills (especially if they're looking at
anything beyond the content and complexity of the answer--clarity of
expression, for example--though I doubt that they are), but I see no
evidence of it. Snape looks at a paper assigned by Lupin that received
eight points and states, "I wouldn't have given it three" (in PoA
somewhere, quoted from memory). Either his magic quill marks the paper
exactly as he would have done, not just the mark/grade but the
comments, and he somehow knows what each paper received, or he goes
through the papers very quickly and marks only the points or the grade
received without comments. Otherwise, there's no way that he could
keep up with the workload *and* know how well each student is doing.
One thing that does help, though, is that he and the other teachers
don't teach every class every day. Most of them appear to meet twice a
week. Let's say that Mondays through Thursdays are divided among his
first through fifth year students and Fridays are devoted to his sixth
and seventh year NEWT classes. If the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs have
double Potions like the Gryffindors and Slytherins, that would be
about five classes per day (except Fridays) and about forty to sixty
papers to mark every night (assuming twenty students per double
class). If I were Snape, I'd have to brew myself a potion to keep me
awake and mentally alert! And the grades also have to be recorded so
they can be averaged at end of term--definitely a job for a magical
quill if he has one, but again, I see no indication that he does. He
and McGonagall, who is twice his age, seem to have prodigious energy,
so maybe they can manage to mark all that homework without stay-awake
potions or magical quills--but only with a school population of 280
rather than 1,000 students. Rowling as a former teacher would know the
limitations for a Muggle teacher. I don't think they'd be all that
different for a Witch or Wizard. Even Snape and McGonagall would have
their limits. Maybe overwork is part of the reason that Snape is so
hard on his students! :-)

Carol