Snape - a good teacher?

[Nicholina ODonnell]

No: HPFGUIDX 72503

I've been thinking about what someone posted a couple days ago.  It was about how we can tell that Snape is a good teacher because Umbridge says that the students are obviously above level.  (Sorry not to give credit, but I don't have the post anymore.  It's just been mulling around in my mind.)  I'd like to contend that it's highly unlikely that Umbridge gave any impartial evaluations.  She is looking for Snape to be a good teacher because Lucius Malfoy always speaks highly of him and Lucius is a dear friend of her beloved Fudge's.  

Her other evaluations, that we know the results of, seem no less biased, even if it is in the other direction.  Hagrid is put on probation, but he actually is giving pretty good lesions.  We know she sets him up to look bad by pretending not to understand him and asking leading questions of the students - particularly the Slytherins, who can be counted on to bad mouth Hagrid.  

Her evaluation of Sybil (while I think Sybil is pretty much a fraud) is also biased.  I think that we can expect that seers don't, as Sybil said, see on demand.  By asking for a fortune for herself, she was setting her up to fail.

Umbridge doesn't want Hagrid to teach or to believe that he might have done an okay job, so she is positive about Grubbly-Plank.

I simply think it's mistaken to take what Umbridge says in her evaluations as at all meaningful.  (While the information she gets to direct (non biased) questions - "How long have you been teaching at Hogwarts?" for example - is meaningful to us - the readers.)

Not to mention that, even if Umbridge was trying to be unbiased, which she is obviously not, she is not at all a qualified teacher.  How does she know what appropriate levels are or what should be covered in each subject?  She's just a fill in appointee with no experience in even her own supposed field of DADA, much less any other.

Nicholina


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