[HPforGrownups] Re: Who Will Teach Harry Occlumency

[Echa Schneider]

No: HPFGUIDX 73413


On Saturday, July 26, 2003, at 09:52 PM, Karen wrote:

> First, as a former teacher, I think Snape deserves a lot of blame for
> the failure of Harry's occlumency lessons. As an adult, AND someone
> who really understood the importance of the lessons, he should have
> overcome HIS old prejudices and hurt feelings to do his job, the one
> Dumbledore had intrusted him to do. Harry, as a teenager, cannot be
> expected to have the same level of maturity and judgement as an
> adult, especially an experienced professor. All teachers have
> students they do not like. You teach those kids anyway, and you do
> your best NOT to pick on them or do things to undermine their
> education. Snape is a petty, small person, despite the fact that he
> is trying to work against Voldemort.

While I don't want to condone Snape's refusal to teach Harry occulmency 
after the Pensieve incident, I don't think it's fair to simply say that 
he stopped doing so entirely because of an old personal grudge.

Trying to imagine it from a teacher's perspective, I see two glaring 
reasons why Snape would want to stop the lessons that have nothing to 
do with being petty.

First, Snape was sacrificing his time to help a student who had no 
interest in being helped. It is extremely professionally insulting for 
Snape to be trying so hard to teach Harry, and then have Harry 
absolutely refuse to even try to make progress in the subject. If I 
were Snape, I don't think I would want to continue the lessons for the 
simple reason that Harry himself was making them fruitless. He wasn't 
trying to improve, he wasn't trying to do his homework, and so on. He 
just didn't want to learn and there wasn't anything Snape could teach 
him as long as that was his attitude.

Second, Harry was just about as disrespectful of Snape as he could 
possibly have been. He actually made a conscious decision to invade his 
professor's private thoughts, and never even seemed to feel like he had 
done anything wrong. Imagine how insulting that must be for a teacher. 
It isn't just immaturity or embarrassed that makes him stop the 
lessons. How can you teach someone who doesn't have even a modicum of 
respect for you, personally or professionally?

I understand why people want to fault Snape for his decision, but in 
the end, it really doesn't seem to me like he was doing anything 
terribly petty or immature. Perhaps it was ill-advised, but I think 
that stopping the lessons was a perfectly reasonable decision even from 
a mature, adult standpoint.