[HPforGrownups] British Muggle/Wizarding schooling (was re: OWLS)

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 53792

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Gina Rosich wrote:

> I still believe (as others have speculated) that there must be some kind
> of post-NEWTs educational training, just not at University.  Maybe
> professionals and experts (e.g. Pompfrey doing nursing or Snape being
> the potions Master) take on interns or apprentices.

Internships and apprenticeships are what I would expect to happen for more
complicated specialties, like medicine.  Certainly wizards and witches
don't know *everything* there is to know after seven years at Hogwarts.  
It makes sense that the wizarding world would focus on hands-on education
rather than book learning, since magic is such an active, results-oriented
pursuit.  What matters is that you can really do magical medicine, not
write a long essay on it.

BTW, this isn't so different from muggle education is some fields.  The
second half of medical school (in the US, at least) is done hands-on in
hospital and out-patient settings, and new doctors generally follow that
with several years of low-paid internships before hanging out a shingle on
their own.

----
Patricia Bullington-McGuire	<patricia at obscure.org>

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered
three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the
purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each
nonexisted in an entirely different way ... 
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"