"Professor" / Krum /

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 53858

Pip!squeak wrote:

<< Hagrid, Lockhart and Moody/Crouch aren't called by the title 
'Professor'. The people who are (Snape, Flitwick, McGonagall, Sprout) 
do all seem to manage well planned, professional teaching. >>

Canon (CoS): Hagrid appeared at once, looking very grumpy, but his 
expression brightened when he saw who it was. "Bin wonderin' when 
you'd come ter see me - come in, come in - thought you mighta bin 
Professor Lockhart back again -"

"And you, Potter, will be helping Professor Lockhart answer his fan
mail," said Professor McGonagall.

I think the title of "Professor" is purely a politeness bestowed by 
the school at which he/she is teaching. Remus's luggage's nametag 
would seem to mean that he had once had a teaching job before, but it 
appears to be canon that he never had a *job* before, therefore 
rationalization is needed. Here is a collection of non-original 
suggestions:

1) He once was hired for a teaching job, excitedly bought luggage 
for it, then was fired instantly that the school found out about his 
condition.

2) He magically labelled the luggage for the Hogwarts job but new 
label came out worn and old-looking because he was so weary and 
hungry, or because the luggage was so old and it wanted to match.

3) The luggage and its label were inherited from his father, also a 
teacher.

4) The luggage and its label were a gift (school-leaving gift, 
birthday of seventh year gift, whatever) from his school friends, 
who teasingly called him Professor because he lectured them in 
a Hermione-ish way.

<< But you don't need a college to go beyond NEWT's. You just need a 
tutor, who can guide your course of study. You don't need to attend 
a lecture if you have a mentor who will tell you which books you 
need to study, what spells or potions you need to attempt, who is 
prepared to set assignments and give you advice on how well you 
completed them. >>

Thank you for your beautiful description (just change "tutor" and 
"mentor" to "master") and support of my theory that, in the 
Potterverse, academic subjects have guilds which do not have the 
government looking over their shoulders at the degrees they give, 
just as non-academic subjects do. Btw, the Muggleverse trade guilds 
called themselves "collegia" when speaking Latin.

<< You don't even need to have a final exam as such. The medieval 
system was that an apprentice produced a 'masterpiece' at the end of 
their apprenticeship. A masterpiece was a piece of work so complex 
that it was obvious the apprentice had mastered their craft. >>

I assume that in academic guilds, the *master* sets the apprentice an 
exam before promoting himer to journeyman, and the *guild* sets the 
journeyman an exam before allowing him/er to submit a masterpiece, 
and that the masterpiece of a scholar is probably a dissertation ... 
I have young Severus writing a dissertation on the uses of boomslang 
skin, and the Potion-makers' Guild having an eternal conflict between 
the applied potion makers (such as apothecaries) who complain that 
they pay all the money but get none of the glory and the theoretical 
potion makers (scholars, academics) who whine that no one *deserves* 
to be a Master who only brewed an immensely difficult potion rather 
than inventing one...

Also, thanks for the plot bunny about the horrific slaughter of 
Merlin College at Oxford...

Kathryn Cawte wrote:

<< But since Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in Britain, if 
teachers were trained in this way [as apprentices or student 
teachers] I would have thought we'd have seen it by now. >>

I don't think the wizards have a profession of secondary school 
teaching. I think it's like Pip said: "it seems to be very much along 
the lines of 'you know a lot about this subject, come and teach it.'
and seeming to know a lot about this subject doesn't necessarily mean 
being declared a Master by some Guild ... a person could learn in 
some other way and display hiser knowledge by writing many books 
(Lockhart) or having been a successful Auror (real!Moody). However, a 
person who takes a job as a Hogwarts teacher would be well advised 
to learn how to teach, and one way would be for a journeymen to teach 
some classes to his master's apprentices, and another way would be 
to student-teach a class offered to the general public through a 
Museum or Library ... we have canon that there is a Museum of 
Quidditch, but in my version of the Potterverse, the Big Museum is 
the Museum of Magic.

<< To me this implies some kind of non-apprentice style training, 
since the term 'Professor' is a term only used officially by 
univrsities whereas gulds use a system of 'apprentices', 'journeymen' 
and 'masters'. But I may be reading far too much into it. >>

As I said above, I think that in the Potterverse, "Professor" is a 
term only used officially by Hogwarts.

<< That's actually the sort of thing I was envisaging when I said a 
college. More the sort of teaching associated with postgraduate 
courses. While not possible in the muggle world at a university the 
small number of wizarding students would make it a lot more 
realistic. Although I could see certain tutors holding larger 
tutorials if they were well-renowned. >>

In my view, the way that, for example, the Potions Guild is different 
than a Potions College (despite being both being named Collegium) 
is that individual masters accept apprentices and train them, and 
employ or mentor journeymen, however they want to, not as employees 
of the Guild.

But I do imagine each Guild owning a Guild Hall which includes a 
grand auditorium, or at least a grand banquet hall that can be set up 
as an auditorium, where respected Masters give lectures for the 
general public and apprentices are ordered to attend by their 
Masters. Like the public lectures at the Universities around here, 
some are intended for mediocre intellects with no prior knowledge and 
some assume so much prior knowledge that only grad students in that 
subject understand well enough to ask questions....

Jack Sherman wrote:

<< Krum often indicated that he enjoyed staying at Hogwarts. I think 
it is quite possible that Krum will transfer to Hogwarts for his 
last year(s) of school. 

However, this seems to present a few problems. What house would he 
be sorted into? I think that it would be a toss up between Slytherin 
and Gryffindor. No matter what house he was sorted into, he would 
definitly become their lead seeker. >>

I feel sure that GoF was Krum's final year of school, so he will not 
come to Hogwarts as a transfer student. He may come as some kind of 
student teacher, an assistant to Madam Hooch, or just an independent 
scholar with Dumbledore's permission to live in the Castle (there are 
PLENTY of rooms) and hang around awhile. Even if he did come as a 
transfer student, I suspect that at his age, he would be treated like 
an independent scholar ... given his own quarters instead of living in 
a House, dining at Head Table rather than a House table, attending 
whatever classes he needed that fitted into his schedule 
but mostly doing independent study perhaps under the guidance of one 
of the professors ... therefore NO NEED to Sort him. Therefore, no 
House to pressure him to lead their Quidditch team even tho' he would 
surely find school Quidditch kind of boring after playing at World 
Class.

Carrie S wrote:

<< How about it ends up being Krum that dies in GoF?? I have thought 
about that as well. >>

When I read GoF, I liked Krum. When he Crucio'ed Cedric, I yelped in 
dismay at him being a bad guy after all. Then when it was all 
explained, Krum was a good guy after all, I became certain that JKR 
will kill him. Introduce this nice guy, fix him up with Hermioen ... 
no happy-ever-afters allowed around here! He must die in the War. 
Sniffle.