Snape and Harry WAS Re: Pensieves objectivity AND: Dumbledore's integrity

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 79828

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "mochajava13" 
<mochajava13 at y...> wrote:
> Sarah: 
> Anything that leaves a mark on a minor is child abuse.  Intent to 
> abuse someone is irrelavant in cases of child abuse; most physical 
> abuse occurs because a parent just doesn't know how else to punish 
> the child.  If that was a public school and someone found out 
about 
> that, Snape would have been suspended from teaching until an 
> investigation was complete, at the very least.  Very possibly 
> fired.  The teacher would not be allowed near that child again.  

I honestly can't get too exercised about Snape roughing up Harry in 
the Pensieve scene, because I see the entire HP canon drawing on the 
old traditional English boarding school format, where corporal 
punishment was just taken for granted. I'm surprised Rowling has 
managed to keep physical punishment out of her stories up until now; 
even the bullying has been mostly verbal, instead of students 
beating each other up behind the Quidditch field, as it probably 
would be in real life.  A more believable satire on this sort of 
school and teaching method is in M.R. James's ghost stories (he was 
a teacher himself, so knew what he was talking about); in "Wailing 
Well" he writes about a bad student:  'It was to him that the Lower 
Master said, with no cheerful smile, "What, again, Judkins?  A very 
little persistence in this course of conduct, my boy, and you will 
have cause to regret that you ever entered this academy.  There, 
take that, and that, and think yourself very lucky you don't get 
that and that!"'  

Wanda