Trelawney / Incompetent teachers/Binns theory

[sbursztynski]

No: HPFGUIDX 110591

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "lifeavantgarde" 
<musicofsilence at h...> wrote:
(Snip) While we definitely know when Hagrid was taken on, we don't 
> know when Binns was hired (he died of old age, but he may've been 
> quite old when hired).
> 
> As we've seen two positions that were empty near the end of the 
> first war, and quite possibly three, since Snape was keen for the 
> DADA position (a Professor Potter being another of my favorite 
> theories), perhaps we're seeing backlash from the killings that 
were 
> quite thick at the time. Also, perhaps the History of Magic 
position 
> was one of these vacated posts. What if Binns were hired around 
the 
> same time as Trelawney and Snape also to be kept safe? Of course, 
> now he's dead, but we saw in CoS how ghosts can be affected by 
magic 
> (Nick's petrification)...perhaps even ghosts' memories can be 
> pilfered and Dumbledore is keeping on the ineffectual Binns to 
> prevent just that?
> 
> Stefanie
> Who isn't sure she believes the Binns bit, but enjoys speculating 
at 
> 4AM :o)


Sue:

Er - exactly how do you fire a teacher who's dead? Exorcise him? 
Tell him to go off and play with the other ghosts? :-)And 
personally, I think he was hired long, long ago and just never 
bothered to change his teaching methods, then died and kept right on 
teaching - a wonderful send-up of the kind of teachers who lurk 
around expensive private schools, doing the same thing every year 
for thirty years and being the joke between parents and children -
 "Oh, do you have Binns for History? Useless, isn't he? We had him 
too."

I have often wondered, anyway, just how Professor Binns marks all 
those essays he gives his students, without being able to touch 
anything.

I also wonder how come we're constantly being told that the DADA 
post is hard to fill - it isn't. Snape wants it. DD doesn't want him 
in the job. He'd rather give it to that idiot Lockhart. But it's 
still wanted by more than one applicant.

Ah, questions, questions! (g)