Hogwarts letters Re: Choosing sides

[hogsheadbarmaid]

No: HPFGUIDX 118917


Del replies : "I don't see it exactly like that. From the way it 
looks, Muggleborns just trade one world for another. They leave the 
Muggle World to go and live in the WW. And considering that the WW is 
a secret world, I wouldn't say that going to Hogwarts opens the world 
to them, quite the opposite. It's like moving from the States to some
unknown little country, where you'll have more possibilities but 
where you'll become lost to the rest of the world."
 
Barmaid:"What canon is there to back up the idea that Muggleborns 
must "leave the Muggle World" and be confined withing the WW??"


Jim:  There isn't any "must" about it; Muggleborns *do* leave the 
mundane world for the magical world, _at least part time._ We've seen 
Hermione, for example, spending ten months a year in the wizard world 
for five years now.  What we don't know much about is how a 
Muggleborn lives her life or his life after Hogwarts. 
 
I agree with Del that most Muggleborn wizards almost surely do spend 
most or all of their time in the wizard world.  That's their 
education, their skill, and being magical is the thing that sets them 
apart from the Muggle world outside. It'd actually be difficult to go
back much; the new wizard has to hide what he is, where he's been, 
and what he can do; in the Muggle world, a wizard has a big secret to 
keep.  
 
It's circumstances that keep a new wizard in the wizard world, not 
any kind of compulsion.  I'm sure Muggleborns visit, and shop, and so 
on in the Muggle world, but it would be awfully hard to really "go 
back."

Jim Ferer


barmaid agian:

Well, you know what they say
 you can never "go back".  But I did not 
read Del to be saying what Jim is saying.  Del is suggesting that in 
choosing to send their children to Hogwarts Muggle parents are 
limiting their world, not opening it wider.  Jim seems to be agreeing 
with Alla upthread (who Del is disagreeing with) 

Here is what Alla said that got snipped:

That is exactly what I had been saying in the similar discussion we 
had earlier - I see the majority of Muggle parents doing exactly 
that - choosing to send their children to school, they may not know 
much or even afraid of in order for their children to develop their
talents.

Or again picking from analogy close to me - just as many middle-aged 
immigrants decide to immjigrate primarily for the sake of their 
children. OK, may be this is not the exact analogy, since parents 
often go with the children. But still many parents go to the unknown 
country, knowing that they really won't have much possibilities to 
develop their professional lives there, but their children will have 
the world opened for them.

Back to barmaid:

I agree more with Alla.  _And_ I do not see anything in canon that 
makes the Muggle world "lost" to Muggleborn magical children, as Del 
suggests.   Rather, as Jim suggests, I think the magical world is 
likely to be a place these type of children will find appealing and 
will want to make their home.  As Jim says
. "at least part time".

I think the immigrant experience as Alla talks about it, the gifted 
child experience which started this thread, and maybe even foreign 
adoption all may have some value as analogy here
 none of them being 
perfect analogies
 there _are no_ perfect analogies
 but they can 
give us some handles to use to get at the experience of Muggleborn 
children
 or the other way round
.  

    --barmaid