[HPforGrownups] Houses and classes

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 88844

On 15 Jan 2004 at 19:56, meriaugust wrote:

> I was just perusing a few of the posts speculating about the 
> Marauders and Snape's school experiences, and something popped into 
> my head: I was wondering why Harry and the other Gryffindors never 
> have classes with the Ravenclaws. They have several classes with the 
> Slytherins (Potions, Care of Magical Creatures and flying lessons) 
> and have Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, and I have always assumed 
> that the mysterious Astronomy lessons were like mass lectures with 
> every student in the year participating, but why no specific 
> Ravenclaw lessons? It seems odd to me that this happens. So here's a 
> few questions (and excuse the ignorance of an American over the 
> British school system): How are the houses paired up for lessons? 
> (Because it seems to be the ones who will have the most conflict 
> with each other. Good for dramatic writing, bad for learning.) Are 
> houses in real British schools paired up like this? Does every house 
> have classes with every other house? Thoughts? 

It depends on the school - houses are a convenient administrative 
grouping, so they are sometimes used to assign classes - but 
certainly not all schools do that. I had five years in schools run 
on British lines and from memory, we went like this.

Year 8, I was in a prep school (one of the two junior schools to 
the much larger school I went to the following year). This school 
had four houses and two year 8 classes, each of the year 8 classes 
consisted of two houses.

Year 9, we went to the senior school that had eight houses and 
eight classes at year nine level - and each class was made of a 
single class. We also had three elective subjects, and in those we 
were all mixed up because it was based on what subjects you chose.

Year 10 - I'm not 100% certain, but I think our core classes were 
made up of half of one house and half of another - so there was 
some shuffling going on. Elective subjects were the same as Year 9.

Year 11 and Year 12 - virtually all our subjects were electives, so 
we were completely and utterly shuffled up.

That's just one set of examples - basically you can get many ways 
of doing this, depending on how the school wants to do things.


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia