[HPforGrownups] Re: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Contex

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 105887

On 12 Jul 2004 at 23:44, Steve wrote:

> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at a...>
> wrote:
> >
> > ...EDITED...
> > 
> > A 1000 year old boarding school with the traditions of educating 
> > every prominent member of its society.
> > 
> > It'd become a major public school almost by default.
> > 
> > See, if we had evidence Hogwarts had copied the Muggle model at 
> > some stage, things wouldn't be as clear cut - but because Hogwarts 
> > is "steeped in traditions" (I agree with that) it seems to me 
> > unlikely that they would have discarded their own evolutionary 
> > process to just copy a Muggle one.
> > 
> > ...EDITED...
> > 
> > Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
> > Shaun Hately 
> 
> 
> Asian_lovr2:
> 
> As always very interesting. As I read your post, especially your
> emphasis on the long history of Hogwarts, it seemed reasonable for us
> to speculate on the natural and likely progression of Hogwarts from a
> practical stand point.

It certainly does.
 
> Hogwarts founders thought of a better way. Instead of wandering about
> the country side and stumbling across likely candidates, they would
> start a school where young wizard could come from far and wide to be
> trained.

Yes, and I suspect, given the dates, that part of this decision may 
have been because of the success of the first Muggle schools in 
Britain. 1000 years ago - the tenth century - were a time when 
schools were just starting to become *reasonably* common in Britain 
- the earliest schools as we'd understand the term really started 
in the 7th century, and it took a while for them to 'catch on'. So 
the founders of Hogwarts would have been able to see this 
development.
 
> My overal point is that Boarding Schools evolved into the form that
> they did out of necessity and logical evolution. It's a reasonable and
> effective way to run a boarding school.

Generally true - while there was a lot of necessity and quite a lot 
of logic involved, historically some things seem to have been more 
or less random.
 
> >From a practial perspective certain things need to be done, and they
> devised reasonable, logical, and somewhat universal ways of doing them.

Yes - but because they are so similar - even down to the specific 
terminology - I do think it's a common evolution rather than a 
parallel evolution - which might still have produced something 
similar.

One example - the term 'prefect'. Many schools historically 
selected such students, but there were a lot of different terms 
used to describe them (and a few schools still use these different 
terms). Over time, though, "prefect" became dominant because of the 
common evolution - even where the ideas evolved separately, so that 
we had... monitors, praefects, prefects, praepostors, superiors, 
senators, silentiaries, over time, they all tended to merge 
together into very similar insitutions with very similar names at 
most of the schools (not quite all).

I'm also thinking it might be worth looking at some of the ways 
Hogwarts differs from the classic public school model, and why it 
might do so, given it's a good match in other areas.

One thing that immediately leaps to mind is the apparent absence of 
any fags and fagging... it could have existed at Hogwarts, 
historically of course, but I suspect the existence of the house 
elves may well have meant there was no imperative for it.


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
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