[HPforGrownups] Re: Oh my goodness, what book are THEY reading?

[Batchevra at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 106811

In a message dated 7/18/04 3:43:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
delwynmarch at yahoo.com writes:
>One thing that shocked me right away in the Potterverse for example is
the emphasis put on competition. Those kids are only 11 when they
arrive at Hogwarts, and yet they are right away told that *everything*
they do or don't do can have repercussions not only on themselves but
on their House as well. Know your lessons, you can earn your House
points. Kiss someone in the robebushes on Christmas night, and you can
lose your House points. I understand the concept of putting kids in
competitive environments, and I see what good results it can bring,
but I feel it has been pushed too far in HP. Competition is a very
good thing, it's a fact of life that the kids have to learn. But
putting them in a situation where they are competing 24 hours a day,
always on the same team and always against the same opponents strongly
upsets me.<

Competition in any school or any area is what is around us. I went to a 
highly competitive school, not only in academics (recently my former HS was ranked 
in the top 50 here in the US) at the time I went it was higher, but also in a 
rivalry of the other HS in my area. We had jackets that proclaimed whether it 
was North or South you went to, boys and girls wore these jackets. I see the 
House system in Hogwarts and probably representative of what happens in 
Britains school systems, especially the public schools (private schools in the US). 
When I graduated I was in the bottom 50% of my class with an average that would 
have put me in another school in the top 20%. There are highly competitive 
schools and ones that basically let you meditate, Hogwarts has competition and 
teaches what it needs to, usually.


>On the other hand, Mr Yocaris wrote his article for Le Monde, a French
newspaper aimed at French readers. It was a perfectly valid thing for
him to do, to point out how the HP books, being British books, can go
against the beliefs of a large part of the French society. They have
been translated in French and marketed in France, which is in itself
an authorisation for them to be criticised by French standards.

In conclusion, I would say that if anyone is to blame for shocking
you, Tammy, it's the New York Times. I sometimes (often) get shocked
by what American and British magazines and newspapers publish, but I
acknowledge that they are *not* aimed at *me*. But unfortunately it's
an old game that won't stop any time soon, for editors to pick and
choose articles in other countries' publications that they just *know*
will shock their own readers. And of course they rarely explain the
context in which those articles were written.

Del<

Most Newspapers do have a slant, just as reporters, documentaries (Michael 
Moore comes to mind), and most news outlets (TV, radio). So the NYT was showing 
the slant of Le Monde, and I am sure that Le Monde was showing the slant of 
the NYT when a book came out about 9/11 and claimed that the attack on the 
Pentagon was a hoax (I don't know if Le Monde actually did this, but the fact that 
the book was a best seller in France at the time makes me wonder). There are 
indisputable facts, but interpreting them is where people differ. You come from 
a backround that is different from mine and we see a few things differently. 
For the record, I don't believe everything that the NYT prints, they have a 
tendency to try and back up their blatant mistakes. 

Batchevra


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