[HPforGrownups] Is education a right or a privilege in WW?

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 102927

Alla wrote:
>Oooo, interesting, but I got a little confused. Could you clarify,
>please? Are you in essense saying that magical quill detects all
>muggle-borns magical children and ALL of them get Hogwarts letters,
>but it does not relate to Purebloods, for whom some selection
>criteria exists?
>
>So, basically it is harder for pureblood child to get into Hogwarts
>than for muggle-born?

That's broadly what I'm saying, though I'd take a different approach on some
of the underlying questions.

The question put to JKR was about how the WW knows about Muggleborn children
with magical ability - the answer is that there is the quill. From the
standpoint of the WW generally, it doesn't want lots of wizards wandering
about in Muggledom unaware of their abilities. Most importantly, it would
threaten the secrecy laws if there were rogue wizards likely to stumble
across the magical world unawares. It could also be a source of recruits for
Voldemort or any of his predecessors. So the WW wants them on the inside,
and the process of acculturation within Hogwarts seems to work to that
effect (as witness the thread that's been going on about Hermione moving
away from her parents' world). _All_ muggleborns (and I would include there
anyone with at least one Muggle parent) get a Hogwarts letter.

The next issue is my take on the "how big is Hogwarts/how many wizards are
there anyway" question (for which there is no canon answer). JKR has said
that there are 1000 students at Hogwarts. Before saying it, the books
suggested that there were many fewer (40/year). After she said it, canon has
fitted into the larger figure. She also said that around a quarter of the
students are muggleborn (by which I assume she means having one muggle
parent). If we also assume that some students (say a third) leave after
taking their OWLs, that means a yearly intake of around 150-160. A quarter
of those would be around 40 Muggleborns. If we assume (I'm doing a lot of
assuming, I know) that a third have a Muggle mother, a third have a Muggle
father, and a third have two Muggle parents, then it actually means that
only 13 or so children are born each year with no magical parent (hardly the
enormous cultural threat which the Purebloods seem to think).

Next problem is whether the remaining 3/4 of the Hogwarts places are
sufficient for all the remaining children in the WW. The cultural context of
the stories suggests that the total population is far too high for this to
be possible. So some (exactly how many depends on your theory on exactly how
many wizards there are) necessarily have to be educated somewhere else.
Hogwarts is a "school of witchcraft and wizardry" and I find it helpful to
think of it in the same sort of way that I'd think of a college of
technology in our world. The WW _runs_ on magic, so that _every_ child would
grow up in an atmosphere where certain spells were used just to keep the
home running: they wouldn't need to go to school to learn that sort of
thing. And similarly, I tend to think that most children go from being
taught the basics at home to getting the rest of their learning for life via
some sort of apprenticeship (as children in our world used to do).

Although we've only got limited knowledge of the backgrounds of the WW
students in the books, the ones we _do_ know about have "elite" families -
they work (or worked) in the Ministry, the media, etc, (eg Neville, Ron,
Luna) or alternatively are members of the pureblood aristocracy (Draco,
Sirius). IIRC, we've not been introduced to any _WW_ student whose families
are "working class". This suggests to me that a Hogwarts education is
something that's important to the aristocracy but also to the "educated
classes" generally. It's not comparable to the kind of comprehensive
education which real world kids get.

So, returning to your original question!

Firstly, I don't think the WW is made up just of "pureblood" and
"muggleborn" people - I think it's easy to identify someone who's
"muggleborn" - because by definition they have a Muggle parent. Likewise,
someone who claims to be a "pureblood" had better have some sort of evidence
to back it up (eg a tapestry). But in the middle are a huge number of people
who may or may not have a Muggle lurking around in the ancestry somewhere a
few generations back but don't really give a toss. From that POV, it's not
actually hard for a "pureblood" to get into Hogwarts because there aren't
many "purebloods" anyway and their families have the mindset and the
connections to get them in.

But from the broader perspective of whether education is a right or a
privilege, I don't think it's a question that someone in the WW would
understand anyway. In our world, education tends to be identified as a
"commodity delivered through schools" and debates over access are about
whether it should be universal - a "right or a privilege". But in the WW,
attending an Academy just isn't _necessary_ for most of its denizens, they
seem to manage perfectly happily as they are.

Long way round the houses, I know, but I hope it goes deeper into my take on
the matter

But JKR alone knows all

Cheers

Ffred

O Benryn wleth hyd Luch Reon
Cymru yn unfryd gerhyd Wrion
Gwret dy Cymry yghymeiri