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

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 103059

On 28 Jun 2004 at 1:05, Tara wrote:

> Me: Wait, why does a child have to be "exposed" to magic at some point
> to qualify for Hogwarts? Lily and Hermione were born to Muggles, had
> no prior exposure to adult wizards, and turned out to be highly
> qualified witches.  According to PS/SS, there's a book that records
> the birth of every magic child born in Britain (regardless of
> parentage or later experience with magic), and McGonagall simply
> consults it every year to send out letters to the eleven-year-olds. 
> It is my belief that every British child with any bit of magic in them
> (except for Squibs, maybe) gets invited to Hogwarts.  Whether or not
> they stay past their O.W.L.s depends on their personal academic ambition.

No, Tara, you've misunderstood what I said. I haven't said that a 
child needs to be exposed to magic to qualify for Hogwarts. This is 
just a proposed theory, and there's no particular reason to suppose 
it's correct - it's just an attempt to resolve into a coherent 
possible, all the diverse information we have.

But there's no aprt of what I've proposed that says a child needs 
to be exposed to magic to qualify for Hogwarts.

What the theory proposes is that a child may require exposure to 
magic to exhibit spontaneous magical manifestations - such as 
Neville's bouncing at the age of 8 when dropped out of a window, or 
Harry's winding up on the roof of his school. These spontaneous 
manifestations have nothing to do with whether or not a child 
qualifies for Hogwarts.

As for the magical quill (it's a magical quill not a book that 
records the birth of every magical child in Britain according to 
JKR), that's been discussed previously in this thread - you've kind 
of jumped in the middle of the discussion here.
 
> This whole theory about a magical quotient or whatever (and I may not
> have seen all the posts on the subject) seems very interesting, but I
> see no evidence for it in canon.

The evidence has been outlined in a lot of posts over the last few 
days, and it really does seem that you've come in on this one 
particular post without having read the previous ones. That's 
hardly surprising - this is a high volume list and things can 
easily get missed, but if you haven't read the background posts 
you're not going to understand why I've tried to develop this 
theory. The short version is that we do have evidence from canon 
that not every magical child gets into Hogwarts. It's not 
conclusive proof but there is evidence for that position.

If you do want to understand the background to this theory, I would 
suggest you check the following messages in the archives of the 
list.

102658, 102778, 102779, 102802, 102831, 102927.

There is no real direct evidence for a Magical Quotient - I'm 
developing that idea as a possible way of explaining issues raised 
in previous posts - notably that (1) it does seem likely that not 
every wizarding child in Britain does get into Hogwarts, and (2) if 
this is the case, it raises interesting questions about whether 
there is a different standard for entry for muggleborns as compared 
to those from Wizard background.


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