OotP Harry not a prefect & his Inner Voice

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 115158


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "delwynmarch" 
<delwynmarch at y...> wrote:

Del:
> Uh, Geoff, you do realise that you are actually adding to my side of
> the argument, don't you ;-) ?
> 
> Because according to what you say, Harry would not have noticed if
> Dean or Seamus had shined in something he, Harry, was not interested
> in. In fact, Harry's interaction with those boys is a quite clear
> illustration of what you say : they are all in the same class, they
> sleep in the same dorm, but we don't see that Harry knows either of
> them very well beyond that (and vice versa). 

Geoff:
Now why did I anticipate a reply from you along this line?
:-) 

Perhaps I didn't expand my argument far enough. I would have known 
someone who perhaps got mention in, say, school assembly for being 
good at football or having achieved a prize at the annual Speech Day. 
I might recognise someone who travelled into school on the same bus 
each day but I often didn't not know their name. I would realise that 
they were from the same school but even in a school of 500, knowing 
more than a few dozen would be would be stretching things.

I don't think that Harry is being particularly insensitive here. I 
think it's a case of gathering and processing information as it is 
needed. Speaking with my teacher's hat on, when I first started, I 
took the entire First Year fairly regularly and most of the Second 
Year so, after a couple of years in post, I knew everybody in a 
school of 600 but, as time went on and the roll grew to 800 and I no 
longer took everybody, I didn't know many people except by sight and, 
when in later days, I was seeing a class for IT perhaps once a week, 
I couldn't claim to be familiar with every face in each class. Does 
that mean I am not interested in them? No.

In my church, which is a reasonably large one by UK standards, We 
have had a fair number of people come into membership in the last 
year or two. I cannot claim to always know the name of each one 
although I have heard it mentioned. It's back to coping with the flow 
of information and dealing with it in the time available and the 
priority it demands.

Geoff
Enjoy views of Exmoor and preserved 
West Somerset Railway steam at:
http://www.aspectsofexmoor.com