What's the point of Hogwarts?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 127875


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sandra87b" <sandra87b at y...> wrote:
> 
> ReturnOfTheMutt at a... wrote:
> > I think the school's purpose is to teach the kids to control 
> > their magic. It's probably dangerous for a wizard to be 
> > untrained.  They might use it unintentionally.  
> 
> 
> Thanks for the reply, but I'm still in the dark. They might learn 
> how to control their magic, but what can they actually do for the 
> rest of their lives? They can only go to wizard-related 
> universities, work in wizard-related industries in the 
> wizard-world... because if they live in the muggle world, all the 
> years of magic-training is worthless. I just think JKR has created 
> a poorly thought out world, that's all.
> 
> Sandra


Carol responds:
I read the responses to this post and didn't see any that made this
specific point: There aren't any wizarding universities. The NEWTs are
sufficient (apparently) to make a person a fully qualified wizard.
>From there, a wizard (for example, an auror in training) receives
additional training specific to his chosen field. As you say, none of
this education and training prepares a student for life in the
*Muggle* world. The assumption is clearly that the student will want
to remain in the WW, that he or she will *prefer* it to the "medieval" WW.

I can understand your thinking for Muggleborns and half-bloods but
certainly not for purebloods, even those without the Slytherin
prejudice against Muggleborns. It seems to me that a student like
Justin Finch-Fletchley, who chose to attend Hogwarts over Eton, must
have done so knowing what he was giving up. His father, no doubt an
Eton grad himself, would have pointed out the advantages of an Eton
education. And Justin himself, after a year at Hogwarts, could have
made the choice to go back, to enter Eton a year late and acquire the
Muggle education he could never acquire at Hogwarts if he so chose.
But we don't see any children making that choice. All of them--not
only Justin but Hermione and the Muggle-raised Dean Thomas and every
other Muggleborn and Half-blood in the school--choose Hogwarts over
conventional British education. Yes, even in the WW there might be
some advantages to learning French or German as electives if a student
wanted to be a diplomat within the WW, and I as a former English
teacher am disappointed that they don't learn literature, but they are
receiving the education they need to find a job in the WW. Potions is
at least as useful to them as Chemistry to a Muggle child; Herbology
and COMC provide hands-on lessons in biology. And they also learn
Astronomy, another science. And DADA is a practical necessity in a
dangerous magical world.

As others in this thread have pointed out, there's a wide range of
occupations in the WW, from dragon tamer to healer to auror, most of
which offer a great deal more excitement than accounting or plumbing
or editing (my mundane Muggle job). Quite possibly there are wizard
architects and civil engineers as well. The on-the-job training they
would receive would be very different from what they would learn in a
Muggle university, but it would serve their need to learn *magical*
engineering and architecture far better than Muggle booklearning and
blueprints.

You say that "they can only <snip> work in wizard-related industries
in the wizard-world... because if they live in the muggle world, all
the years of magic-training is worthless." But you seem to be missing
the point. They don't *want* to work in the Muggle world. The WW is,
for them, much more exciting. Possibly some Muggleborn children who
receive their Hogwarts letter decide not to attend or are prevented
from doing so by their parents, but the children we see in the HP
books like the WW and want to be part of it. They don't care that
they're not being adequately prepared to live in the Muggle world
because they've put the Muggle world behind them. They learn what they
need to know to be part of the WW, and that is mostly spells and
potions and herbology, with a smattering of magical history and
astronomy for those inclined in that direction. Given the jobs
available in the WW, these are the subjects that they need.

It does seem sad that they're deprived of training in music and
languages and literature, but we as readers perceive a need that the
wizards themselves evidently don't see. Or perhaps JKR, wanting to
separate the WW from the Muggle world as fully as possible, chose not
to incorporate those subjects into the curriculum. (I like to think
that a good Muggleborn Muggle Studies teacher could sneak them in.)

Carol