[HPforGrownups] Hermione and Snape. Was: Re: Accio 2005 press releaseTrial of Snape

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 128285

On 29 Apr 2005 at 17:13, Laura Ingalls Huntley wrote:

> Irene:
> > That wasn't quite what I meant. In the  context of a real-life
> > school, where somebody like Hermione would be discouraged by her
> > peers from demonstrating any commitment, strict teacher is much
> > better than a "nice" but ineffectual one.
> 
> Er, well.  I suppose I agree with you on principle, but I think that
> principle is sort of blown to bits when the *teacher* in question is
> actually discouraging a student from demonstrating any commitment. 
> Arguably, Hermione doesn't *need* encouragement to study, but I don't
> think you can argue that Snape provides an environment that is
> anything but hostile towards Hermione's commitment to her studies. 
> Heck, he makes fun of her for being a "know-it-all".  If the teasing
> of other kids is bad enough to discourage certain students from
> academic excellence, imagine what the taunts of a teacher must do!
> 
> Irene:
> > If that strict teacher happens to be fair
> > (McGonagall), that's excellent, but even if he's not, it's still
> > better than the other choice.
> 
> I'd say that depends on the extent of his or her unfairness and also
> the individual temperament of the student in question.  Plenty of
> students can do quite well with nice, ineffective teachers (Hagrid,
> for instance) if they have the proper resources (textbooks, for
> example).  I think in either case there is a fault in the teacher that
> the student needs to overcome (hostility in the classroom *will*
> cripple many children), and how well they do is a function of their
> personalities.
> 
> Irene:
> > Oh, I need Shaun to come to my rescue, he always explains it so much
> > better than I do.
> 
> Laura.
> Drat, no.  Let him stay away, he's too knowledgeable about all this
> stuff.  ^_~  Anyway, I've never really felt that his arguments apply
> to Hermione.  I believe (emphasis on *believe* -- sorry if I've got it
> all wrong) that the gist of what he says about Snape is that a
> percentage of kids will do well with a teacher that is hard on them
> and tells them they will never be any good, because they can and will
> rise to the challenge.  Now, with Hermione and Snape, I don't get the
> impression Snape is ever nasty to her for not doing well or not trying
> hard enough -- on the contrary, I think he's nasty to her for trying
> *too* hard.  While you may *agree* with him on this count (Ron
> certainly does), I *don't* think it makes him effective in encouraging
> Hermione to work harder (as if she could!).

Shaun:
Sorry Laura, now my name has been invoked, I cannot stay away. (-8

In simple terms, I think you and Irene are both making points I agree 
with. And your paraphrase of (one of) my position(s) with regards to 
Snape is accurate (I would have phrased things a little differently, 
but it's pretty close to what I believe).

But I am certainly not certain that Hermione derives any great 
benefit from Snape's classes - she *might* do so, but it's by no 
means certain in my view.

All right, let's see how I can lay out my position on this.

Where I'm coming from is someone who went to a number of different 
schools and who fared very badly in 'modern' schools with all the 
modern touchy-feely-let's-worry-about-self-esteem-above-all-else-
academics-aren't-important-teachers-should-be-nice ideas, and who did 
extremely well in 'highly traditional' you-kids-are-here-to-learn-and-
we-don't-care-at-all-what-we-need-to-do-to-make-that-happen ideas.

I've no fundamental problems with modern educational ideas - I think 
they work well for a lot of kids and where they work, I'm very glad 
to see them being used. What I object to is the idea that seems to 
develop that new ideas are inherently better than old ones, and that 
new philosophies of education should replace traditional 
philosophies. In my view, there's no need for that to happen - both 
can co-exist.

Because of this, I tend to get rather frustrated when I see people 
attacking the methods of teaching used at Hogwarts seemingly on the 
basis that they are old fashioned traditional methods. They are 
certainly open to criticism - but I don't think it's valid to attack 
a school and its methods simply because they aren't the methods a 
particular person is used to. Because there's more than one 'good' 
way. Just because there are some good new ideas, doesn't 
automatically mean the old ways were wrong, or bad.

Both types of teaching work for some kids, and both types don't work 
for some kids. I'll even concede that in general terms, I think the 
modern methods done well probably work better in more cases - I just 
don't like it when people go so far as to dismiss the old methods.

Now Hogwarts as presented in the books seems to be a highly 
traditional school using highly traditional methods of teaching. In 
my view, the main reason for this is most likely that JKR wanted to 
make use of the British boarding school literature traditions as 
presented in literally thousands of books written and published in 
the 19th and 20th century. Making use of a particularly literary 
tradition allows an author to 'take shortcuts' in writing. You start 
with a set of understandings and assumptions which you can then tweak 
to match what you need. You can then create something that is unique 
when it comes to the important details, without having to obsessively 
create all the background details from scratch. She's drawing on the 
traditions of a massive corpus of work - and, in my view, as someone 
who grew up reading such books (and who still collects and reads them 
to this day) she's done it very well. Hogwarts is unique - but it's 
in touch with a rich literary tradition.

So the school is traditional - all the teachers seem to use 
traditional teaching methods and have traditional educational ideas. 
One of the major ideas that falls into those methods is the idea that 
a teachers job is to impart knowledge to students. Teachers do not 
have to be nice. Teachers do not have to be kind. Teachers do not 
even have to be emotionally stable. None of those things are relevant 
to their abilities as teachers - because a teachers job is to teach.

In such an environment, with such understandings, you assess whether 
or not a teacher is successful, based on whether or not their 
students know what the teacher has taught them. Nothing else is 
relevant.

(At least not in their role as a classroom teacher... teachers can 
have other responsibilities besides teaching in such a school - for 
example, Snape is head of a house at Hogwarts - and that position 
means that he does have some particular and special responsibility 
for the welfare of the children in that house that goes beyond their 
classroom learning. But he doesn't have it for anyone else. If we had 
signs that Snape was abusive towards Slytherin's, that would be a 
black mark against him in my view - but we don't have signs of that. 
Indeed what information we have (and I'm not by any means convinced 
it is entirely accurate) suggests that he treats Slytherins 'better' 
than other students. There are also some things that do fall into a 
category that *any* teacher should deal with appropriately - 
Hermione's teeth incident is the one thing about Snape that I find 
absolutely reprehensible - because all teachers do have a basic and 
fundamental duty to deal with a medical emergency - he didn't need to 
do much, but that comment was uncalled for. But I digress).

My point is two fold. Some kids do learn best in very traditional 
environments when information and knowledge is simply presented and 
expected to be picked up. The attitudes of the teacher are largely 
irrelevant to these kids - sure, it can be a bonus if the teacher is 
nicer, but it doesn't really matter. And for many of them, they don't 
really want anything else. They just want to learn. They don't want 
teachers trying to get to know them, trying to be their friends, 
trying to make every class a happy place. Others may not enjoy the 
class - but they still may learn very well in it - and that's the 
bottom line.

When it comes to Snape, we have no reason to suppose that *in 
general* his students do poorly. Without that information, we can't 
really assess whether or not he is a 'good' teacher where the 
criteria is simply ability to teach. I'm hoping we might get some 
information on this in passing in 'Half-Blood Prince' - because for 
the OWLs, students were externally assessed. If it somehow emerges 
that everybody did well in potions (or even did adequately) then we 
will have a clear indication that Snape is a generally good teacher 
by that one criteria.

(When it comes to specific students, we do have some indication that 
Snape doesn't do well. I think Snape's personal and visceral hatred 
of Harry means he cannot teach Harry as effectively as he might 
otherwise do so. And I think Neville is one of those kids for whom 
Snape's style is simply wrong. But even the best teacher can have 
failures with some kids.)

I can say that I learned very effectively with Snape-like teachers, 
and years on, I'm very glad I had them. Only one was really as bad as 
Snape - and he may have been the best teacher I ever had in a lot of 
ways (not because of his methods - he was just a naturally brilliant 
teacher at his core, I think.)

Now... Hermione specifically. Do I think Hermione benefits from a 
teacher like Snape?

Yes.

Do I think Hermione specifically benefits from a teacher like Snape?

No.

There's a distinction.

I work with gifted kids. I've been doing so for years. While every 
gifted kid differs in some ways, there are certain common 
characteristics that large numbers of them have in differing amounts.

Hermione, to me, seems very much to fit into the mould of a highly 
motivated exceptionally or profoundly gifted child.

(Harry, by the way, just for the record seems to fit into the mould 
of a normally motivated moderately gifted child - he's not an 
underachiever, by any means, but he doesn't set out to do very well 
either - if he sets his mind to something though, with effort, he can 
do it.)

As a matter of simple fact, most EG and PG kids do not do that well 
in modern education. This isn't because modern educational methods 
are inherently bad for such kids - it's just that modern education 
often includes ideas tacked onto it that work out being bad for 
gifted children (when those ideas are discarded, a lot of modern 
teaching actually works very well for such kids). I don't want to go 
into all that here - but it's a commonly observed problem.

Large numbers of these kids (but by no means all) do well in 
traditional learning environments for a number of reasons, which 
again I won't go into here (if people want to discuss these things, 
I'm happy to go into them on OT-Chatter, so people can tell me why 
I'm wrong).

We don't know about Hermione's education prior to Hogwarts - but I'm 
inclined to think she was lucky enough to be in a place where she got 
most of what she needed, but probably not quite everything - not a 
bad environment, just not ideal. That assessment is based on my 
experience of such gifted kids who seem like Hermione - at age 11, 
she hasn't given up on education (which means her experiences 
probably weren't that bad) but she does seem incredibly eager to 
embrace new things at Hogwarts (which suggests she is finding 
challenge at Hogwarts she has never had before). That's speculation - 
but informed speculation.

And for such a child, the Snape classroom is actually a pretty good 
one. A classroom where you don't have to worry about peripheral 
issues - one where you just sit down, shut up, and learn. The teacher 
doesn't coddle anyone - he just starts teaching and expects people to 
keep up. High standards, rigorous learning.

That probably is a good environment for Hermione if, as I think she 
does, she fits the high motivation EG/PG child model.

However, for such children, there's a lot of other environments that 
work well as well. These are the kids who learn easily in any 
credible teaching environment. Hermione may learn from Snape - but 
she probably also learns equally well from McGonnagal, Sprout, and 
Flitwick. She learns from Binns (and to me, Binns does seem to be a 
pretty mediocre teacher in a lot of ways). She even managed to learn 
from Lockhart (though what he was teaching wasn't much use). Hermione 
could learn in just about any classroom - as long as the teacher is 
teaching something concrete.

Bad teachers from Hermione - well, Trelawney is the prime example. 
Trelawney (to me) seems to be the teacher who most fits into 'modern' 
educational ideas - she's a very poor fit for them, she almost seems 
to have embraced the bad parts without managing to take on any of the 
positives. She seems to me to be (for the most part) a nice enough 
lady, fairly calm, fairly gentle - but she's probably close to an 
ideal example of how that isn't enough to be a decent teacher. Her 
subject is very wooly, her teaching style seems non-existent. She 
doesn't like Hermione, probably because she realises Hermione sees 
right through her, and realises she isn't actually teaching anything. 
In fairness to Trelawney, it seems to me that Divination is probably 
largely things that can't be taught, so its hard to be harsh about 
the fact she's not teaching well. But she's an example of the type of 
teacher who is wrong for Hermione. And Hermione knows it.

Umbridge is probably somewhat similar. It's not that the knowledge 
obtained in her class doesn't have some value - it's just she doesn't 
teach at all. She simply gets kids to read. Again, this is the type 
of classroom that is bad for Hermione. 

I suppose my point is that Hermione probably does learn well from 
Snape - she probably learns very well from Snape, in fact. *But* she 
also learns well from other teachers.

I think Irene is right in that in many (not all) modern real-life 
schools Hermione would be discouraged from learning - I constantly 
see gifted kids who this has happened to and came very close to being 
one myself - discouraged by her peers and even by teachers from 
reaching her potential.

And that classes with Snape probably are a better thing for her than 
such a school. *BUT* I think that is because of the traditions and 
ethos of Hogwarts as a whole - not specifically because of Snape. He 
is part of it. But so is McGonagall. So is Flitwick. So is Sprout. 
It's a different, traditional, form of education. The whole school 
is.

And while teachers like Snape play a role in that - so do teachers 
like McGonagall, teachers like Sprout, Binns, Flitwick, Lupin, 
Moody(Crouch)... all teachers who seem to put learning first. They 
don't necessarily ignore other things - it's just they are not the 
first priority.

I think Snape is probably an effective teacher. But there's plenty of 
effective teachers at Hogwarts.

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