[HPforGrownups] Snape: Crime and Punishment

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 143952

Ginger wrote:
> Binns knows his subject, presents the information and then tests his
> students on what they have learned.  He also has them look things up
> themselves and write reports, which is a good method for some people.
> (I know if I look something up I am more likely to remember it than
> if it is simply told to me.)

The big question I would ask about Binns is whether he's still learning
himself. History is a dynamic rather than a static subject but of course
Binns, having died, could well just be repeating the old lessons that he had
worked out while he was alive rather than taking into account anything
that's happened since or any new interpretations of what happened before.

How long has he been teaching for example? There's never any reference to
modern history in what he teaches and his "enthusiasm" seems to be the 18th
century and the goblin rebellions. Could even be that that was a part of
history that he actually lived through.

If pressed, I'd suspect he lived from around 1690 to around 1900 - a time
span which would allow him to have actually experience the 18th century he
focuses on and then to have come to Hogwarts in the 19th century. His
teaching style, with its emphasis on memorising facts rather than
interpreting events, does seem to belong to the 19th rather than the 20th
century.

Is he a good teacher? I had two teachers for my A level history: one of them
went around the class talking to us in small groups about the subject, the
other wrote reams of notes on the blackboard for us to copy down. It's the
second one who imparted the information I needed to pass the exam but it was
the first who nurtured my lifelong love of history...

hwyl

Ffred

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