Snape's teaching methods

[spotsgal]

No: HPFGUIDX 144042

> > Betsy Hp:
> > I'm not sure if merely flunking Potions would fail you out of 
> > Hogwarts, though I believe it is a part of the core curriculum.  
> > But I'm pretty sure that if Neville didn't pass third year 
> > Potions he'd have to repeat it and would not take fourth year 
> > Potions with his classmates in GoF.  (Unless Hogwarts offered 
> > some form of summer school, though everything in the books 
> > suggests it doesn't.)
 
> Alla:
> 
> Is there a canon which supports what you are suggesting? I don't 
> remember it, could you point me out to student flunking the class 
> and having to repeat it? My memory could be faulty of course.

Christina:

"If your friends Crabbe and Goyle intend to pass their Defense 
Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. this time around, they will need to 
work a little harder than they are doing at present."  (From Chapter 
15 in HBP)

Now I know that the OWL is the specific exam that Snape is referring 
to, but it seems likely that Crabbe and Goyle are repeating their 
fifth year DADA class again.  How else could they be expected to 
pass an OWL when they are spending the year learning more advanced 
material that isn't even on it?  I'm not sure if the repeat-a-year 
solution to failing grades holds for all seven years; however, this 
quote does show that there are certain requirements for students to 
meet, and if those requirements are not met, then the student must 
continue until they succeed (it also validates Betsy's argument that 
Hogwarts has a core curriculum, as Harry fails his HoM and 
Divination OWLs and isn't required to retake them).  And before you 
say that maybe it's just passing OWLs that is a requirement, I think 
it's ridiculous to think that *any* student that has habitually 
failed years of a subject could ever pass an OWL in that subject.  
The student would need to repeat years just to have a fighting 
chance.

The truth of the matter is, you don't have any canon to support your 
stance either because, IIRC, the books never state explicity that a 
person has failed a class.  So we can't know for sure what Hogwarts 
does with students who fail classes, but I just can't see Dumbledore 
letting kids float through a subject failing it year after year.


> Alla: 
> And it is extremely telling to me that he performs better on his 
> OWL when Snape is not there tormenting him.

Christina:

I saw Neville's performance on the OWLs as more of a testiment to 
Snape's success as a teacher, as opposed to a physical absence of 
Snape during the exam.  Remember, Harry does also surprisingly well 
on his Potions OWL (better than his Potions grades should have 
predicted), and even though he hates Snape, he is certainly rarely 
intimated or flustered by him in class.  The bottom line to the 
Potions OWL is that Snape taught the kids what they needed to know.  
When it came down to an objective exam, the students excelled 
because Snape taught them well.  The most basic form of assessing 
whether or not Snape taught successfully is looking at whether or 
not his students learned the subject he was teaching.  Neville did 
decently well on his Potions OWL; therefore, he learned Potions.  So 
Snape's methods *did* work.  Neville left his Potions schooling 
knowing what he needed to know.

Christina