[HPforGrownups] Re: What cultural standards we are using to determine whether Snape is abusive ?

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 144322

I haven't posted for a while - I've been too busy with university 
(just finished the third year of my Education degree - one year to go 
- and now I hope to have time to get active with the lists again. And 
I'm glad to see one of my favourite topics is still being discussed). 
 
Just because there are probably new people on the list who haven't 
seen my posts before, I should give a little background on where I am 
coming from in this particular conversation. I have an incredibly 
strong interest in education (the reason I am now getting my degree 
is so I can do professionally work I have been doing voluntarily for 
over a decade). I have articles published in the area of education - 
with specific interest in issues like bullying and abuse of students -
 I've written a chapter of a book describing my school experiences - 
a book that will be published in the US next year, I run seminars on 
education, and there's a message on my phone at the moment from the 
Education Age asking to do an interview with me about my educational 
experiences. I had quite a range of different experiences at school, 
attending over half a dozen different schools ranging from a very 
working class state school right up to what is often referred to in 
Australia as an 'elite private school' and a wide range of teaching 
styles ranging from the ridiculously permissive to the extremely 
strict and stringent. I'm not sure I'd call myself an expert on 
education - but I am far better informed than most people are about 
it. Not that that makes me right - but this isn't just something I 
dabble in. It's something I spend a lot of time on, right or wrong.

Anyway - to actually reply.

On 8 Dec 2005 at 5:00, dumbledore11214 wrote:

> Alla:
> 
> Hogwarts corrupt? Probably not, on the other hand Board of Governors
> seemed to be awfully fast in dismissing Dumbledore from his position
> in CoS. Granted, they claimed they were blackmailed by Lucius, but
> still...
> 
> On the other hand, I would not say that Hogwarts has great teaching
> standards, quite to the contrary, really, IMO.
> 
> And Yes, I do think the man who is responsible for those standards
> made an awful lot of mistakes. Although I do think that he had the
> best of intentions.
> 
> Let's forget for a second about Snape teaching shenanigans, let's just
> count how many truly incompetent teachers  we already saw on Hogwarts
> staff. Trelawney, Lockhart, Umbridge come to mind right away.
> 
> So, either Dumbledore is not always capable to implement high 
> teaching standards or his standards of teaching are not very high,
> IMO.

I'd agree that the general standard of teaching at Hogwarts often 
doesn't seem to be that high, and I would certainly agree that both 
Umbridge and Lockhart are pretty lousy teachers. I'd give Trelawney a 
little more credit personally - I think her subject is a joke, but 
I'm not 100% sure she doesn't teach aspects of it well. I personally 
happen to also have doubts about the teaching abilities of Hagrid and 
Binns.

I wonder how much effect the war - the original war that occurred in 
the 1970s - had on this. In a war situation, obviously a lot of 
people can die and that can have real implications for the future of 
a society. It reduces the amount of people available to perform 
certain functions within that society and that can lower the quality 
of people in certain positions.

While I would say that teaching is a very important task, in general, 
many societies don't value it all that much - and so when there is a 
shortage of qualified people for all of society's important jobs, 
it's very likely you will get fewer high quality people willing to 
teach. They may feel that their talents are better used elsewhere. 
You can still expect to get some dedicated teachers - competent 
people who regard teaching as an important job and so don't feel 
compelled to move into another area - but you may also have a 
tendency to have more people just making up the numbers.

> Alla:
> 
> Actually, we don't really know what people of his world think of Snape
> being abusive or not, IMO. What I mean is that we don't hear parents
> complaining, but maybe they do complain to Dumbledore and he just
> tells them that everything is going to be Ok or something like that.

I think it's also important to realise that the majority of parents 
of Hogwarts students are either muggle born - and probably have no 
idea of the mechanisms they would need to use to complain (even if 
they knew what teaching at Hogwarts was like - Hermione's 
relationship with her parents strongly suggests that she doesn't keep 
them particularly well informed in my opinion), or they are very 
likely former students of Hogwarts themselves and therefore had seven 
formative years to become accustomed to the way the school is, and 
are therefore less likely to see what might be wrong with it. Indeed, 
given that we have some indications that severe physical punishment 
may have existed in the quite recent past (ie, in the time the 
parents were at the school) they might regard the modern Hogwarts as 
a wonderfully progressive place. There's also the issue that it does 
appear to be the only Wizarding school in Britain - when there's no 
alternative to show people that other methods of education are 
possible, it's much less likely that they will realise there might be 
a problem, and without an alternative, it may be that they feel 
complaining is difficult.

(Incidentally, I saw this with my own parents - for various reasons I 
won't go into here, my parents were told by psychologists that the 
school I wound up attending at age 13 was by far the best place for 
me to be educated - so even though my parents did have some concerns 
about some aspects of the school, they were very reluctant to rock 
the boat by complaining - because without an alternative, what would 
happen if the school somehow took a dislike to me without 
complaining. I mean, honestly, if you are a parent of a child at 
Hogwarts who thinks the school is an unreasonable place - how likely 
are you to cause trouble knowing that there's no real alternative - 
yes, we know from what Draco says about Durmstrang that it isn't 
impossible for students to attend schools outside their country - but 
it does seem unusual).

I should say before I continue that I, personally, don't think there 
are major problems with Hogwarts - what I've raised above is simply 
offered in the interests of open discussion - I'm playing devil's 
advocate to an extent. I don't think there's that much to complain 
about - but I certainly think Alla is right that just because we 
don't hear of complaints doesn't really mean that much - and I'd go 
further and say even if there aren't complaints, it may not mean that 
much. A lot of factors could mitigate against complaints.

> Alla:
> 
> In any event though, as I said upthread, I do NOT believe that JKR
> intended to give "Potterverse" morals THAT different from ours. I
> believe it will be demonstrated somehow at the end of the tale. I
> could be wrong of course.

I agree - I don't think that JKR is intending to make the Potterverse 
much different from ours in a moral sense. *But* I do think there are 
a lot of people who are seeing the morality of our world much more 
narrowly than it really is.

Look... I would say that I am a very moral person (though possibly, 
not a very modest one!). I am extremely interested in the area of 
education and in doing my best to ensure that children have an 
education that meets their needs, and provides them with what they 
need to grow up happy and healthy. It's a moral imperative for me - 
it really is. It's something I have dedicated thousands of hours to 
over the last dozen years, it's something that I have put my life 
pretty much on hold for for the last three years, and will for at 
least another year. I have some vestiges of modesty left, so I won't 
outline everything I do in this regard. But I do believe I am a moral 
person, and what is more I am someone whose views on morality are 
very tied up in their views on education.

Nonetheless, I have no massive problem with Hogwarts as a school 
presented to us in Harry Potter. Indeed, in a lot of ways, it's 
somewhat close to my ideal school. The school I attended that is 
closest to Hogwarts in style and substance is the school I regard 
with the greatest affection, and as the best school, out of the 
reasonably significant number I attended.

With specific regards to Snape - well, I had teachers who made 
Severus Snape seem like Maria Montessori (-8 And a couple of those 
men are men that I regard among the best teachers I ever had.

Now, I can accept that other people will disagree with my position on 
this. I can accept the possibility that my views are wrong.

But I do believe they are moral and ethical and I do believe they are 
more certainly consistent with the range of morality across our 
modern western societies. Morality is not a narrow band - it's 
broadband - and it includes quite a lot in its scope.

And I think there is a *lot* of overlap between the very broadband of 
Muggle society and the (I suspect) somewhat narrower band of 
Wizarding society.

> Alla:
> 
> That is why I feel very comfortable judging Snape by my " muggle"
> standards. I believe that this is what JKR does despite placing him in
> the world with magic, you know. :-) I think that her position in the
> interviews supports it too.

I don't see any reason to disagree with you on this - but I would 
point out that if you are right, it is important to realise that your 
"muggle" standards may not match JKRs.

Our standards on this can be informed by so many different things. 
Our political beliefs. Our educational experiences - lots of things.

And our society and the society in which we live.

I'm not talking about anyone specifically - but I think when 
discussing Hogwarts and considering how Hogwarts fits into the 
culture of British Wizarding society, it would probably be rather 
useful not to judge Hogwarts in the context of western society in 
general, and education in general, but within a much narrower 
context.

I've written an essay on that, of course, but basically I think 
Hogwarts needs to be judged in the historical context of the schools 
most similar to it in the real world. Not within a wider context.

Or rather, while I think it is valid to judge it in a wider context, 
I think there is specific validity in looking at things in a somewhat 
narrower way.

> Alla:
> 
> Sorry, Miles. I believe Snape crosses this important invisible line
> multiple times. He may have rarely hurt the children physically, but
> emotionally I think he hurt them multiple times. Whether we believe
> him or not ( actually while I did not really believed him in PoA, in
> retrospect I would not put past him the desire to kill Trevor. You
> know, just because the pet annoyed him too much :-) ), is not
> important to me. IMHO of course.
>  What important to me is that Neville believed him, what important to
> me is that Neville is afraid of Snape more than anything else.

The rouble is... I firmly believe that I was abused at school by my 
teachers at the age of 12. Seriously abused. I came out of that year 
of schooling suffering clinical depression, and ready to commit 
suicide rather than return to that school.

The school in question was a modern school with a very modern 
educational philosophy based on ensuring that all children were 
respected, and that all children should be allowed to develop their 
skills in a caring environment. The teachers were, I believe, deeply 
caring people for the most part - I know my homeroom teacher (the 
teacher, incidentally, who did the most to harm me) broke down and 
wept in front of my mother when she realised how much pain I was in.

So... what was wrong there?

I *believed* that school was harming me (and I still do - frankly, I 
tend to be violently ill if I have to go past the place - and I have 
to periodically (most recently when I went to see GoF last week). Do 
my beliefs make that school a bad school? Do my beliefs mean that 
what my teachers did was inappropriate?

Well, I think they do - in that I think it was a *bad* school for 
*me*. In that I think what my teachers did was *inappropriate* for 
*me*.

But, in general terms?

Well, no. There were a thousand other students at that school, and 
most of them seemed quite happy there.

On the other hand - I believe (and I absolutely do believe this) that 
the best school I ever attended was one that Severus Snape would have 
fitted very neatly into. A school with extremely strict discipline, a 
school where teachers were allowed to (and did) hit me. A lot of 
people would say that crossed a fairly definite line.

Judging Hogwarts (and judging Snape) on the basis of his interactions 
with *one* student - to me, that is rather ridiculous. Because I'll 
tell you this - I would say that every teacher on this planet has the 
occasional student for whom their normal methods just don't work. I 
would hope that at least sometimes such a teacher would normally 
realise this and that there's a need to try something different in 
such cases - but condemning a teacher because they can't do that, 
goes too far in my view - and condemning the style of teaching 
altogether really goes too far. I think it is reasonable to hope that 
a teacher knows enough to alter their methods for a specific child in 
specific cases where they are not working, but that's quite a bit 
different from expecting them to alter their methods for *all* 
children, based on that specific child.

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