[HPforGrownups] Re: In Defense of Snape (Against Snape in JKR's words)

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 122206

On 17 Jan 2005 at 14:47, vmonte wrote:

> Harassment, threats, vindictiveness, and cruelty are not what I would 
> call a valid teaching style; it's more a life style/choice. And I'm 
> not talking about forcing a teacher to cater their classroom to one 
> child; I'm talking about treating "all" children in a classroom like 
> human beings. Sure you can teach children with individual styles by 
> using Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, or by trying 
> cooperative learning strategies, by using Bloom's Taxonomy, whatever. 
> But to say that cruelty is a valid teaching technique is absurd.

Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences and Bloom's Taxonomy have a 
lot of utility in a typical classroom. But they don't magically 
create classrooms that successfully teach all children in those 
classes - they just tend to increase the number of kids being 
serviced. That's a good thing, but it doesn't come close to meaning 
every child is being served.

I work with gifted kids - Bloom's Taxonomy quite often works for 
these kids - but not always. Multiple Intelligence based teaching 
actually harms a lot of gifted kids - it's a very recognised 
problem.

This is the point - methods that are seen as valid (and are often 
quite justifiably seen as valid) often don't work for all kids. We 
don't dismiss these methods simply because they don't work for all 
children. We don't even dismiss these methods even when we know 
they harm some children.

You describe what Snape does as cruelty. I wouldn't use that word 
personally, but whatever you want to call it, I can assure you that 
methods of teaching very much like those used by Snape, worked for 
me. They worked well for me. They worked for me, when just about 
every other method didn't.

Hearing people say that calling these methods valid is absurd, is 
frankly, rather hurtful and rather offensive to me. When you spent 
much of your childhood being denied an education appropriate to 
your needs  and finally were lucky enough to wind up at a school 
which actually managed to teach you... well, frankly, when I see 
people describing the methods of education that worked for me as 
invalid, or wrong, it sends a very clear message to me. My rights 
weren't important. My needs weren't important.

Apparently I shouldn't have got an education at all - because the 
methods that worked for me weren't 'valid'.

That's really *nice* to constantly hear and read, you know.

I take education very seriously. So seriously in fact that I gave 
up a six figure income a couple of years ago to spend the next four 
years living on a pittance to study for an education degree. When I 
qualify in two years time (I'm halfway through now) I am, at most, 
going to earn half of what I was earning at the age of twenty five, 
for the rest of my career. Why have I done this? Because kids like 
me - kids like the type of kid I was, still don't get an 
appropriate education in my country, and in fact, in most of the 
western world (I don't really know about anywhere else). And they 
don't get it because people have typically and often decided that 
their right to an education that meets their needs, isn't as 
important as other peoples right to the same.

(Now, I hasten to add, that I think 'Snape-like' methods work for 
only a minority of the special population I am interested in. I 
don't want people to get the impression I want lots and lots of 
Snapes around - I don't. I want a lot more Lupins, a lot more 
McGonagall's and just the occasional Snape).

I've worked as an advocate for kids who are denied appropriate 
education for a decade now (and I'm not even thirty until 
Wednesday, so that's pretty much all my adult life). I have been a 
witness before government inquiries into education. I have written 
articles on education. Sometime in the first half of this year, a 
book on education is being published in the United States, and I 
wrote an entire chapter of it.

I'm studying to be a teacher - that takes time, so I have two more 
years of that - but I do know a fair bit about education, already.

And I know that just about the worst thing that can be done in 
education is for someone to simply decide that a particular method 
of teaching is 'invalid'. I've been on the receiving end of that. 
It's not fun - and it's not fair.

It is hard to assess the effectiveness of Snape's methods. To do 
that fairly, in my view, we'd need to first of all know what marks 
his students receive, and we don't get that much information on 
that.

But people shouldn't dismiss the way he teaches simply because it 
doesn't match their perception of how schools should operate.

It's not fair to a teacher. And it's not fair to any of his or 
students who might be learning more effectively in that classroom 
than they do in one that is closer to the norm. Perhaps because 
they are not that close to the norm themselves.

Perhaps because their personality is a little different. Perhaps 
because the way they think isn't exactly normal.
 
> Shaun wrote:
> Earlier today, Pippin said this:
>  
> "But I think if you've had bad experiences with a RL teacher who 
> reminds you of Snape, they get projected on to the character, and 
> if you've had good experiences with a Snape style teacher they get 
> projected too. IMO, we'd all like to validate our experiences by 
> having Snape get the fate we wish our real life teachers could have 
> had."
> 
> vmonte responds:
> 
> Do you think that JKR's experiences with her Snape like teacher were 
> good experiences? No, I don't think so.

No, I don't think so. But honestly, I don't think whether JKR had 
good experiences or bad experiences with the teacher she based 
Snape on is relevant to whether or not Snape is a good teacher.

Frankly, if the only way to interpret Snape is *precisely* in the 
way that JKR sees Snape, then she would not be writing well. She 
would be creating, pretty much by definition, a completely one 
dimensional character.

Different people see the same person differently in the real world, 
based on their own experiences, prejudices, philosophies - a whole 
range of things.

An author whose characters can only be seen through the filter of 
the authors experiences, prejudices, and philosophies isn't much of 
an author.

His or her charatcer will be one dimensional stereotypes.

I don't really think that applies to JKR.

I have no doubt that she sees the characteristics taken from a 
teacher she knew in real life, and given to Snape as 
characteristics of a bad teacher.

But what we, the readers, are presented with are the 
'charateristics'. We do not have to accept JKRs beliefs about what 
those characteristics represent as the one true interpretation.

What she believes is interesting, certainly, and gives an insight 
into what she intended.

But her filters of experience, her filters of personal beliefs, are 
not something she can, or should impose on her readers.


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