Snape's abuse (Re: Would an "O" for Harry vindicate Snape?)

[phoenixgod2000]

No: HPFGUIDX 131558

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Amanda Geist" <editor at t...> 
wrote:

 
> Just because the current American school system is paranoid in the 
extreme
> about holding students accountable for their actions and punishing 
them in
> any way, does not therefore make it true that trying to control a 
student's
> behavior or hold him accountable for his mistakes is therefore 
abusive.

Nothing John wrote was used as a classroom discipline techniqe. Some 
were against students not even in Snapes class at the time! I don't 
have a problem with holding students accountable and neither do most 
of the teachers I know--regardless of what you hear about the 
supposedly spineless American school system. Snapes classroom abuse 
is personal and biting, something no teacher should use as a 
Classroom management technique. If you have to correct a students 
behavior it should be firm and objective because if you make it a 
personal attack, all the student focuses on is the attack and not 
changing behavior.  
 
> Snape is doing both of these. I think his methods can be very 
nasty; but I
> fully believe that he is entitled to the goal of control and 
discipline.  

The idea that Snapes only recourse for classroom management is 
mocking his students, threatening to poison pets, and sabotaging 
student work is ludicrous and demonsrates a petty sadism that 
shouldn't be tolerated.

> And I think children should be exposed to someone like Snape. The 
sooner
> they learn that life isn't fair; that some people are mean for no 
reason;
> that sometimes the mean ones are on your side even if they're not 
nice; and
> that the nice people aren't always your friends--the better. It's 
called
> reality. Most school systems and theories seem to set out to 
protect
> children from reality, rather than give them a chance to learn to 
deal with
> it.

This point of view is just silly. So we should include a Snape-like 
teacher to teach what? That you should just roll over and let people 
with power trips walk all over you because they have authority? That 
mean people should just be tolerated and not confronted? That evil 
can be small and petty as well as grand and sweeping?

Snape is a bad lesson to teach children because he is in such a 
superior position to them they basically have no recourse to him. 
They can't stand up to him, they can't confront him. He's their 
teacher, he holds all the cards. It doesn't surprise me at all that 
Neville is more scared of him than Bellatrix. He's more helpless in 
front of Snape than he is in front of a death eater. Bella, Neville 
can actually hex. Snape, he can only endure. 

School is there to teach skills, not painful life lessons. Those 
happen regardless of the kind of teachers you have. Your heart still 
gets broken. Your friends will betray you. You'll still have a 
shitty boss. You'll still have days where nothing goes right and all 
you want to do is lock yourself in your house and call for take-
out.  Teachers and school should be a safe haven from the crap of 
the world, not your first introduction to it.  

If Dumbledore really was as big on choices and lessons as he likes 
to say, he would use Snape to actually teach students something 
about confronting the corrupt and sadistic other than just playing 
their game.