Harry's bias again, answering several posts

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 141045

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:
 
Carol:

<snipped>

> I still think that Snape is asking Harry the questions to determine
> how much, if anything, he knows about magic (questions unrelated to
> Potions would have been inappropriate) and to sound out his 
attitude.
> (Does he have Lily's knack for Potions? Does he have James's 
arrogant
> attitude? Is he, just possibly, the Dark Lord in the making that
> Lucius Malfoy and friends suspected?) Without question, he uses the
> opportunity to poke a hole in the balloon of Harry's celebrity 
status,
> but he may have had good reason for doing so. He may not want the
> future destroyer of Voldemort running around taking James Potter-
style
> risks for the fun of it or hexing people "just because he can." Best
> to keep him humble--and alive. And quite possibly he's deliberately
> trying to make Harry look mediocre in front of the Slytherins, some 
of
> them children of DEs, so that they won't realize the threat Harry
> poses. 

Geoff:
Speaking from my experience over 30 years as a teacher of teenagers, 
when I came up against a class of new pupils every September, I would 
never have asked an indiivdual about their knowledge directly because 
of this exact problem - of causing embarrassment to a pupil who had 
not met that topic. I suspect that if Snape had thrown the questions 
out generally to the class, there would have been others who could 
noy have replied. I would be more likely to give the class a simple 
written test explaining that I merely wanted to know what they knew 
and give me guidance where there were areas where some pupils had not 
done the work at their prevus school.

Again, to combine this with "poking a hole" in their status is not 
the best approach because you are looking at two very different 
aspects of the student. We would receive information from the Middle 
school about their achievements and also attitudes but I tried to 
start by giving each pupil a "clean page" so that I gained knowledge 
of the person from my own interaction and not from assessments made 
by other people which might bias my own views.

Snape is allowing his preconceptions to override his educational - 
and pastoral - judgments of Harry right from the start.