Academic dishonesty

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 139430

> Del replies:
<SNIP>
> What is being taught is the ability to successfully make a potion
> *according to a certain protocol*. Simply having the students make
> potions would be a waste of time and resources. Though the potions are
> what is used to grade the students, they are not what really matters.
> What matters is how good of a potion can the students make while
> following a particular method. It's the *skill* the students develop
> and demonstrate that matters, their ability to produce a certain
> result under certain circumstances - including the method they are
> given. So using another method makes the whole exercise worthless. 
> 


How on Earth do you know this?  I do not recall anywhere EVER having 
the educational aims and philosophy of potions class or Hogwarts as a 
whole discussed.  I grant you that if Hogwarts follows the same lines 
as a muggle Liberal Arts institution this would be the case, but I have 
never seen any evidence that this is the philosophy of Hogwarts.  
Indeed, all the evidence we have seems to point to a very different 
model, one of technical training rather than liberal education.

No one at Hogwarts or in the Wizarding World seems very interested in 
the students learning patterns of thought or theoretical 
understanding.  Rather, they value practical skills at DOING magic.  
After all, this is the very foundation of their society, the thing that 
makes them different than muggles.  There is no reason that a muggle 
could not understand the theoretical principles of magic just as well 
as a wizard.  It is in the actual practical DOING of magic that wizards 
are different, and a Hogwarts education seems focused tightly on 
training young wizards in technical skills.

All of the classes at Hogwarts are applied classes, with the possible 
exception of Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, and those might well be 
applied as well for all we know, as we have never actually seen them.  
The types of classes that would, logically, be necessary for the 
liberal and theoretical study of magic are suspiciously absent.  To 
mention just the most basic, since spells are phrased in Latin a 
theoretical understanding of magic would logically require education in 
at least the basics of the Latin language.  How could you phrase a new 
spell properly if you don't know the differences among the Indicative 
(what does something) the Accusative (what something is done to) and 
the Ablative (what something is done with)?  Yet this crucial and 
necessary subject is completely absent from Hogwarts.

And the reason for that seems to be that Hogwarts simply is not a place 
that teaches or values philosophical and theoretical knowledge.  
McGonnagall does not seem to be concerned in the least whether students 
understand the theoretical underpinnings of transfiguration, she wants 
her students to be able to turn cups into coyotes.  Snape and Slugworth 
do not appear to care one whit if students understand the theory behind 
making a love potion.  They want their students to be able to actually 
make a love potion that functions.

In short, I think that Snape and Slugworth (and McGonagall and Sprout 
and Hagrid and everybody else on the faculty except Dumbledore) would 
totally disagree with you.  They would say that making a potion that 
works IS what really matters, and theoretical understanding is at best 
only of secondary importance -- and probably not important for the 
average wizard at all.  They don't care if their students understand 
transfiguration, they want them to be able to transfigure.  They don't 
care if their students understand charms, they want them to be able to 
cast them.  They don't care if their students understand DADA, they 
want them to be able to fight off curses and dementors.  They don't 
care if their students understand potions, they want them to be able to 
brew potions that work.  After all, understanding is something any mere 
muggle could do.  Actually DOING magic, THAT makes a wizard!

Since we know from JKR that their are no Wizarding universities, at 
least not in Britain, I suspect that those who want more theoretical 
knowledge are expected to learn it after graduating from Hogwarts 
through a combination of independent study and informal apprenticeship. 
It is possible that some employers also offer further education.  In 
fact, we know that the Ministry does this for its Aurors, and it's 
likely that the three years of education in the Auror program provide 
the theoretical and philosophical training not provided by Hogwarts.  
That's a bass ackwards way of doing things by our thinking, but it was 
very common up until the relatively recent past (for instance even as 
late as the 1950s aspiring members of the Society of Jesus, at least in 
the United States, did not learn any actual religious philosophy or 
theology until they had spent several years in applied ministry 
settings, and the Jesuits were considered the Church's most 
intellectual order).  We think in terms of giving people basic 
understanding and theoretical knowledge, which are then applied to 
practical problems.  However, historically it was much more common to 
emphasize practical skills first and foremost, the idea being that 
relatively few people would ever have the need, or the ability, to 
learn the "advanced" ideas that lay behind applied techniques.  Given 
that the Wizarding World seems to be intellectually and socially 
retarded -- often so much so that one wonders if magical ability takes 
up the neurons in the wizarding brain that are used for analytical and 
imaginative thinking among muggles -- it would make sense for their 
educational system to reflect such a traditional but outmoded pattern.

Lupinlore