[HPforGrownups] Re: The Train Scene GoF/ Hero vs Anti-Hero/Draco, Ginny, & Tom, oh my!

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 162604

On 7 Dec 2006 at 6:03, wynnleaf wrote:

> > Now, what about the aftermath?  JKR is careful to point out that
> the
> boys did not drag Draco and Co. out into the hall.  They kicked,
> pushed and rolled them out, and one of the twins was careful to
> step
> on one of the unconscious boys.  Now while we might be able to
> excuse
> this in the heat of the moment, why does JKR so specifically
> describe
> their actions?  She did, after all, have the choice of the boys
> dragging the unconscious bodies out the door.  But no.  She chose
> to
> show them kicking unconscious boys.

Yes, she did. And for me, when I read that, I was utterly horrified at what they did. I condemn 
it utterly. I could never ever condone it.

But I understand it. And though I cannot and could never condone it, I find myself able to 
forgive it.

I haven't posted for a while because I've been incredibly busy. I've been finishing my degree - 
something I have now achieved, so I am a qualified teacher! I hope to be getting more active 
on the list again now, and this thread is one I have been following with interest.

Let me make something clear before I continue this post. I *hate* bullying. No, that's not 
strong enough a word. I utterly *detest* bullying. I experienced truly horrific bullying as a child 
which has emotionally scarred me (and physically scarred me to a lesser extent). I take 
bullying incredibly seriously. I have been working to eliminate bullying in schools in anyway I 
can for more than a decade and I'm actually considered to be quite a prominent authority on 
it, with a number of articles published on the issue (though I must in fairness say some of my 
ideas are considered unorthodox and even disturbing by some people).

And from my perspective, Draco Malfoy is a bully - but honestly I find it hard to see him as a 
particularly bad one. He'd *like* to be a bad bully, I think. But I don't think he really is all that 
bad. Neville is the only person I really feel I've seen him successfully bully, and Neville is an 
easy target (before anyone accuses me of attacking Neville, let me say that I am speaking 
here as someone who was a very easy target himself, and I am talking about early Neville - 
the Neville we see emerging from Order of the Phoenix onwards is no longer this easy 
target).

Honestly, Draco to me, doesn't seem all that bad as a bully. Not because of any redeeming 
features on his part - but because he isn't at a school that particularly tolerates bullying in its 
worst forms.

My experience is that this is the major factor that limits how much bullying occurs in a school. 
It's whether or not bullying is tolerated. If it's tolerated, you will likely have a lot of bullying. A 
school that refuses to tolerate it will not have a lot of bullying. 

And the reason Draco isn't much of a bully is because his form of bullying is not tolerated at 
Hogwarts.

Now, when I talk about bullying not being tolerated - that refusal to tolerate can take a lot of 
different forms - sometimes quite radically different forms. A school can refuse to tolerate 
bullying by teachers and staff doing what they can to detect bullying, and to address it when it 
occurs - my preference (and I believe this works very well) is for them to address it through 
severely punishing the bully and then working to help him or her with any issues he or she 
has, but as I say, there's so many different ways a refusal to tolerate can be expressed. 
Some schools have success with a moral suasion approach, some exclude the bully, some 
stick them in counselling. These can all work - the key is the refusal to tolerate. Ideally (again 
in my view) this refusal to tolerate comes from the staff, the adults, primarily. But it doesn't 
*have* to.

It can come from the children. And this is what I see happening at Hogwarts. Draco is not 
much of a bully because the other students as a whole do not tolerate his form of bullying. 
And that is what we see in the train scene. A severe expression of that refusal to tolerate 
Draco's bullying.

Draco does get away with reasonably minor bullying, because that doesn't reach the 
tolerance trigger. But there's a limit and that's what we see in the train.

This approach - of the students expressing their refusal to tolerate bullying - can be quite 
successful in schools. But it often has a downside. And that is that children do lack 
judgement. And they can go too far.

And that is what we see after the bullies have been dealt with in that scene. Somebody with 
mature judgement might - and I stress might - feel that stopping the incident was enough. But 
kids are fairly unlikely to stop at that point. And they may work to hurt the people they have 
dealt with. Is that acceptable? It is a hard call for me, actually. Personally I believe bullies 
should be severely punished and part of me can view additional injury inflicted on these 
people over and above the need to disable them as punishment and that I could justify. But in 
general, no, because I just don't see that as what is happening - it's a possible explanation... 
but a likely one?

As I say, I experienced quite horrific bullying as a child. And when that scene, a memory 
came to mind. When I was nine, the worst bully in my school came upon me in the 
playground and took a soccer ball off me - a very benign incident by the standards I 
experienced. An older boy saw this and for once, somebody came to my aid. This older boy 
tripped the bully and returned the ball to me.

And I went up to the bully on the ground and kicked him in the head. Over and over and over 
again.

This kid deserved to be punished. Severely and seriously. Head injuries and the potential for 
brain damage was probably a bit excessive, sure, but if I had been simply trying to punish 
him, I doubt I'd feel the guilt I feel about that incident. I didn't want to punish him. I just 
wanted to *hurt* him. And I think that's the most likely explanation here.

I can't condone that - when I did it, or when they did it. But I understand it - and I can forgive 
it. In them anyway.

The fact is... most people on that train (maybe with the exception of some or most of the 
Slytherins) would probably say that Draco and co got what they deserved. And if you can 
view what happened to them as punishment, maybe they did.

A person can deserve to be punished - but they can't deserve to be abused.

And sometimes the action can be exactly the same, but the motivation behind it can be quite 
a bit different.

The thing is - as I say, what stops bullying being a serious problem in a school is a refusal to 
tolerate it.

And what Draco does isn't tolerated.

But what Harry and the others do is probably tolerated - and so that's why they get away with 
it. I don't think JKR is condoning their behaviour. But I think it's quite a realistic depiction of 
what would likely happen in that situation.

Personally, just as a matter of record, I think Fred and George are the most successful 
bullies I've seen in the Harry Potter books. Because they are funny, and because they seem 
to limit most of what they do to targets that other students don't care about, their actions are 
tolerated in a way that Draco's never would be. But I still see them as bullies. That doesn't 
make them evil or wicked - bullying is complicated and not all bullies fit neatly into our 
preconceptions. But they are bullies, in my view.

Ginger wrote:

> School officials (which are lacking on the train) can only react to
> what they see.  If it is hearsay, they are bound to be "fair".  Kids
> are taught nowadays that the right thing to do is to walk away and
> tell a teacher.  In a perfect world, where everyone played by the 
> same rules, this would be the ideal solution.
> <SNIP>
> This all reminds me of Harry and Draco.  Sure Harry is "the Boy who
> Lived", but Draco is from "a good family".  Draco is careful to keep
> himself in a position where he can say he didn't throw the first 
> punch except for the end of OoP where he attacks Harry on the train
> and in the bathroom scene in HBP where Draco wasn't in control of
> the 
> situation.

Ginger, first of all, let me say that I agree with most of what you have said here (and with 
quite a lot of what Steve said before you). But I think there's one point that needs to be made 
here about Hogwarts.

And that is that unlike *most* modern schools in the real world, Hogwarts does not seem to 
be as obsessed with the need to be "fair" in the way you describe. Hogwarts is shown to us 
as a much more arbitrary environment in my view, one in which everybody isn't particularly 
worried about the new idea of "fair" as "equal".

There is nothing wrong with fairness in a school - real and true fairness. But what is imposed 
on so many schools today as fairness really isn't in my view. A teacher shouldn't be 
compelled to treat the word of a known bully and a known liar as being of equal value to that 
of a known victim who has always been truthful. Unfortunately, often they are pretty much 
required to do that in modern schooling. Hogwarts though does not seem to be a particularly 
modern school in its outlook.

The thing is - Harry, up until he goes to Hogwarts, has been in a muggle school, and I 
wonder if he has internalised ideas that wouldn't necessarily be true at Hogwarts. We know 
Harry was bullied by Dudley and his gang at their primary school, and had no friends because 
of it - and I wonder if it was there that Harry learned the truth that so many lonely children 
who are bullied learn when we allow fairness to become corrupted into giving the benefit of 
every doubt to every child.

That when five people say you did something, they will always be believed over you alone 
saying something different. The arithmetic of equal treatment for unequal people that 
pervades much of modern educational ideology.

And so, with Harry, I think he might find Hogwarts much more ready to deal with bullying than 
he expects. But he never gives it a chance.

That aside, we are told that Harry was bullied at primary school, and that he was a loner 
because nobody wanted to cross Dudley. And that is likely to have affected Harry. To him, 
you probably can't rely on anyone to help protect you from bullies - especially when the 
bullies have friends.

The only thing you can rely on is friends of your own.
 
And so that is what he does.

And like real friends, they do what they have to do.


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



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