Umbridge

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 147724

Gerry wrote:
> Umbridge does not want to relate, she wants to be obeyed. If you
take children seriously, you take into account the amount of
responsibility they can handle and give it to them accordingly. Some
teachers are stricter than others, but we always see every teacher
treat the students seriously: as students who are there to learn and
have the ability to do so (some more than others). Umbridge has a
completely different agenda. She wants to establish her own power. She
does not care one whit what the students think of her or what's best
for them. She wants to rub it in, that they are children and she is
the adult. I'm quite sure she knows the students detest the way she
treats them, but it gives her a power-kick to do so anyways. <snip>

Carol responds:
I'm not so sure that it's personal power Umbridge wants. I think it's
power for the Ministry, and she doesn't care how she obtains it or
uses it, even if it means using a Crucio behind Fudge's back to
promote Fudge's own agenda ("What Cornelius doesn't know won't hurt
him") or sending Dementors to Little Whinging unbeknownst to Fudge. I
do think, however, that Fudge's agenda in OoP has been largely
engineered by Umbridge, who has stepped in to make sure that Hogwarts
and Dumbledore are under the control of the Ministry. If we compare
the Fudge of GoF to the Fudge of OoP, he seems to have evolved from
bumbling to ruthless in a hurry, and I imagine he had some, erm,
encouragement in this direction.

As Geoff points out upthread, Umbridge is not a teacher but a
bureaucrat. She reminds me of so-called educationists, imposing
educational theory on teachers at the expense of teachers' actual
knowledge of their subjects and their experience as teachers. I don't
know whether JKR, who has been a teacher, is targeting government
interference with education, just as she's targeting bureaucracy in
general, but that's how it seems to me.

At any rate, Umbridge as High Inquisitor, is operating (IMO) on the
same principle as Dostoevsky's (doubly imaginary) Grand Inquisitor in
"The Brothers Karamazov": The people (in this case, the students) are
too ignorant to know what's best for them, and those who do know have
both the right and the duty to impose it on them and to brutally
suppress those who try to instigate rebellion.

Carol, hoping that Geoff or someone else with recent experience
teaching in the UK will respond