Teaching Styles

[festuco]

No: HPFGUIDX 148016

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at ...> wrote:

> All right - now please explain to me why Neville is the student who 
> forgets he is wearing the sorting hat during the sorting ceremony; 
> why Neville is the student who needs to be helped into the Gryffindor 
> common room the first time they go there; 

Gerry
(snip)
Well, obviously: 
1) he has a bad memory
2) he has very low self esteem, tends to make mistakes because he
already believes he will fail. 

Careless in my non-native understanding of the English language means
though perfectly able to do something, not caring to be bothered to do
it right. A very good example of carelessness is Harry in PoA when he,
despite the danger he is in uses his invisibility cloak to pay a higly
risky Hogsmead visit, he knew exactly what was at stake, yet he could
not be bothered to act differently. Very, very different from Neville.
 Now I fully believe Snape is unable to see the difference between
carelesness and being - how do you call it in English - a
psychological block. But canon makes it very clear that for Neville it
is not a question of 'can't be bothered' but of being unable to. A
good teacher,- mind you, not an extraordinary one - should be able to
recognize the difference. 

why Neville is the student 
> who according to Harry, before their first flying lesson has 'an 
> extraordinary number of accidents even with both feet on the 
> ground.'; Why Neville is the student who is the only one who manages 
> to accidentally take off in their first flying lesson, and to fall 
> and injure himself; Why Neville is the student who is found sleeping 
> on the floor outside the Common Room because he forgot the password; 
> why out of Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Neville, why is Neville the one 
> who bolts and runs revealing their location to Filch, when Harry goes 
> to duel Malfoy?' Why is Neville the student who is always losing his 
> toad? Why is Neville the student who loses the passwords that allow 
> Sirius Black to get into Gryffindor tower?
> 
Gerry
Why are all this examples of carelesness? 
 

> To me, it seems obvious that the problem is with the pupil. With 
> Neville.

If that were the case, he would have difficulties in all his classes.
Yet he is fine with charms and is outstanding in herbology, not
exaclty a tame subject. And even with transformation he does not go to
pieces 
> 
> Blaming Snape for Neville's failures in his classes is like blaming 
> the teacher of a dyslexic child for the fact that the child has 
> trouble reading. Even if there is something the teacher could be 
> doing to help that child (and often there is), the issue is with the 
> child.

Snape makes the problem worse by his bullying. As I said before, as a
teacher, Snape should be able to recognize the problem and adapt his
teaching method. This means that he should stop bullying Neville,
because by all this years he should have figured out it is not working
and contributing hugely to the problem. 

> Now - does Snape handle this issue particularly well? No, I don't 
> think so - but I think it is pretty absurd to blame him for the 
> problems Neville has. If I was going to blame anybody for that (and I 
> really don't have the evidence for this, but it'd be my gut call) 
> it'd be his Grandmother.

Why, if you think that Snape does not handle this situation well, do
you consider him a good teacher? 
 
> Shaun:
> 
> Where in the canon is it that Neville is careless?
> 
> "Professor McGonagall pulled herself back through the portrait
> hole to face the stunned crowd. She was white as chalk.
> 
> 'Which person,' she said, her voice shaking, 'which abysmally foolish 
> person wrote down this week's passwords and left them
> lying around?'
> 
> There was utter silence, broken by the smallest of terrified
> squeaks. Neville Longbottom, trembling from head to fluffy slippered
> toes, raised his hand slowly into the air."

Gerry

Neville left the paper next to his bed, safe in the Gryffindor
dormitory. No one could have foreseen that it would be stolen by
Crookshanks who was in league with Sirius Black. That is not an
example of carelesness. 
 
> From our very first encounter with Neville:
> 
> "He passed a round-faced boy who was saying, 'Gran, I've lost my toad 
> again.'
> 
> 'Oh, Neville,' he heard the old woman sigh."

And why would that be careless? 

> Whem 95% of a class are able to do something, it seems to me pretty 
> odd to suggest the teacher has overestimated the complexity of the 
> task at hand.

That was not what I was saying. 
> 
> I don't think Snape's reaction is from shock, personally, but if it 
> was, that would actually indicate to me that the mistake Neville had 
> made is shocking - ie, something that a teacher with nearly a decade 
> of experience teaching this subject hasn't seen before.

Well, a melted cauldron is something quite spectacular, we see many
potions mistakes throughout the book, but most of them are not any
more dangerous than a potion turning the wrong colour of giving a bad
smell. So yes, I do think it strange that the first potions being
taught is one where a simple mistake has such huge effects. 

> The first problem with that argument, in my view, is that Neville 
> makes his very first mistake before Snape has bullied him. The second 
> problem with it that Neville demonstrates careless behaviour out of 
> class and in other teachers classes as well - in Chamber of Secrets I 
> recall, he accidentally removes the leg of McGonnagall's desk during 
> a class, and at the time he's under no stress at all.

Why is this careless? Is it because it is Neville? 
> 
> > Gerry:
> > 
> > Now Snape does not have to be nice to Neville. He could have tried to
> > leave him alone. Even a completely inflexible person should be able to
> > manage that.
> 
> A teacher has a duty to teach their students. They can't just decide 
> to leave them alone. Abrogation of responsibility for educating a 
> student is just about the worst thing a teacher can do.

Gerry
Leaving a student alone, abstaining from nasty comments is not the
same as abstaining from duty. It can be a very effective teaching
method. I'm sorry, but I get the feeling Betsy had in one of the other
discussions. You seem determined to excuse anything Snape does. You
wanted an example of Snape being nasty to other students than Harry.
Ypu even agree that the DADA class is nasty, yet suddenly it is all
right because teachers do that at Hogwarts, where you use McGonnagal
as an example, though both times she is very tense an stressed where
Snape knows exactly what he is doing. His remaek about Hermione's
teeth is again an example of a teacher being personal and cruel. Snape
 is not a nice man.

> > know your opinion on modern teaching methods, but please keep in mind
> > that the old methods were just as good in making students suicidal
> > when they genuinly could not help their mistakes and got punisment on
> > punisment and sarcasm on sarcasm because they had the kind of teacher
> > that was not able to understand that for them elemental was not
> > elemental but virtually impossible. 
> 

> If there was any evidence that Neville was suicidal as a result of 
> being in Snape's classes, or even that he was suffering some form of 
> general depression as a result of being in those classes, I would be 
> inclined to agree with what you have said here. But there isn't. 
> There is evidence that Neville is frightened by Snape, but that's an 
> entirely different matter. Neville is frightened by *many* things.

So as long as a teacher does not make his students depressed or
suicidal his teaching methods are fine? Then it does not matter that a
teacher has not the wit or is too disinterested to distinguish between
carelesness and inability? That is one easy excuse for bad teaching.

> Shaun:
> 
> The point is I don't believe it is an example of sadism. I've seen 
> truly sadistic teachers in action - and Snape doesn't even come 
> close. And I've had teachers who were very like Snape in their 
> actions, and they were not sadistic.

Well, JKR calls Snape sadistic, almost everybody who reads the toad
scene calls whar happens sadistic. I can only conclude you have a very
strange view of sadism. 

Gerry