What Hermione thinks of Snape as a teacher (LONG)/ a bit of Hermione andTrel

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 148029

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> Besides, Hermione DOES criticize Snape's teaching skills, IMO of 
> course. I would say it is written in a very not contrived way.
> 
> "Snape's never been like this with any of our other Defense against
> the Dark Arts teachers, even if he did want the job," Harry said to
> Hermione. "Why's he got it in for Lupin? D'you think this is all
> because of the boggart?"
> "I don't know," said Hermione pensively. "Bur I really hope
> Professor Lupin gets better soon" –PoA, p.173
> 
> I don't know about you, but as I said in my earlier post it really 
> seems to me that Hermione much prefers Remus to Snape as DADA 
> teacher.

Carol responds:
What the students object to when Snape takes over the DADA class,
Consisting entirely of Gryffindors is some points deducted from their
house because Snape regards Hermione as "an insufferable Know-It-All"
(funny thing, so do they), because he is jumping to the end of the
book to a chapter he knows they haven't read, and because he, a
substitute teacher, is assigning a long essay on werewolves.

Nevertheless, Hermione completes the assigned essay, complaining only
when Lupin (who has his own reasons for their not learning about
werewolves at his point) does *not* require them to turn it in. But
Snape's reason for assigning it has nothing to do with being mean to
students or with his competence or incompetence as a teacher. He wants
someone, and almost certainly that someone is Hermione, to do the
assignment and figure out exactly why Lupin is absent that day, an
explanation which he pointedly does not give them himself (compare
Grubbly-Plank's refusing to explain why Hagrid is absent).

Hermione *did* learn from Snape in this instance, exactly as he
intended, but like him, she keeps quiet about Lupin's secret for most
of the year, revealing it to Harry and Ron only when they actually are
in danger from werewolf!Lupin.
> 
Alla: 
> And another one, which I want to repeat.
> 
> "This was really unfair," said Hermione  consolingly, sitting the
> down next to Harry and  helping herself to shepherd's pie. "Your
> potion wasn't nearly as bad as Goyle's, when he put it in his flagon
> the whole thing shattered and set his robes on fire"

Carol responds:
She is complaining about unfair point deductions, not an inability to
learn from Snape. As she has aptly demonstrated, she listens in class
(she learned from Snape what Polyjuice Potion was and which book to
find it in, for example, and she always does well in his
class--better, as has been pointed out, than in Slughorn's, despite
Slughorn's jovial manner with *some* students and her inclusion in the
Slug Club among Slughorn's favorites). Hermione gets an O on her
Potions OWL despite his occasional sarcastic remarks to her. She knows
that he knows his subject, and unlike Ron, she does not "have better
things to do in Potions class than listen to Snape."
> 
..
Alla:
> "I did think he might be a bit better this year," said Hermione in a
> disappointed voice. " I mean
you know
." She looked carefully
> around; there were half a dozen empty seats on either side of them
> and nobody was passing the table"
. Now he is in the Order and
> everything." – OOP, p.235
> 
> Erm... I did think he might be a bit better this year - sounds like 
> a criticism to me.
> 
Carol:
Better in terms of fairness, not in terms of what he has to teach and
what she can learn from him. Can you show any evidence that Snape's
teaching style has prevented Hermione from excelling at Potions, or
explain why she does better in Snape's class than Slughorn's if
Slughorn is the better teacher? (*Harry* does better in Slughorn's
class because he's using *Snape's* own notes, and Slughorn is still
using the same textbook that he used fifty years previously when he
first started teaching, whereas Snape, in Potions class, hardly seems
to be using the textbook at all--except as required reading for the
detailed theoretical essays he assigns.)
> 
Alla: 
> I am also saying that Hermione has very low threshold as to whom she 
> is ready to learn from. Trelawney seems to me like an exception NOT 
> a rule and really, I think that Hermione's mind indeed not well 
> suited for Divination. <snip>

Carol responds:
Hermione seems willing to learn from everyone except Trelawney
(including Snape), even the boring Professor Binns, who puts everyone
else to sleep in five minutes. She puts up with what she, Ron, and
Harry all agree is Hagrid's bad teaching for friendship's sake until
sixth year, when they all drop the course. Her walking out on
Trelawney is exceptional (partly the result of her contempt for the
subject, partly of Trelawney's saying that she isn't suited for it). I
think that ego plays a part here; she's determined from Day One in
Potions to show that she isn't a "dunderhead," but she has no such
ambition to show that she has what it takes to be a Seer. Could her
contempt for the class result in part from her lack of natural
aptitude for it?

I'm not saying that Trelawney is a good teacher, though perhaps she's
less of an "old fraud" than HRH seem to think. But certainly she's
fooled by Ron's and Harry's made-up dream diary and seems to think
that bad things happening to her students makes them interesting. But
I think we're seeing with Trelawney (and Luna) a type of thinking that
Hermione doesn't understand, can't do herself, and consequently
dismisses contemptuously. 

She does no such thing with Snape, whose logical mind she appreciates
("Brilliant!" she says of his riddle in SS/PS) and whose knowledge of
the unquestionably useful subjects of Potions and DADA is undeniable.
We do not see her walking out of his class or demeaning his subject,
only occasionally complaining about his unfairness. That she listens
to him and learns from him seems to me beyond dispute--in marked
contrast to her behavior in Divination.

Carol, who will be interested in seeing how well Hermione casts
nonverbal DADA spells in Book 7