House Pride (wasRe: Sorting Hat (was: muggle baiting...)/Arthur is right or not?

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 155912


> Potioncat:
> I think the four Houses "should" 
> be valued equally. All of them have virtues and qualities that are 
> important. It could be hoped that every student has qualities of each 
> house. 
> 
> But even though McGonagall says, "Each house has its own noble 
> history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards." I 
> don't think she means it. I'm pretty sure that JKR doesn't mean it. 
> Or rather, she silently adds, "but Gryffindor has the best and the 
> most." 


Something to bear in mind is the so-called "Pygmalion Effect", the
phenomenon of self-fullfilling expectations.  There was a famous
experiment where teachers were randomly told one class was 'gifted'
and one class of similar students were 'slow'.  Huge differences in
performance where of course what resulted.  It's a very well-known
experiment and I'd be surprised if JKR, who was a teacher after all,
would be unaware of it.  (write-up here: 
http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schugurensky/assignment1/1968rosenjacob.html).

It's hard to think of a more classic scenario that would produce such
an effect than to put a hat on an 11-year-old, tell them it's a magic
hat that knows who they really are inside, and then tell some of them
that they are brave and good and some of them that they are cunning
and selfish.  Of course it's going to result in different behaviours.
  And it's further reinforced by the evident importance given to where
one's family traditionally goes.  And this is a pattern that the
entire community has been living with for over a thousand years. 
Perhaps the most damaging thing was Salazar Slytherin leaving the
school,  which left the rival houses to tell the story of what
happened with no version left for the Slytherin kids to tell
themselves except for whatever negative version they were told by the
other three houses.  

This is why I think it's going be be so important to the narrative
that we somehow find out what really happened when the Founders split.
 I think the difference between the 'official' version in the history
book, and the Sorting Hat's version, is cuing the reader that there is
something to be discovered there, that can finally heal that rift, by
knocking some of the complacency out of the Gryffindors, and
correcting the corrosive and self-fullfilling attitude that Slytherin
kids are somehow warped.  A more positive story would give them some
higher expectations to live up to.


-- Sydney