[HPforGrownups] Scary Teachers - Good Teachers (was: Re: Hagrid and Snape...

[ClareWashbrook at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 152904

Finwitch:

Actually, she IS a teacher. She's been teaching French abroad for  
instance, and reached an education in Scotland - not that she's  
teaching now, rather doing a campaign against the cagebeds for the  
sake of poor orphans and writing the 7th book - but she certainly has  
been.

As for me -- well, let me just say that there's a difference  between 
a teacher and a lecturer. Snape IMO fits to latter category,  rather 
than the former.


Clare:
 
No, she isn't.  She taught English as a second language to adults in  
Portugal for a year, which is not the same as teaching children and  teenagers.  She 
then taught French for a year on supply.  Supply  teachers work at a school 
briefly and don't really teach - they manage behaviour  whilst the pupils 
complete work set by a staff teacher.
 
I agree that Snape would be better suited to lecturing but he does get  
results.  Snape is one of the good guys, who has a lot of pressure on  him.  I 
think JKR meant us to sympathise with him to a certain  extent.  I would like to 
think that she is making a point that the "grammar  school" style of teaching 
in which failure is highlighted rather than excused is  actually effective, no 
matter how horrible the teacher seems and no matter how  much the children 
dislike him.  It does work, in the books and in RL.   She could also have been 
making a contrary point that focusing upon results, as  our current system does, 
allows teachers with undesirable attitudes to continue  because of their good 
results.  Perhaps it is both.  Perhaps it is  neither and the point merely 
rises out of her plot intentions. I  prefer to think that she is highlighting 
the former but that is because I  staunchly believe that excusing failure and 
focusing on the politically correct  is destroying our education system and our 
culture.  Snape is nasty, I'd  hate to have had him as teacher but I bet I'd 
have learnt!
 
smiles,
Clare xx





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