[HPforGrownups] School Size/Class Size was Re: Scary Teachers - Good Teachers

[Ffred Clegg]

No: HPFGUIDX 152997

Neri wrote
> Actually it does. 10 births per year per 1000 population assumes that
> married couples are formed *within* the population. However, for a
> half-blood child, only one of his parents belongs to the Wizarding
> population. If all wizard children were half-bloods (in the strict
> sense of one wizard parent and one muggle parent) you could get as
> much as 20 births per 1000 wizard population, but of course we know
> that some aren't half-blood so 15 sounds about right.
>
> But then we arrive at the biggest unknown, which is the number of
> muggle-born. They come from outside the wizard community so their
> number is completely independent of the wizard population size.
> Moreover, since the reasons for the birth of a wizard child to a
> muggle family are shred in mystery and probably adhere to the rules of
> magic as well as RL, there can be great fluctuations from year to
> year. Thus we would be perfectly within our rights too add each year
> any number of muggle-born that are needed to get the *right* number of
> students. I hope this helps <g>.

The only other thing that we have to factor into any discussion about the 
proportion of wizard vs muggle-born is acculturation.

If there was a large enough proportion of muggle-born children coming into 
the WW each year, then everyone in the WW would understand Muggle manners, 
mores, and culture, because they would all (or almost all) have friends, 
relatives and acquaintances who had come from that milieu.

In fact that doesn't happen. The _majority_ of wizarding folk, even someone 
as cosmopolitan as Arthur, who worked with Muggle matters every day and was 
fascinated by the subject, really have very little knowledge of the other 
side.

I'd conclude that the number of muggle-borns has to be sufficiently small 
vis a vis the number of wizard borns to not make a difference to WW culture.

hwyl

Ffred