[HPforGrownups] Re: Teaching is not and never has been a popularity contest.

[Marion Ros]

No: HPFGUIDX 157922

Bruce Alan Wilson:

<Snip dissertations, from Shaun and BAW, of the pedagogical benefits
of being a prick>

> Whatever you may say about Snape as a person, as a teacher you have 
> to give him this--his students LEARN THE SUBJECT; on the principle 
> that 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating', we have to admit 
> that he is a good teacher. 

AD:
So, if being an ass is the best way to get through to Neville, we can
conclude, from his performance against the Boggart and his "E" in
Charms, that Lupin and Flitwick are even bigger bastards than Snape?



Marion:
You're missing the point.
In the original link (http://mike-smith.livejournal.com/125565.html#cutid1) Mike says the following:

"Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Neville Longbottom is hard at work on totally whizzing it. According to Snape, the potion they're making is supposed to be green, and his is orange. This is apparently because Neville added one too many rat spleens and went overboard on the leech juice. I'm kind of thinking that it has more to do with Neville failing at life in general. To hammer home the point, Snape says they'll be testing his crappy orange work on his toad. I assume he means Neville's pet toad, and not just some random toad they handed out to the lab partners for this session. Because Neville seems super-worried about what'll happen to this toad once it's exposed to his substandard product. Hermione begs Snape to ease off the poor kid, since she wasn't able to help him enough to salvage his work, but Snape just tells her to quit showing off. Again, this makes a lot of sense. People comparing this Potions bullcrap to chemistry makes me throw up in my mouth a little, but one principle that carries over is that you're working with potentially dangerous materials, so the cardinal rule is to know what the hell you're doing. That means following the instructions, listening to someone who knows, and staying focused on the task at hand. Snape may come off harsh, but it's a safe bet that Neville won't soon forget that you only need one rat spleen the next time. For that matter, he'll know better than to depend on someone else to save his ass. Unless Hermione's gonna hold his hand through every slightly challenging task life throws at him, helping him here is counterproductive. Besides, Hermione's already stuck carrying Hagrid's teaching career. 

<snip>

Moving on, the nWo (Trio) attend Lupin's Defense Against the Dark Arts class. The backstory on this is that the teaching position in the DADA course is cursed because yadda yadda yadda, and even though Snape would prefer to be teaching it, for some reason they hired Lupin to do it instead blah blah blah techno crap. At this point, all anyone seems to know abou Lupin is that he's an amicable fellow who just so happens to look and dress like a vagrant. He shows up late to his own class, and tells the students to put their books away and follow him for a practical lesson.

<big snip about boggart!Snape>

The chapter's a decent improvement from before, simply for using Neville's confidence issues to tie everything together into a little story. Snape breaks him down because fear is critical to good laboratory practice, even if the lab is for something as melodramatic and absurd as Potions. Fear leads to caution. Caution leads to accuracy. Accuracy leads to progress. Conversely, Lupin builds Neville back up again, since Lupin's course concerns self-defense, where fear can only become a hinderance, even when the enemy doesn't feed upon it. Fear leads to hesitation, hesitation leads to getting eaten by a flying shark. It's a precarious balance Neville has to strike, but he has to strike it if he's going to get through life. I complain about these books for failing to provide any sort of moral guidance to the characters, but just this once it might have gotten it right. Can't fault that."


Marion again:
See? Snape's teaching style is quite appropriate for the art he teaches.
(I wanted to write more, but then I read Betsy's post and knew I couldn't add to that :-)

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