Teaching Styles / Sorting Hat

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 157962

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "phoenixgod2000" <jmrazo at ...> 
wrote:
>
<SNIP>
> 
> phoenxigod2000, who wonders why Snape's teaching methods are still 
> being argued about when he's an evil murderer ;)
>

Well, his teaching methods are probably a more profound indication 
of his state of light/dark, good/evil than the case of the Terrible 
Tower.  As Nora, particularly, has pointed out several times the 
ordinary interactions of life may well be much more revealing than 
extraordinary situations, which after all tend, especially in highly 
contrived plots of the kind JKR sometimes uses, to be influenced by 
all kinds of strange and convoluted (and often, I think, 
unbelievable) perturbations in the space/time continuum.  

Thus, in the kind of situation we have here, it can be argued quite 
cogently that abusive teaching methods are much more important than 
specific actions taken during one particular highly dramatic and 
murky instance.  Add that to the fact that we have an "epitome of 
goodness" (author's own words) who apparently approves of said 
abusive teaching methods, and the moral soup really gets stirred 
(not to mention spit in several times).


Lupinlore, who finds it interesting that even post-quill (I think) 
Harry in OOTP includes both Snape and Umbridge when he thinks of the 
teachers he hates most at Hogwarts