Identifying with Muggles in Potterverse WAS: Re: DD at th...

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 158173


> 
> Tonks:
> First I think you are comparing apples to oranges. You are talking 
> about college courses, not Jr. High and High School, which is the 
> equivelent of Hogwarts. And I don't think that the founders 
> were "shortsighted".
> 
> I think that Hogwarts is based on a different model of education 
> than the U.S. in the 21st century.
> 
> When my father when to school prior to 1914, they taught the 3 R's. 
> Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. And he knew a lot more in 8 years 
> of school than most high school graduates, (and some with a BA) do 
> today.
> 
> I am not saying that someone with a gift of music or art should not 
> be trained. I think that much of the ways of Hogwarts is as it was 
> very long ago.  Back then an artist or whatever would become an 
> apprentice and learn that way. And "culture" was for the higher 
> classes. They would learn that from their family or private tutors. 
> 
> I see Hogwarts as more of a trade school when children learn what 
> they need to learn and not anything extra. All children are taught 
> there, from all classes of WW society.  I would guess that students 
> like Draco would know something of the arts and others like Ron 
> would not. They would get an equal education in magic, because that 
> is what Hogwarts is, a school of 'magic'.
> 
> Tonks_op
> Who doesn't remember learning a lot of "culture" in her small town 
> school either, which might explain why I hate classical music.
>

Ken: 

Yes, certainly I do reference my college experience but my humanities
education experience from K through 12 was of a piece with college if
not more intense. I never lived in a town larger than 1200 souls
before college, my graduating HS class was 50 in number. My education
dates from the mid 20th century, finishing well before the turn, and
we have no children so I have no direct experience of 21st century
educational practices in the US. 

Way back then we most certainly did have art, music, history, and
english/literature classes as part of our normal public school
education, even in small town schools in Illinois and Wisconsin. I had
far more of a humanities education before college than I had during
college. If I can remember correctly in college I had one sociology
class, one mass communication class, English 102 (by decree of the
college of engineering, the English department was perfectly happy to
accept me into an advanced class) and two English lit classes. In
terms of humanities hours my entire college course load was about the
same as my annual experience in school in just about every year prior
to that.

I don't know what educational practice is in the UK beyond what I can
surmise from watching BBCAmerica and reading the works of British
authors. Oh, and I did live about 40 miles north of London for 6
months in the summer of 1988. My impression of my education relative
to that of my colleagues there is that my engineering education was
second to none but in the humanities I usually felt half a step
behind. That could be simply because of the cultural differences
though. And their engineering skills were right up to snuff too, I am
not trying to say that *they* were second rate in that regard. My
father's educational career began in an honest-to-goodness one room,
rural school complete with sterotypical school marm. My mother went to
school in suburban Harrisburg, PA. Mom always discounts her
intellectual capacity because she did not finish high school but
honestly I cannot see where my parent's education was second to mine
in any way save length. By standing on their shoulders I was able to
attend college and then with my employer's help, graduate school. 

I am sorry to hear that you hate classical music. My love of classical
music stems not from the music classes we had in school in which we
tended to sing popular songs from the 19th and early 20th centuries
but from band. I can still remember the first time we played a piece
that was derived from Wagner, what transcendt joy! Or the Bach-derived
piece for a clarinet quartet I was part of for a competition. I
attended a local two year campus of the University of Wisconsin and so
was able to play in their band alongside the music majors since there
were too few of them to staff it. As it happens the chorus was in even
worse straights and recruited me along with several others from the
band. And so I became a bass and performed Vivaldi's magnificent
Gloria. It's not every day you see a young Baptist lad singing Mass in
a Catholic church -- in Latin no less! I absolutely love baroque
choral music to this day, I even spend perfectly good money on tickets
to the Music of the Baroque concerts. I can hear the beginnings of the
 driving rhythms of my equally beloved rock and roll every time I hear
Scarlatti's harpsichord sonata in G major, Kirkpatrick number 455
(what a catchy name, eh?). Crisp, precise, unrelenting. It gives me
shivers. But then so does "Sweet Home Chicago". I know that Bach is
placed in the realm of the elitist today but he was just a workaday
church musician in his time. If he were alive today he would enjoy
Fats Waller as much as I do but I hope he would still take the time to
write the Brandenburg Concertos.

I am a better person for knowing something of the humanities and
though I would not have thought it at age 20, I am a better engineer
for knowing these things. I've gone on at great length here and have
not even mentioned almost the all of the humanities. It would take
forever to describe how my relatively small formal humanities
education has enhanced my personal and professional life. My basic
childhood education gave me the itch to learn more as an adult. That
itch must be implanted at Hogwarts.

That is why the young wizards and witches at Hogwarts are in no less
need of a cultural education. The Muggleborn need to know about the
culture they are entering. Those who've been in the WW from birth need
to understand the Muggle culture they hide from. Our heritage is their
heritage. Aristotle enlightens them as much as us. Some aruge that the
WW is too small to make a large cultural contribution, does that not
argue all the more for embracing the common human cultural heritage?
Do we imagine that the bonds between the Wierd Sisters and Cream are
any less than those between Cream and Robert Johnson? Does Celestina
Warbeck owe *nothing* to Lena Horne or Mel Torme? What would Dolores
Umbridge be like if she had been exposed to Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma
Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr? Would she have a dream too,
instead of being a nightmare?

I reject the arguments that Hogwarts teaches these things and we just
don't see it. Come on, we've seen Minerva go over Harry's schedule
exhaustively several times, we've seen his OWL's, we've heard him moan
and groan about every class he's had to take and we have never seen
any sign of a humanities class anywhere. We have two classes that come
close. History of magic qualifies but the exclusion of Muggle history
is inexcusible. Astrophysics is definitely a science, astronomy can be
taught as either a science or a humanities class or both at once. At
Hogwarts it seems to be taught in the most dreary fashion imaginable.
Are we sure that Binns isn't teaching that one too? Go on now, name
the Professor of English for me. For that matter wizards have to
balance their bank accounts and gravity pulls the apples down from a
witch's apple trees too. Shouldn't they study basic math and science?
They can't *all* marry Hermione Granger.

Oh, and I forget Muggle Studies. Forgive me, nearly everyone at
Hogwarts forgets it too! That one class could cover a multitude of
sins, I admit it, if anyone actually took it. Every single pupil at
Hogwarts should take this class. Even the Muggleborn need the WW's
perspective on how the world of their birth relates to their new
world. Or they would if there was any evidence that the WW had that
perspective to teach the young wizards and witches.

Ken