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

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 158220

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03"
<horridporrid03 at ...> wrote:
>
> > >>a_svirn:
> > Well, the stature of secrecy is 1696 or something, a century after 
> > Shakespeare. So why wouldn't they know about him? Wizards and       
> > muggles had a shared culture at the time.
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Oh, for some reason I had the 1200's in mind.  (Is that when Hogwarts 
> was founded?)  So yeah, you're right they don't have any reason to 
> *not* know about Shakespeare.  Obviously Hogwarts doesn't teach him 
> (or any other form of literature) but I suppose they might get him at 
> home.
> 
> That also means the WW went into hiding well into the Renaissance.  I 
> wonder what the Hogwarts curriculum was like at the time?  Was more 
> covered?  Has generations of warfare taken their toll?
> 
> Betsy Hp
>
Carol responds:
The Statute of Secrecy was enforced in 1692, a year which I, at least,
associate with the Salem Witch Trials, but I'm not going to go into
that again!

But if we consider what was actually taught in British schools at the
time, we can be pretty sure that the curriculum didn't contain any
works by Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's own time, his plays were the
equivalent of popular culture, while his "sugared sonnets" were either
circulated privately among his friends or commissioned by wealthy
patrons. (They were written around 1595-99 and first published in
1609, but not taught in English schools until much later.)

In fact, until the mid-nineteenth century, the curriculum of British
public schools such as Eton consisted of the Seven Liberal Arts. The
Trivium (set of three studies) included grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
The Quadrivium (set of four studies) included arithmetic, geometry,
music, and astronomy. English was not taught. The only languages were
Latin and Greek. (Later, parents with enough money could pay extra to
have their sons taught French or natural philosophy, i.e., science.)
Hogwarts would, of course, predate Eton by some six centuries, but the
liberal arts curriculum was established by Alcuin of York in the
eighth century.

Now, granted, this liberal studies curriculum does seem to be an
improvement over what's taught at Hogwarts, but it's classically based
and ignores the contributions to civilization of the students' own
country. Neither British literature nor British history would have
been taught in English public schools from the time of the founding of
Hogwarts until the Statute of Secrecy. Boys (and girls taught at home)
would perhaps have learned Latin and arithmetic before coming to
Hogwarts, either at home or in Muggle schools. I think that the
Hogwarts teachers that we see count on the parents of non-Muggleborns
to teach their children the tattered remnants of the liberal arts
curriculum as prerequisites for their Hogwarts classes: reading,
English grammar and spelling, the basics of essay writing, and at
least elementary arithmetic (making change, measuring, the simple
calculations required in Divination).

Since we're speculating here, pretending that the WW is real and has
its own history, we can guess that the original Hogwarts curriculum
was adapted from the liberal arts curriculum and included both Latin
and astronomy. Maybe arithmetic and similar skills were taught as part
of Muggle studies, especially before the WW adopted its own monetary
system and it was necessary for many wizards to pass as Muggles or at
least live in that world. Once the Statute of Secrecy was passed, the
curriculum diverged further from that in Muggle schools, which was
also evolving but in an entirely different direction.

In the modern WW, only astronomy is retained from the ancient liberal
arts curriculum. Students who want to invent their own spells probably
read up on theory in the library and, realizing that Latin is required
to name the spells, learn it themselves. I think that vestiges of
ancient language teaching may pop up in Ancient Runes (though maybe
the language is Celtic?), and Potions is "natural philosophy" (an
"extra" for the Eton boys of, say, the sixteenth century) with a
vengeance. But music, as in many modern American (Muggle) schools, and
perhaps modern british schools as well, has fallen by the wayside. It
isn't even taught in Muggle Studies, which seems to be all about
electricity and heavy lifting--i.e., how the poor Muggles manage to
live without magic.

Carol, who thinks that the Statute of Secrecy, including Obliviating
and hidden Hogwarts but resulting in things like the Hogwarts
curriculum, is mostly a plot device to explain how the WW could exist
under our Muggle noses without our even knowing it