Hagrid the animal abuser/The uses of beasts in fables

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 166198

Alla wrote:
> <snip>
> As I keep repeating I believe Hagrid is a very flawed teacher, I am
just rather convinced that whatever potential he may have had, was
killed rather nicely by Malfoy behaviour during that lesson and
afterwards. <snip>

Carol responds:
My apologies for responding to only one portion of your post, but I
don't agree that Draco's injury and its aftermath did Hagrid, or his
teaching, any permanent damage (though if Buckbeak had been executed,
it might have done so).

Hagrid survived two months (IIRC) in Azkaban in CoS and comes back
essentially unchanged. He lets Rita Skeeter's article and the public
reaction to it upset him in GoF, but he recovers from that, too. 

Unlike Snape, who starts the students out with a simple potion (SS Am.
ed. 138); Sprout, who starts with relatively harmless plants in
Greenhouse 1; Flitwick, who assigns a new, grade-appropriate book each
year; and McGonagall, who starts with a beginner's textbook and
progresses through intermediate to advanced, Hagrid starts off with a
fairly dangerous animal classified as XXX by the MoM, rather than
with, say, Bowtruckles (XX). (To be sure, his first students are
third-years, not first-years, but they still have no previous
experience with the class.) After the Draco incident (which, of
course, was partly Draco's fault and which Draco blew out of all
proportion), he loses his confidence and stays with Flobberworms (X),
perhaps the least dangerous and least interesting of magical creatures.

But once Buckbeak's life has been saved (unfortunately for the
students, at the end of the school year), he is back to his old self
again, excitedly "teaching" the students to care for the extremely
dangerous Blast-Ended Skrewts, demonstrating much more concern for the
Skrewts' welfare than for that of the students. After the Skeeter
article, he becomes despondent and refuses to teach. When he recovers,
he seems to have learned a bit about the proper subject matter for the
class, taking over Grubbly-Plank's lessons on Unicorns (of course, by
this time, there are only two Skrewts left, GoF Am. ed. 484). From
there, he progresses to Nifflers (XXX), warning the students (slightly
belatedly) to remove any jewelry or valuables (543). In OoP, after his
 disastrous expedition to the giants, he's back to teaching dangerous
beasts (it's impossible to determine the MoM rating for Thestrals from
FB because they're lumped under Winged Horses, XX-XXXXX, but I would
guess that they're at the dangerous end or the range). The mere fact
that they're invisible to most of the students makes them terrifying,
if not dangerous if properly handled. (Not that the students will be
able to plop down half a dead cow in front of creatures that most of
them can't see.) However, Hagrid does a fairly good job with this
lesson considering that Umbridge is standing there treating him like
an idiot and trying to make him slip up, and he does tell HRH before
class that he's saved the Thestrals for their fifth year, suggesting
that he realizes that they'd be inappropriate for his third- and
fourth-years.

So, while Hagrid remains an inconsistent teacher, gifted with magical
animals but not very aware of or concerned about his students'
psychology or their educational needs and more driven by what he
considers interesting or exciting than by what they need to learn, he
does seem to be making progress. (And meanwhile, Draco Malfoy has
learned from hard experience to listen in that class).

At any rate, I still think that Hagrid would have benefitted from
using a Ministry-Approved textbook to suggest a sequence of lessons
tied in with students' actual needs and the creatures they would be
tested on for OWLs and NEWTs, but I don't think for a moment that he
is permanently harmed by Draco's behavior in the Buckbeak incident.
His crying and his drinking and his attitude toward animals and his
blatant favoritism of HRH remain as they always were.

Carol, noting that incompetent teachers are as much a part of life as
sarcastic ones and wondering whether Umbridge even bothered to inspect
Binns since she'd have a hard time firing a ghost