Slughorn (was: Snape as Neville's teacher / JKR's sexy men roll call)

[hickengruendler]

No: HPFGUIDX 168516

 
> Magpie:
> Snape's favoritism seems, to me, to be rather exaggerated. He 
clearly hates 
> Harry and his treatment of him is personal and unfair, but if you 
want a 
> teacher who's OTT showing favoritism that would be Slughorn, 
comically so. 
> Yet for some reason he's usually considered not so bad because he's 
kind of 
> a nice guy (or for some other reason, perhaps)--even thought  he's 
the one 
> *blatantly* trying to promote some students over others and 
allotting his 
> attention accordingly.  

Hickengruendler:

While that's true, at least Slughorn gives everyone a fair chance. 
Sure, he has his favourites, and blatantly so, but at least everyone 
can belong to his group of favourites, if they excel academically. If 
a student convinces him, they can join the elitist circle. With 
Snape, it seems to me, that nothing could change his pre-existing 
likes or dislikes. (I am basing this mainly on his treatment about 
Hermione). 

That said, I find Slughorn frustrating as a teacher, because I had 
someone like him. He was my music teacher and he blatantly favoured 
those, who were in the school choir. He was always nice and didn't do 
anything to put the others down, but nonetheless his favourism was 
obvious and I ended up really disliking this man, because of this. 
This sort of overshadows my opinion about Slughorn as well, even 
though I do like him as a character. I also really hesistate to call 
Slughorn actually nice. The way he treated the students in the train, 
who didn't fulfill his expectations certainly wasn't nice. Didn't he 
hand out sweets and ignored the "unsatisfying" students the second 
time around?

Hickengruendler