Sadism or not ? McGonagall and her punishments

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186660

Alla wrote:
> 
> Huh? I certainly do not characterize McGonagall's behavior as picking on students "all the time". As to why do it if you do not like it? Maybe because if you are a teacher, it is your job to discipline your students, whether you like it or not.
> <snip>

I am asking you for textual support of McGonagall enjoying herself, because "why do it if she does not like it", does not really feels like textual support to me. The answer to me is simple - she may do it because she feels she has to. <snip>

> I agree that Minerva is wrong from time to time as to how she deals with students. I however do not see a single sign of her enjoying herself when she disperses punishments. My opinion of course. <snip>

Carol responds:

Certainly, the Hogwarts teachers are expected to discipline their students and they have three means of doing so that I can think of: an immediate reprimand, point docking, and detentions. Both Snape and McGonagall use all three methods. Even Flitwick resorts to giving Seamus lines that can be construed as insulting on one occasion, something like, "I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick." 

Both McGonagall and Snape usually limit their detentions to punishments that the students will find unpleasant (but the teachers, in some cases, may find helpful). The exception, of course, is that first detention in the Forbidden Forest. I agree with Alla that McGonagall didn't assign it because she enjoyed the idea of scaring four eleven-year-olds, including Draco. She did it to discipline the students and teach them to obey the rules. (It didn't work, but the detentions never do.)

Many of the teachers in the books are less concerned with students' feelings than we nowadays think teachers ought to be, which is to say, they're not concerned with students' feelings most of the time. There's not much difference between Snape's addressing Neville as "idiot boy" and Karkaroff's addressing Poliokoff as "disgusting boy" except that Snape's provocation (a melted cauldron) is considerably greater than Karkaroff's (food spilled on the student's robes).

And McGonagall has the same tendency. I agree that she was provoked (fearing for her students' safety just as Snape does when Neville melts his cauldrons) when some  "abysmally foolish person" (Neville) loses his list of passwords, but what about her remark to Neville before the TWT, "Longbottom, kindly do not reveal that you can't even perform a simple Switching Spell in front of anyone from Durmstrang!" (GoF Am. ed. 257). I doubt that she's enjoying his humiliation, but nevertheless, she has singled him out as incompetent in front of all the other fourth-year Gryffindors with no concern whatever for his feelings. Trelawney thinks nothing of predicting Harry's death in practically every class and tells Hermione that she's never encountered a student whose mind "is so hopelessly mundane" (PoA am. ed. 298). Hagrid at some point (I can't find it--it's not the hippogriff lesson) calls Draco's questions stupid. None of them, of course, goes to the extremes of Fake!Moody and Umbridge (calling Draco's action cowardly and scummy while bouncing him in ferret form or calling Harry a liar and forcing him to carve "I must not tell lies into his own skin"), and none of them has Filch's gleeful (and largely impersonal) delight in whipping and otherwise torturing students. But all of the regular faculty members I listed (except possibly Flitwick) are much more concerned with enforcing the rules and maintaining discipline than with the students' feelings or self-esteem.

I forgot to mention Slughorn, who is more prone to award points than to dock them but nevertheless quite openly plays favorites (the slug Club in general and Harry in particular), with not even enough interest in an ordinary kid like Ron to learn his name. 

Hogwarts (and, by extension, Durmstrang)isn't as bad as the schools that Dickens satirized in "Nicholas Nickleby" or even early nineteenth-century Eton, in which boys were whipped for such offenses as not knowing Greek. But the teachers are not far in some respects from the French teacher in "Jane Eyre" who refers to Helen Burns as "a dirty girl" who hasn't cleaned her fingernails that morning. In other words, there's nothing modern about their disciplinary methods or their attitude toward students.

Alla:
> 
> Um, what was the point of Harry"s detention with Snape? What was the point of whipping the students in the past? What was the point of Ron's detentions?
> 
> I would think the point of the detention is to punish a student. I certainly do not think that Hogwarts" punishments carry any educational points or something. But neither do I think that all of them are being used with the reason to enjoy students" sufferings. <snip>

Carol responds:
Right. Detention is supposed to punish insubordination or rule-breaking or failure to follow directions or some other failing on the part of the students. Unless the teacher is that egotistical moron, Lockhart (whose idea of a good time turns out to be a punishment to Harry), he or she designs the detention to be anything but enjoyable (e.g., scrubbing bedpans without using magic). Students are supposed to learn not to repeat the offense (if only to avoid detention). That detention doesn't serve that purpose is amply demonstrated by both the Twins and the Marauders, none of whom are deterred by numerous detentions from committing future offenses. (We do occasionally see, from Lupin and Dumbledore, the much more effective method of psychological manipulation--IOW, making the student feel guilty. But, in general, Hogwarts operates under a nineteenth-century philosophy of discipline that allows teachers to inflict humiliation and disgrace and discomfort and even fear on students as long as the students are in no real danger (and I agree that McG didn't know about the creature that was killing the unicorns or she would never have assigned four eleven-year-olds (Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Draco) to work with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest. (Technically, Hermione was twelve, but it doesn't matter.)

Carol, who thinks that the detention in the forest is primarily a plot device in any case