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What Harry Potter Didn’t Study
June 28th, 2009
Does it bother anyone else that essentially all of Harry Potter’s education at Hogwarts was about rote memorization of spell casting and totally divorced from “muggle” education?
I mean, the wizarding world need not worry about all the same things that the muggle world worries about, but come on. You’ve still got money, so math, economics, business, etc., are all still important topics. And we have evidence that even with the textbooks being about recipes, experimentation with potions and such leads to better results, so science and the scientific method should be taught, too. Astronomy in the Harry Potter books didn’t seem to be anything scientific.
And how about reading, writing, and all the other things that get taught in middle school and high school? If we let history be replaced with magical history, okay, that still leaves the human condition as a topic that Hogwart’s students skip.
Now, if I were writing the Harry Potter books, I’m not sure I’d do anything different from J. K. Rowling, but their enormous popularity among YA readers disturbs me a little when I think about this topic. How much of their popularity is about changing the subjects of high school into something different and easier? I mean, I think this stuff is going to seem easier to readers. I think I could cast spells better than I could figure out what it means to be human in the face of great tragedy (e.g., what you’re ideally confronted with in English class from time to time), or what is the meaning of art.
So I submit that all the wizards and witches coming out of schools like Hogwarts are miserably educated people without much to their background or experience than the ability to use a wand. Unfortunately that sounds like muggles who just use technology without understanding it, and use Cliff Notes to pass exams.
It’s not good.
If Harry Potter couldn’t cast spells, who would hire him except for McDonald’s? And who would find him an educated, interesting person?
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I’ve never read the books nor seen the films, but based on what you’ve written, you seem to make an excellent point.
“If Harry Potter couldn’t cast spells, who would hire him except for McDonald’s? And who would find him an educated, interesting person?”
Ha! That observation should catch on as a meme of some sort.
I’ve thought the same thing while reading the series. I enjoy the Harry Potter books as much as anyone but this is one of several things about them that always bugged me. Including the complete absence of religion in the Potterverse. I understand its got a British setting and religion is a lot less prominent a force there as it is here in the US but still, surely it should come up every now and then.
And what’s with the near complete absence of technology? They don’t watch TV or go to movies (or have a wizardly equivalent). They write with quill pens dipped in ink. It really makes me appreciate “muggle magic” a bit more when I realize that even if I had magical powers I’m not sure it looks better than what technology does for us.
I guess that’s why wizards don’t work in the banking system, eh?
As a teacher, I could make a few snide comments about how Rowling’s world represents the general opinion of school and teaching as a whole. After all, as everyone knows, Bob, anyone can teach, can’t they? Especially simple stuff like math and science, right? Even more so the simpler stuff like English and social studies.
(Removes tongue firmly set in cheek before she bites down on it)
so, do we also get mad at the chronicles of narnia for abandoning the children’s education needs while they’re in narnia? or jump all over little red riding hood for its inability to properly escort girls from one place to another? perhaps we should stop letting kids read hansel and gretel because of child endangerment.
these problems with harry potter are humorous at best because it presupposes a whole system and problem that don’t even exist. of course no one’s going to find harry an interesting and educated individual because he doesn’t even exist. if they had the kids learning math, english, social studies, going to gym, the popularity of the books would drop like rocks because this is YA escapism. kids, just like adults, don’t like to be confronted with everyday mundane stuff in their escapism. if there were a book published about a 20 something who went into a magical world to fight dragons, and also work as a retail clerk and learn about determining the price per ton of paper, and it was serious, no one would give a damn about this book. kids know this stuff is fantasy (excepting those rare individuals who can’t), and they know that while harry gets to learn how to turn dogs into buckets of water, they have to learn about long division. saying that the harry potter books need a realistic representation of education presupposes that the bulk of kids are too unintelligent to separate their fiction from real life.
as a real life example: my wife teaches kindergarten, and every week she goes to the library and gets fistfuls of books for the kids to read and look at and whatnot. she also has to pick up books the school requires her to read. the books the school requires are things like, Community Helpers A-Z, and another about recycling. here are the practical or even necessary things that kids might need to know, yet the kids could care less. their favorite book, on the other hand, was Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, which has none of these things. and while these kids recycle and will (probably) do things in their community at some point, none of them believed that a pigeon might request to drive a bus.
a kid’s ability to process fantasy and pretend is at a significantly larger capacity than i’m sure most people would grant.
sorry to go on. i’m not trying to come across as a jerk, i’m just trying to converse. i wasn’t going to even comment in the first place because it strikes me as profoundly purposeless to get pulled into internet squabbles. but there you have it.
This has always bugged me as well. Of course, it may also be a reflection of the British school system, but there’s so little mention of any Hogwarts students going on for higher education of any kind. Hogwarts is one giant trade school.
I actually thought about this while reading the series. I ultimately reconciled Hogwart’s half-assed curriculum with my own suspension of disbelief by reminding myself that there isn’t an adult in the entire series, apart from Dumbledore and McGonagall that doesn’t reason (and frequently behave) like a middle-schooler. I mean seriously, at what point does any adult in that series demonstrate any faculty for basic reasoning?
I do agree Hogwart’s is like a giant magic trade school. Seems that elementary school is sufficient to give everyone all the math, science, social studies, and English skills they’ll ever need. I wish that were the case…and think it should be the case with K-12 in general, although we’re falling short…
True. Basic reading and mathmatical skills aren’t enough. I can only assume that wizards are expected to stay in the wizarding world once they graduate Hogwarts. However, if JKR wanted the school to make more sense to people, she would have included lessons in English and math.
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