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* What's up with the members of the Hogwarts staff? Of those that are described in a decent amount of detail, only [=McGonagall=], Flitwick, and Sprout seem to be both decent people ''and'' good teachers:
** Snape is a git who enjoys tormenting children and harbors prejudices against the students that are not in his house.
** He's also an extremely talented potions teacher who can impart great knowledge on those who pay attention and don't let their tempers get the better of them, and has a very important connection to Dumbledore.
** Trelawney is a fraud who has made only two accurate predictions in her life.
** If Trelawney's made any accurate predictions, she's clearly NOT a fraud. Divination is a difficult subject easily open to misinterpretation or being downright incorrect, but it's a legitimate subject nonetheless. SOMEONE needs to teach the basics.
*** No, the books make it clear that Trelawney's divinatory skills are really poor by divinatory standards. Her getting TWO accurate predictions in her life is an extremely poor showing and doesn't amount to anything if she's unable to muster such skills during her teachings.
*** IIRC, somewhere (Pottermore? HBP?) it says Dumbledore had intended to do away with Divination, until Trelawney gave an actual prophecy about Voldemort. He was worried that she would be in danger, so he hired her to keep her safe.
*** Divination also is tricky to teach because either you have the gift or you don't. So you're basically going to have to focus on the theory of different methods - which virtually anyone could teach if they do their research.
** Binns seems to be the wizarding equivalent of valium.
** Maybe Binns is employed because he's cheap to pay? After all, he doesn't need to eat or anything. Plus, he sort of has the ultimate tenure - he haunts the place; there's no way to get rid of him, so they decide they might as well use him, perhaps? Plus, history of magic is arguably the least important subject other than divination, because knowing the other subjects could actually save your life one day. I doubt that knowing History of Magic will.
** Perhaps history does not save your life, but knowing where you come from is still an important part of education. Also, the Wizarding World seems to be a very traditionalist society, so it would only be logical if they put a bigger emphasis on history.
** If those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, then that may well be the reason why wizarding society hasn't progressed, both culturally and technologically (I know it's a bit of a stretch). For all we know, there may have been a Voldemort-type figure every century.
** In a more immediate phrasing, history is a huge part of our view of the world. The wizarding world is a self-centered, traditional society that looks upon other creatures as sub-human at best, and it's incredibly easy to get stuck in that mindset if the kids don't get to learn that it wasn't always like this and that other creatures have their histories too, especially since this seems to be the closest thing they have to social sciences.
** What confuses me is that the only subject they seem to be doing in History is Goblin Uprises. That's it. Every time they mention how boring he makes history, it's always with something like "he even made bloody Goblin battles boring", and both times exams on history are mentioned, the topic is, surprise surprise, GOBLIN UPRISES. Is there nothing else interesting in Magic History? Or did Binns just forget he'd done the same topic more than once?
** Not true. They've also mentioned Giant Wars and various historical wizards ([[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Emeric the Evil, etc.]]) in the classes. And several of the exam questions involved international wizarding conventions.
** Having survived the Scottish education system, Binns was TruthInTelevision for me. Scotland has historically (heh) had a problem with effective teaching of history and especially of Scottish history, and the consequent neglect of the subject in recent years became [[http://www.scotsman.com/news/time-to-end-shameful-neglect-of-scottish-history-1-673740 something of an educational crisis]].
** Hagrid is a nice guy, but his teaching is a bit odd, to say the least.
** I dunno. Seems that once you've trained a Blast-Ended Skrewt, Care of any other Magical Creature is going to be a cakewalk.
** The Hagrid thing actually really bugs me. Yes, he's a darling, but he has absolutely no right to be teaching! He has what, a second-year education? Also, he's completely insane. Great guy, but he exposes children to vicious beasts. The blast-ended skrewts could have killed somebody, I seem to remember they injured plenty. Malfoy was attacked by a hippogriff -- I know he's a brat and he was told that if he insulted Buckbeak it might attack, but it is an animal that attacks people for saying the wrong thing! Am I the only person who thinks that him losing his teaching job would have been the right thing?
** You're not. According to Luna at the start of the fifth book, the Ravenclaws aren't that enamored of him either.
** Well, Hagrid's teaching methods may be odd, if not dangerous; but considering that his predecessor, Kettleburn, is reckless enough to earn himself, like, SIXTY probations, Hagrid is probably a better teacher.
** Lupin teaches in the same way, though - direct first-hand experience with dangerous, "dark" magical creatures far worse than Hagrid's common-or-garden monsters. Malfoy's injury was no worse than the countless others suffered by Hogwarts students in classes taught by other professors; Hagrid only got in trouble because his father was a school governor and in a position to put pressure on Dumbledore.
** Oh, like what? A thing that you can defeat by twisting its fingers or a thing you can defeat by imagining it in a funny way? Ri-i-i-i-ight, Hyppos and Skrewts shiver in fear before those badasses!
** That's wrong. Malfoy and the hippogriff was in book 3. Draco's dad got sacked at the end of book 2 as governor (because he had threaten the 11 other ones).\\
Consider a real-world example: a student in a science class ignores his teacher's warnings and drinks some kind of toxic chemical, leading to a trip to the hospital. Should the science teacher be sacked?
** There's a serious difference between what Lupin does and what Hagrid does. Lupin gave students "practical" lessons in fighting dark creatures while at all times making sure that an adult wizard who could deal with the situation was there at all times and could take over if things got out of control. Hagrid, on the other hand, assigned a biting book with no instructions on how to use it. He breeds a new creature out of several types of monsters with no idea how dangerous this creature might be or how to control it, and puts the students in charge of caring for large numbers of these new creatures. This is an issue, and he probably should have lost his teaching job over that. Malfoy's injury is a different story, although Hagrid probably shouldn't have ''started'' with hippogriffs.
** Magic is inherently dangerous, but magic also means that injuries typically aren't as severe as they normally would be. In the Muggle world, Malfoy's clawing would necessitate a hospital visit and surgery. In Hogwarts, a simple trip to the infirmary patches him up quickly. Even ''losing all of the bones in your arm'' just necessitates a short stay in what's essentially the nurse's station. Everyone teaching magic understands the inherent risks, which is why the infirmary is larger than normal, but St. Mungo's doesn't seem to even take anybody who doesn't have extremely serious health problems (that can only be solved through difficult professional help, like the attack by Nagini) or severe brain damage. Hagrid's class is no more dangerous than what the kids are exposed to simply through ''having'' magic that they can use on each other when the teachers aren't looking.
** As for Lupin, Boggarts aren't dangerous, anyway. Molly gets trapped by one for a minute or so, and it doesn't do anything except make her sob. There's no indication it can physically harm any student even if Lupin wasn't there. He also shows them a Hinkypunk, which misleads people into drowning in bogs...which seems safe enough to show people in a classroom with no bogs. (Strangely, Hogwarts does later get a swamp in it.) Likewise, Grindylows just grab you and won't let go. Nothing he demonstrates can cause harm that we know of.
*** Molly's boggart didn't hurt her because the form it took wasn't capable of causing her physical pain. Harry's was able to simulate the effects of a Dementor attack (albeit weaker than the real deal) and eventually caused him to pass out. Presumably they are able to hurt people, possibly even kill them, but it's dependent on the form they take. Something like Ron's (giant spider) would presumably be capable of biting you the way a real giant spider could (were giant spiders a real thing).
*** It's been I while since I read the book but IIRC Harry passes out because of the effort doing the Patronus, not because the Boggart could emulate the Dementor's attack. The indication in-universe is that the Boggarts can scare but are otherwise harmless said by Lupin openly in the books. In any case a relatively big spider doesn't seem truly dangerous in a classroom with an expert adult wizard, especially not in a school with most subjects with the exception of Divination, Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies to be equally or more dangerous.
** Flich seems to hate children, a very useful attribute for the caretaker of a school. But then, as a Squib, he is already an outcast in the wizarding world. Being a Squib and living in a school full of children learning magic would most likely turn even the gentlest person into a kill-joy. So I'm not sure who suffers more from that arrangement, Filch or the students.
** Well, for one, Trelawny and Snape are there so Dumbledore can protect them from the remaining Death Eaters. And while Trelawny only makes two legitimate prophesies, which is still a hell of a lot more than anyone else we ever met, the majority of her predictions did come true (Neville broke his first cup, the girl lost her pet bunny, Hermione left them for good, and Harry did die young, though he was OnlyMostlyDead.)
** Okay, I give you Trelawney. But I cannot see any reason for Dumbledore not to crack down on Snape and give him a much-deserved attitude adjustment. Some FanFics have picked that up and stated that "Snape has to keep up appearances with the Death Eaters, so he has to be biased and torment the non-Slytherins", but that could easily be reversed: From the Death Eaters' point of view, it would easily be understandable that he has to play the part of the reformed DE towards the light siders, e.g. play nicely and be fair.
** Trelawney's predictions aren't really all that impressive; they're the sort of vaguely-defined, easily-fulfilled prophecies that [[InternetColdReading any Muggle sideshow psychic]] would know. Neville's bumbling ways are probably the stuff of school legend by the Third Year, and Hermione herself points out that Lavender wasn't "dreading" her bunny's death, as Trelawney predicted; the possibility never even occurred to Lavender! Let's face it: on ''any'' given day, something shitty's probably going to happen to you.
** [[WordOfGod Rowling]] said once that Dumbledore allows Snape to keep teaching the way he does because he thinks it's just another life lesson for them: Some people in authority are cruel and unfair. [[FridgeBrilliance It was a good preparation for the Carrows at Hogwarts, don't you think]]? Also, consider that when the Carrows were at Hogwarts, ''Snape'' was the one protecting the students, through clever, under-handed means. In addition, it's not like Snape is a bad teacher; he's probably one of the best at Hogwarts because he doesn't compromise his (extremely high) standards, which in turn means that his classes have high pass rates. Notice that Neville was the only student in Harry's year who neither showed any aptitude at all for Potions ''or'' passed his Potions O.W.L.? Even Harry and Ron, who hated Snape and groused about all of his classes, passed theirs with "Exceeds Expectations".
** But he never actually helped them. Take Neville, he was obviously bad at the subject. Snape never told him why what he was doing was wrong or gave him a chance to make it up, he just insulted him for messing up. This one time in the third book, they were making a Shrinking Solution and Neville did something wrong, so Snape made him redo it. A good teacher would have explained to him what he did wrong the first time, why he was wrong, and how he could avoid it. A bad teacher would just let him at his second potion and fail him. A dick teacher would threaten him with force-feeding the potion to his beloved pet, thus making him incredibly nervous and way more likely to mess up, carry out the threat, fully expecting poor Trevor to die, and then punish Neville for... getting the potion right. I'm not one for teachers babying their students and taking care of their self-esteems, but that's got to mess a kid up, and that's not conducive to good teaching. Besides, it doesn't really seem that OWLs are that hard to pass.
** I'll concede that Snape is a good teacher, but you can be a tough, strict teacher everyone but the nerds hate without being the utter jerkass that he is. Snape defines GoodIsNotNice. The kicker is that Hermione, an excellent student he has no reason to dislike, gets caught in the crossfires of a magical dust-up and her teeth get turned into something like a beaver's teeth. Hermione is already self-conscious about her big teeth and what does Snape do? Say "Get to the hospital wing, Granger," or just ignore it? No. He tells her he can't tell the difference and reduces her to a puddle of tears with one sentence. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Snape. Is. An. ASSHOLE.]] I would like to think that Dumbledore chewed him out about this at least, but considering J.K. Rowling apparently believes in the "bullying makes kids stronger" excuse used by generations of bully-enablers, I have a terrible feeling Snape never got so much as a harsh word for doing stuff like that.
** Right! I mean it's not like Hermie ever did anything dickish to him! Like, you know, burn his robe while he was saving her chump boyfriend (yes, I know they had "reasons" to suspect him, that doesn't change anything) or ''stole valuable supplies from his closet''. Have ''any'' of the Snapefobes ever considered that he'd most likely have to pay for those from his salary? Of course not.
** And of course, Hermione never gets any support or recognition anywhere else, either. Except for, you know, every other class except Divination. What Hermione absolutely didn't need was another professor impressed because she read ahead. And every time Hermione answers a question that's easy for her, or fixes someone's potion, that's another kid who doesn't learn the thing, that's another kid who skates by without learning and will maybe get killed.
** As the daughter of two teachers, I resent the implication that just because he has to pay out of his pocket (and yes, that sucks, and yes stealing it was a sucky thing to do) justifies an alleged fucking adult in a position of power insulting a child which at best was going very overboard staying in good with the Malfoys and at worst was him being a petty asshole. Both my parents put up with a ton of way worse shit than having things stolen (my mother got called misogynistic slurs to her face and was threatned with being beaten up and my dad once or twice had a kid actually try it) and neither of them would ever have dreamed of saying something like that to a kid. I like Snape as a character but the Snapeaboos trying to pretend he's not an asshole are in serious denial of the abuse of the power disparity and ragingly unprofessional behavior he displays throughout, not to mention all the very legitimate safety issues brought up by other people in this thread. I agree Harry is biased and needs to be chewed out for some of his actions but that doesn't mean Snape comes out of it smelling like a bouquet of roses.
** I agree about Rowling's comment that 'teachers like Snape are a lesson'. But I also think that Dumbledore's selfish reasons for keeping Snape are probably more to do with it. Yes, I guess it makes sense that it could prepare students for future situations if they already know that sometimes, people bully those less powerful than them. But I do wonder what, exactly, this lesson is meant to do - to say 'you should just allow those with authority to abuse you'? That doesn't seem a healthy lesson to me. Aside from that, it seems evident that Snape does not like teaching and probably never wanted to be a teacher to begin with. Dumbledore keeps Snape in the school because Snape is very useful to him and his future plans; Dumbledore is nothing if not a ChessMaster. And the well-being of students seems to always have been secondary to what Dumbledore's personal plans are - that's why there's such disgusting levels of bullying among just the students, too. Draco is no more punished for his bullying than James and Sirius were, and all of them create some terrible situations because they're not being monitored. Snape was kept at the school so he was conveniently placed for Dumbledore to use, and that may be the reason that he's not been 'cracked down' on by Dumbledore. The fact that Snape does get consistently impressive testing results from his students (even though he is doing this by creating a fear of failure) probably makes it that much easier for Dumbledore to ignore any kind of disciplinary actions against Snape that might make it more difficult for him to manipulate Snape.
** The problem with Dumbledore's 'Teachers like Snape are a lesson' theory is that the lesson the kids are actually learning is 'Despite whatever it says ''de jure'', the way it works ''de facto'' is that those in power over you can work out their sadistic jollies on you there's nothing you can do about it, except hope you can suck up and get on the bastard's good side like his Slytherins are'. Yeah, '''wonderful''' life lessons to be teaching the kiddies, Dumbledore.
*** Sometimes you just have to realise that no "lessons" are being taught in these situations. Ultimately it's just a situation where an asshole is in a position for reasons unrelated to school/the kids etc and you just have to deal with it, as you'll just have to deal with hundreds of crappt situations in life. The only positive aspect is that at least this time, the asshole is at least knowledgable about the subject they're teaching.
** I think the lesson is that there are in fact teachers and people in the real world who can act like Snape and you just have to deal with them or you're going to have a hard time being able to live in this world. I'd also like to argue that maybe we portray our ethical standards to a fantasy world and expect them to be the same and that could cause many problems when you don't take it for what it's worth. Especially since this is children's literature and it likes to make more exaggerated liberties on characters to impact the life lessons that children are more likely to take away from it.
** Or maybe the lesson is that the readers should stop taking after the biased and headstrong protagonist and ignoring the goddamned obvious, i.e. that not only did Snape have to keep up the "bad" image in case V returns and he has to wriggle back into his ranks, but he also had to suck up to Malfoys in order to stay in their good grace and keep up with their plots, and also that both Harry and Hermione deserved every last bit of verbal spanking they were given, by repeatedly violating school rules and getting away with it, disrupting Snape's classes, stealing his stuff, setting his robes on fire, not being the least bit grateful when he ''repeatedly'' saves their hides and do I even need to carry on?
** We all understand why Snape has to behave the way he does but given all these limitations on him, is really the best person to be teaching schoolchildren? And Harry and Hermione might not be model students, but the way that he goes off on Harry on the very first day of class for things beyond his control (Neville's accident is in no way his responsibility) and the fact that the oppressive atmosphere in the classroom make it harder for the students to do potions and his clear hatred of teaching really make him seem like a bad teacher. Dumbledore keeping him (and others) on for reasons that have nothing to do with and in some cases hurt the education of his students is irresponsible of him as a headmaster. Keeping a teacher he knows is bad around because the students will have to deal with unpleasant people in life so they might as well start now is also sabotaging their education. Them learning how to correctly brew potions is a bit more important than whatever lesson he's trying to teach them and those two goals seem mutually exclusive.
** "...is really the best person..." - Of course not, he was a lousy teacher, and everything you said is true. But that's kind of the point and a part of his role. The first impression is the most important, and the sooner Draco writes to his father and starts gushing over how cool the new Potion master is and how he trashed all the mudbloods and blood traitors, the better for the mission. "...is irresponsible of him as a headmaster" - welcome to the club. I'm trying to put this notion across all the seven sections. And just for the record, I consider the whole deal about Snape being a "lesson" about unpleasant people the wildest and insanest nonsense '''ever''' and the best proof of how little grasp Rowling actually has over her own writing.
** One thing you all seem to be forgetting is that Potions seems to be pretty much Advanced Chemistry+magic. Even a nice teacher has to be very strict to teach something that dangerous, so one like Snape--who has a bad temper and low opinion of most of his students anyway--is probably a complete nervous wreck trying to keep anyone from getting themselves killed. Add all his other stresses on top of that and you have someone who is very badly in need of a year's vacation.
** Except that in chemistry class, ''first'' you get lab safety lectures and exercises, ''then'' you start with harmless experiments, and only months later do you start getting to play with the sulfuric acid. Good God, we didn't get around to touching the dangerous chemicals until ''high school''. What did we see Snape do? First day of first year, he had 11-year-old students mixing a potion that could (and in Neville's case, did) easily become a mass of dangerously overflowing caustic if you made a trivial mistake in timing... with no more instruction other than 'The directions are on the board, get to work'. Conclusion: Snape didn't give two shits about lab safety.
** It seems to me the ''entire school'' doesn't give two shits about safety. Professor Sprout has the students playing with mandrakes, a plant that can ''kill you'' if you hear its cry. In Professor Hooch's class a student suffered a broken wrist during a routine flying lesson. Hagrid let a student get mauled by a Hippogriff. Professor Quirrell and Professor Moody were ''completely bug-fuck evil''. And the less said about the terror-inducing death-sport known as "Quidditch" the better. "Safety" is not a big concern at Hogwarts and apparently never has been.
** Magic means that it's much easier to heal wounds and fix problems than normal. A mess that would result in calling in a biohazard cleanup unit and sending dozens of people to the hospital can be fixed in Hogwarts by a few people waving wands for a few minutes. A bloody injury that requires surgery or would be completely impossible to fix, like ''losing all of your bones in your arm'', can be healed with a few days of bedrest and a potion or two. They can afford to be more careless than a Muggle school because the consequences simply aren't as severe. Also, I should point out that the mandrakes were specifically too young to actually kill the students and would just knock them out harmlessly.
** A fatal accident is still a fatal accident, even for a wizard and even with magical healing. If somebody's cauldron explodes and a piece of shrapnel goes through their skull, you've got a dead kid regardless of what Madam Pomfrey can do. Besides, it actually ''isn't'' typical of human behavior to be more willing to injure themselves the further medical science advances. We can do things in the burn unit now that would be considered miracles from God a century ago, but you are no more likely to deliberately ram your bare hand into a pot of boiling water than your great-grandmother would be.
** Furthermore, why does Filch even have a job? What's the point of having a pissy, foul-tempered squib running around mopping the floors of a castle with 100 magical super maids (house elves) living in it?
** He's probably coordinating them, sort of like a foreman. Putting a bunch of House Elves in charge would not fit with the human/wizard-supremacist world views of the wizarding world.
** That seems like it would be a good explanation, but it's not really backed up by what's presented in the books. If Filch was in charge of the house elves, why would he do any work himself? Why would he trudge around the school mopping mud off the floors and scraping gross crap off the walls and ceilings if he could just summon an elf and have them do it with a wave of their finger? Furthermore, everything Dobby says to Harry and company after he starts working at Hogwarts implies that house elves work directly for the current headmaster/headmistress of Hogwarts rather than the caretaker.
** Maybe Filch is there to do the 'public' cleaning up of things, [[FantasticRacism an old wizarding family holdover of not wanting to see any house elves. Ever.]] The house elves do all the 'behind the scenes' stuff, but Filch is the one to take your problems to, and who cleans up when kids are there to see it. Plus, he has a [[WordOfGod half kneazle]] "cat" , and it's (presumably) his job to patrol irritably, and confiscate things from students.
** House-elves presumably don't have the authority to discipline students, and wouldn't have the temperament to do so even if they did. (Remember Winkie, who couldn't bring herself to say anything harsher to Barty Jr. than that he was a "bad boy"?) Whatever cleanup Filch does personally is either him gathering evidence against the ones who make messes, or grumpily proving to himself that he ''can'' get things done around the place, even if it's without magic.
** Filch is good at his job. He may not have magic or care about the kids, but he has determination and gets things done.
** I always felt Filch was more like the chief of security and/or administrator than just a janitor like Groundskeeper Willie, and as such did things that House Elves can’t do like giving order to students, supervising students' behavior (with the help of his sentient cat), interact with the teachers and answering to their request (as he does with Umbridge), etc. Even if he orders the House Elves to do the stuffs (especially because even if House Elves respond to the headmaster is doubtful that Dumbledores does the micromanagement). Besides I don’t remember in the books him doing any real hard work (that is probably done by Elves), he does seem to be more like a manager of the place.
** There are still a couple of other teachers, though they aren't described much. Hermione seems to really like Professor Vector (Arithmancy), Madam Pomfrey is the nurse who really cares about the children, Madam Hooch is a fair Quidditch referee (though I don't really know what else she does), and Professor Sinistra is a total mystery (Astronomy, and we don't even know if it's a man or woman. The students never complain about their Astronomy teacher though, so we'll assume that Sinistra isn't awful at least).
** According to WordOfGod, Aurora Sinistra is female. She and the other "unseen" professors seem to be decent people, but still, at least half of the more prominent staff members are somewhat dubious. And we haven't even mentioned the various Defense teacher fiascos, so far.
** Hooch teaches Flying to first years.
** Website/ThatOtherWiki says that Quirrell was the former Muggle Studies teacher, only transferring to Defense Against the Dark Arts in ''Philosopher's Stone''. So who taught Muggle Studies in-between them and when the Carrows took over?
** Charity Burbage. She's mentioned at the beginning of ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.''
** [[spoiler:And executed by Voldemort. Personally.]]
** Not to mention Mad-Eye Moody, who teaches 14-year-olds about the three worst crimes in the Wizarding World by DEMONSTRATING THEM IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. Pretty screwed up, even if [[spoiler:he did turn out to be a Death Eater in disguise.]]
** Maybe it's only illegal to do the curses on humans and possibly the other registered sentient beings and beasts while normal spiders are fair game.
*** Huh, guys, must I remind you that one of Fake!Moody's classes involved Imperiusing the fourth year Gryffindors (and likely the whole of Hogwarts fourth year)to see if they could resist it?
** It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Out of the slightly over a dozen or so teachers at Hogwarts (not counting the continually rotating DADA instructors), only three have legitimate concerns about their ability to be a teacher - Trelawny, Snape, and Hagrid. Other than that, Filch and Binns get brought up, but there really isn't any major issue there, yes Binns is boring, but if the students just sucked it up and paid attention, they'd be learning the subject just fine. And Filch has no direct authority over the students, all he can do is yell about them "befouling the castle" while cleaning up the mess and tattle to a real teacher when they actually break an official rule. And as to the big three cases of this, let's look at them:
** Trelawny - Horrible teacher, yes. Total fraud, not really; while nowhere near as good as she likes to think, she is a legitimate seer, and even most of her non-prophecy predictions come out right, as long as they're just off-hand comments and not a deliberate attempt. Now, why would Dumbledore let someone so horribly unqualified teach? Simple; in this case, he legitimately doesn't care. He admitted in Book 6 that he was on the verge of just removing the whole subject of Divination from the school, and the only reason it's still taught is to give him a reason to keep Trelawny around. Add in that it is an elective subject, which simply can't be taught at all (you either have the gift of sight or you don't), and there's really little reason to care if the teacher teaching a literally un-teachable subject sucks.
** It is understandable to maintain the subject to keep Trelawny safe. But this un-teachable subject still gave students loads of homework to do. They could have spend their time on much more important things. Even when the course is elective.
*** There’s a possible explanation of why a bad seer like Trelawny is the Divination teacher. If there are other seers and are better and more efficient than Trelawny (who only had two major predictions in her life) they are probably doing something else better than teaching, like winning the lottery. So all good seers won’t be teachers as they probably are rich and have no reason to work. That’s why the subject is doomed, only bad seers can be teachers. The exception was Fireze and because he as a centaur had no need for money, and even he had to pay a high price becoming an outcast among centaurs.
** Snape - Yes, he is an unfair jerkass. Yes, he shows open favoritism towards certain students, and open disdain for others, but there are other factors to keep in mind. First, the only students we see him actually go out of his way to make miserable are Harry and Neville, both of whom he has personal issues with stemming from before they had ever met: [[spoiler:Harry for being the son of his most hated enemy and the love of his life, and Neville for not being the one chosen for death by Voldy (thus sparing Lily)]]. So, while he ''is'' unfairly biased towards Slytherin students, as pointed out above, it's basically Dumbledore letting him act this way so that students can learn a lesson about how, quite frankly, life ain't fair. Second, as far as just teaching his subject, he's damn good at it, even Neville ends up passing his potions O.W.L.; the only person in Harry's class who we know failed was Crabbe and/or Goyle, who are verging on being literally TooDumbToLive. Despite his personality issues, Snape is proven to be very good at getting the student to learn his subject, and those issues are not as large as they are made out to be, because as above, the only students he actively goes after are those he has a pre-existing hatred for.
** Isn't accepting that all of Snape's students passed their OWLs a bit too convenient? It is somewhat justified that his behavior is to be taken as a life lesson, but is that lesson really what one should teach 11 year olds? Acting in the manner in which he did does not seem likely to inspire his students to be better. Someone with his attitude has no business instructing children, he is certainly a genius in his field, but that doesn't necessitate him being a good or even average professor. Someone like Snape is probably best suited teaching either upperclassmen Potions or graduate work. Using fear is fine, but he clearly crossed a line where some of the kids started to hate him - a big no-no for teachers. In fact, he probably wouldn't even be considered for hiring in a Muggle school because he's affiliated with criminals.
** If Snape is supposed to be a lesson that life isn't fair, who is teaching the Slytherins that lesson? The way this troper sees it, the only thing the Slytherins get from that lesson is that behaving like a jerkass is perfectly fine. And we ''wonder'' why several of them turn out to be evil?!?
** Who's teaching the Slytherins that lesson? Pretty much everyone else in the castle, the moment the hat puts them there. The books make it relatively clear that "Slytherin = Evil" is the ruling opinion of the school, which may be true in many cases, but I doubt it's 100% accurate all of the time. One can assume that some Slytherins are jerkasses by nature, but some are jerkasses by nurture, having been groomed into it by all of the hate they seem to automatically get. Snape himself was a victim of the same prejudice pretty early on, whether his unpleasant disposition hurt his image or not. Besides - if he were just an unpleasant Hufflepuff, even the fandom's interpretation of his character likely would've been drastically different from the start.
** And I don't think teaching was really a calling for Snape. He was put in that position by Dumbledore. I think he was still learning how to teach the whole time. And I got the impression more than once that he was unbelievably offended and without hope hen it came to how his students approach potions. Snape knows how useful his subject can be and so may of the students spend their time actively forgetting everything they can. Knowing how useful this stuff is probably contributed to his desire to teach DADA as well.
** Hagrid - The exact opposite of Snape; great as a person/friend, lousy as a teacher. But again, there are mitigating factors. He does have extensive knowledge of the subject and knows what he's talking about and then some; whenever he brings them a new animal, he always does a good job in teaching them everything about it. His major problem was in choosing which animals to teach them about. Also, the first time we see his class, it is literally the first time he's trying to teach, and it's fairly obvious he's been improving as he gets used to it, since in Book 5, Umbridge, despite monitoring every one of his classes, can't find a legitimate reason to fire him until the end when she just decides to not bother with trying to find one and just attacks him, so likely it just took him awhile to get the hang of teaching, and given time, there's no reason he couldn't develop into at least a decent teacher for the subject. And again, his major problem was in setting the course syllabus, not in the actual teaching, so even if he doesn't really improve on that, all it would need is the Headmaster or another better teacher setting the course objectives and letting Hagrid do the part he's good at.
** Great as a friend? He tricks three underage wizards into promising to take care of his giant brother, a virtually impossible task. All the more, with Umbridge keeping an eye on them already. He could have asked a different teacher, but they would have outright refused that. So that's why he asks some children. That's pretty cold.
** My answer to the first question is; go back to school. My school is roughly the same size of Hogwarts and she has actually gotten the ratio of good and bad teachers quite well. The three worst teachers all represent real terrible teachers; one who torments, one who is too kind and friendly to be a teacher, and one who just doesn't understand the subject. At first I thought she missed one of the teacher archetypes, the one that doesn't do anything and tells you to "do your work" and then Umbridge came to the school. Well done.
** ^ '''Exactly.''' People seem to forget that almost every word of these books are told through the eyes of a ''child''. And children always have a skewed perception of how the world works. Don't any of you remember what it was like to be in school? Don't you remember the teachers you thought were the meanest people in the world? Don't you remember the frustration when a situation was just ''so unfair!" but none of the adults seemed to care what you think? Rowling wanted to bring back those feelings of adolescent frustration and righteous indignation, and judging by the comments on this page I'd say she did that quite well.
** Additionally, ten years after a devastating, decimating war, perhaps the cream of the crop is not available to teach? Perhaps much of the cream of the crop wound up on the front lines. Those that might have been called to teaching otherwise might have found themselves in fields like medicine or law enforcement because that was what was most needed. Ten years isn't even a generation yet.
** Also remember one thing Snape is super bitter about not being able to be the DADA teacher, but what dumbledore never tells him is that [[spoiler: Voldermort jinxed the position, meaning teachers never lasted a year, and Dumbledore used that knowlage to make his death seem like the only reason Snape fled]]
** Where are people getting the impression that Trelawney is an incompetent teacher? Harry and Ron don't do well in her class, but they think the subject is a joke and don't put any effort into it. Parvati, Lavender and Luna seem to enjoy her lessons, suggesting Divination might just be an acquired taste. Trelawney seems to teach plenty of methods of Divination - tea leaves, palm reading, crystal balls, star charts, horoscopes, fire omens - so it seems like she's attempting to give them a chance to grasp the theory and practice even if they don't have the gift. Seers do exist in this universe after all, and she does make successful prophecies.
*** Trelawny is a fraud because she's a liar. She acts dramatic and all knowing but it's all an act. She's a liar looking for attention who just happens to also be a genuine Seer, a fact she's not even aware of. While the methods in the text books may have some merit she herself is just making stuff up. Harry gets high marks in an assignment he completely falsified because he included a lot of bad things happening which she happens to like. All signs point to divination being possible but extremely vague and imprecise, nothing like what Trelawny claims to be capable of. There's a reason every competent character in the series has no respect for her.
** Snape is a git who enjoys tormenting children and harbors prejudices against the students that are not in his house.
** He's also an extremely talented potions teacher who can impart great knowledge on those who pay attention and don't let their tempers get the better of them, and has a very important connection to Dumbledore.
** Trelawney is a fraud who has made only two accurate predictions in her life.
** If Trelawney's made any accurate predictions, she's clearly NOT a fraud. Divination is a difficult subject easily open to misinterpretation or being downright incorrect, but it's a legitimate subject nonetheless. SOMEONE needs to teach the basics.
*** No, the books make it clear that Trelawney's divinatory skills are really poor by divinatory standards. Her getting TWO accurate predictions in her life is an extremely poor showing and doesn't amount to anything if she's unable to muster such skills during her teachings.
*** IIRC, somewhere (Pottermore? HBP?) it says Dumbledore had intended to do away with Divination, until Trelawney gave an actual prophecy about Voldemort. He was worried that she would be in danger, so he hired her to keep her safe.
*** Divination also is tricky to teach because either you have the gift or you don't. So you're basically going to have to focus on the theory of different methods - which virtually anyone could teach if they do their research.
** Binns seems to be the wizarding equivalent of valium.
** Maybe Binns is employed because he's cheap to pay? After all, he doesn't need to eat or anything. Plus, he sort of has the ultimate tenure - he haunts the place; there's no way to get rid of him, so they decide they might as well use him, perhaps? Plus, history of magic is arguably the least important subject other than divination, because knowing the other subjects could actually save your life one day. I doubt that knowing History of Magic will.
** Perhaps history does not save your life, but knowing where you come from is still an important part of education. Also, the Wizarding World seems to be a very traditionalist society, so it would only be logical if they put a bigger emphasis on history.
** If those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, then that may well be the reason why wizarding society hasn't progressed, both culturally and technologically (I know it's a bit of a stretch). For all we know, there may have been a Voldemort-type figure every century.
** In a more immediate phrasing, history is a huge part of our view of the world. The wizarding world is a self-centered, traditional society that looks upon other creatures as sub-human at best, and it's incredibly easy to get stuck in that mindset if the kids don't get to learn that it wasn't always like this and that other creatures have their histories too, especially since this seems to be the closest thing they have to social sciences.
** What confuses me is that the only subject they seem to be doing in History is Goblin Uprises. That's it. Every time they mention how boring he makes history, it's always with something like "he even made bloody Goblin battles boring", and both times exams on history are mentioned, the topic is, surprise surprise, GOBLIN UPRISES. Is there nothing else interesting in Magic History? Or did Binns just forget he'd done the same topic more than once?
** Not true. They've also mentioned Giant Wars and various historical wizards ([[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Emeric the Evil, etc.]]) in the classes. And several of the exam questions involved international wizarding conventions.
** Having survived the Scottish education system, Binns was TruthInTelevision for me. Scotland has historically (heh) had a problem with effective teaching of history and especially of Scottish history, and the consequent neglect of the subject in recent years became [[http://www.scotsman.com/news/time-to-end-shameful-neglect-of-scottish-history-1-673740 something of an educational crisis]].
** Hagrid is a nice guy, but his teaching is a bit odd, to say the least.
** I dunno. Seems that once you've trained a Blast-Ended Skrewt, Care of any other Magical Creature is going to be a cakewalk.
** The Hagrid thing actually really bugs me. Yes, he's a darling, but he has absolutely no right to be teaching! He has what, a second-year education? Also, he's completely insane. Great guy, but he exposes children to vicious beasts. The blast-ended skrewts could have killed somebody, I seem to remember they injured plenty. Malfoy was attacked by a hippogriff -- I know he's a brat and he was told that if he insulted Buckbeak it might attack, but it is an animal that attacks people for saying the wrong thing! Am I the only person who thinks that him losing his teaching job would have been the right thing?
** You're not. According to Luna at the start of the fifth book, the Ravenclaws aren't that enamored of him either.
** Well, Hagrid's teaching methods may be odd, if not dangerous; but considering that his predecessor, Kettleburn, is reckless enough to earn himself, like, SIXTY probations, Hagrid is probably a better teacher.
** Lupin teaches in the same way, though - direct first-hand experience with dangerous, "dark" magical creatures far worse than Hagrid's common-or-garden monsters. Malfoy's injury was no worse than the countless others suffered by Hogwarts students in classes taught by other professors; Hagrid only got in trouble because his father was a school governor and in a position to put pressure on Dumbledore.
** Oh, like what? A thing that you can defeat by twisting its fingers or a thing you can defeat by imagining it in a funny way? Ri-i-i-i-ight, Hyppos and Skrewts shiver in fear before those badasses!
** That's wrong. Malfoy and the hippogriff was in book 3. Draco's dad got sacked at the end of book 2 as governor (because he had threaten the 11 other ones).\\
Consider a real-world example: a student in a science class ignores his teacher's warnings and drinks some kind of toxic chemical, leading to a trip to the hospital. Should the science teacher be sacked?
** There's a serious difference between what Lupin does and what Hagrid does. Lupin gave students "practical" lessons in fighting dark creatures while at all times making sure that an adult wizard who could deal with the situation was there at all times and could take over if things got out of control. Hagrid, on the other hand, assigned a biting book with no instructions on how to use it. He breeds a new creature out of several types of monsters with no idea how dangerous this creature might be or how to control it, and puts the students in charge of caring for large numbers of these new creatures. This is an issue, and he probably should have lost his teaching job over that. Malfoy's injury is a different story, although Hagrid probably shouldn't have ''started'' with hippogriffs.
** Magic is inherently dangerous, but magic also means that injuries typically aren't as severe as they normally would be. In the Muggle world, Malfoy's clawing would necessitate a hospital visit and surgery. In Hogwarts, a simple trip to the infirmary patches him up quickly. Even ''losing all of the bones in your arm'' just necessitates a short stay in what's essentially the nurse's station. Everyone teaching magic understands the inherent risks, which is why the infirmary is larger than normal, but St. Mungo's doesn't seem to even take anybody who doesn't have extremely serious health problems (that can only be solved through difficult professional help, like the attack by Nagini) or severe brain damage. Hagrid's class is no more dangerous than what the kids are exposed to simply through ''having'' magic that they can use on each other when the teachers aren't looking.
** As for Lupin, Boggarts aren't dangerous, anyway. Molly gets trapped by one for a minute or so, and it doesn't do anything except make her sob. There's no indication it can physically harm any student even if Lupin wasn't there. He also shows them a Hinkypunk, which misleads people into drowning in bogs...which seems safe enough to show people in a classroom with no bogs. (Strangely, Hogwarts does later get a swamp in it.) Likewise, Grindylows just grab you and won't let go. Nothing he demonstrates can cause harm that we know of.
*** Molly's boggart didn't hurt her because the form it took wasn't capable of causing her physical pain. Harry's was able to simulate the effects of a Dementor attack (albeit weaker than the real deal) and eventually caused him to pass out. Presumably they are able to hurt people, possibly even kill them, but it's dependent on the form they take. Something like Ron's (giant spider) would presumably be capable of biting you the way a real giant spider could (were giant spiders a real thing).
*** It's been I while since I read the book but IIRC Harry passes out because of the effort doing the Patronus, not because the Boggart could emulate the Dementor's attack. The indication in-universe is that the Boggarts can scare but are otherwise harmless said by Lupin openly in the books. In any case a relatively big spider doesn't seem truly dangerous in a classroom with an expert adult wizard, especially not in a school with most subjects with the exception of Divination, Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies to be equally or more dangerous.
** Flich seems to hate children, a very useful attribute for the caretaker of a school. But then, as a Squib, he is already an outcast in the wizarding world. Being a Squib and living in a school full of children learning magic would most likely turn even the gentlest person into a kill-joy. So I'm not sure who suffers more from that arrangement, Filch or the students.
** Well, for one, Trelawny and Snape are there so Dumbledore can protect them from the remaining Death Eaters. And while Trelawny only makes two legitimate prophesies, which is still a hell of a lot more than anyone else we ever met, the majority of her predictions did come true (Neville broke his first cup, the girl lost her pet bunny, Hermione left them for good, and Harry did die young, though he was OnlyMostlyDead.)
** Okay, I give you Trelawney. But I cannot see any reason for Dumbledore not to crack down on Snape and give him a much-deserved attitude adjustment. Some FanFics have picked that up and stated that "Snape has to keep up appearances with the Death Eaters, so he has to be biased and torment the non-Slytherins", but that could easily be reversed: From the Death Eaters' point of view, it would easily be understandable that he has to play the part of the reformed DE towards the light siders, e.g. play nicely and be fair.
** Trelawney's predictions aren't really all that impressive; they're the sort of vaguely-defined, easily-fulfilled prophecies that [[InternetColdReading any Muggle sideshow psychic]] would know. Neville's bumbling ways are probably the stuff of school legend by the Third Year, and Hermione herself points out that Lavender wasn't "dreading" her bunny's death, as Trelawney predicted; the possibility never even occurred to Lavender! Let's face it: on ''any'' given day, something shitty's probably going to happen to you.
** [[WordOfGod Rowling]] said once that Dumbledore allows Snape to keep teaching the way he does because he thinks it's just another life lesson for them: Some people in authority are cruel and unfair. [[FridgeBrilliance It was a good preparation for the Carrows at Hogwarts, don't you think]]? Also, consider that when the Carrows were at Hogwarts, ''Snape'' was the one protecting the students, through clever, under-handed means. In addition, it's not like Snape is a bad teacher; he's probably one of the best at Hogwarts because he doesn't compromise his (extremely high) standards, which in turn means that his classes have high pass rates. Notice that Neville was the only student in Harry's year who neither showed any aptitude at all for Potions ''or'' passed his Potions O.W.L.? Even Harry and Ron, who hated Snape and groused about all of his classes, passed theirs with "Exceeds Expectations".
** But he never actually helped them. Take Neville, he was obviously bad at the subject. Snape never told him why what he was doing was wrong or gave him a chance to make it up, he just insulted him for messing up. This one time in the third book, they were making a Shrinking Solution and Neville did something wrong, so Snape made him redo it. A good teacher would have explained to him what he did wrong the first time, why he was wrong, and how he could avoid it. A bad teacher would just let him at his second potion and fail him. A dick teacher would threaten him with force-feeding the potion to his beloved pet, thus making him incredibly nervous and way more likely to mess up, carry out the threat, fully expecting poor Trevor to die, and then punish Neville for... getting the potion right. I'm not one for teachers babying their students and taking care of their self-esteems, but that's got to mess a kid up, and that's not conducive to good teaching. Besides, it doesn't really seem that OWLs are that hard to pass.
** I'll concede that Snape is a good teacher, but you can be a tough, strict teacher everyone but the nerds hate without being the utter jerkass that he is. Snape defines GoodIsNotNice. The kicker is that Hermione, an excellent student he has no reason to dislike, gets caught in the crossfires of a magical dust-up and her teeth get turned into something like a beaver's teeth. Hermione is already self-conscious about her big teeth and what does Snape do? Say "Get to the hospital wing, Granger," or just ignore it? No. He tells her he can't tell the difference and reduces her to a puddle of tears with one sentence. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Snape. Is. An. ASSHOLE.]] I would like to think that Dumbledore chewed him out about this at least, but considering J.K. Rowling apparently believes in the "bullying makes kids stronger" excuse used by generations of bully-enablers, I have a terrible feeling Snape never got so much as a harsh word for doing stuff like that.
** Right! I mean it's not like Hermie ever did anything dickish to him! Like, you know, burn his robe while he was saving her chump boyfriend (yes, I know they had "reasons" to suspect him, that doesn't change anything) or ''stole valuable supplies from his closet''. Have ''any'' of the Snapefobes ever considered that he'd most likely have to pay for those from his salary? Of course not.
** And of course, Hermione never gets any support or recognition anywhere else, either. Except for, you know, every other class except Divination. What Hermione absolutely didn't need was another professor impressed because she read ahead. And every time Hermione answers a question that's easy for her, or fixes someone's potion, that's another kid who doesn't learn the thing, that's another kid who skates by without learning and will maybe get killed.
** As the daughter of two teachers, I resent the implication that just because he has to pay out of his pocket (and yes, that sucks, and yes stealing it was a sucky thing to do) justifies an alleged fucking adult in a position of power insulting a child which at best was going very overboard staying in good with the Malfoys and at worst was him being a petty asshole. Both my parents put up with a ton of way worse shit than having things stolen (my mother got called misogynistic slurs to her face and was threatned with being beaten up and my dad once or twice had a kid actually try it) and neither of them would ever have dreamed of saying something like that to a kid. I like Snape as a character but the Snapeaboos trying to pretend he's not an asshole are in serious denial of the abuse of the power disparity and ragingly unprofessional behavior he displays throughout, not to mention all the very legitimate safety issues brought up by other people in this thread. I agree Harry is biased and needs to be chewed out for some of his actions but that doesn't mean Snape comes out of it smelling like a bouquet of roses.
** I agree about Rowling's comment that 'teachers like Snape are a lesson'. But I also think that Dumbledore's selfish reasons for keeping Snape are probably more to do with it. Yes, I guess it makes sense that it could prepare students for future situations if they already know that sometimes, people bully those less powerful than them. But I do wonder what, exactly, this lesson is meant to do - to say 'you should just allow those with authority to abuse you'? That doesn't seem a healthy lesson to me. Aside from that, it seems evident that Snape does not like teaching and probably never wanted to be a teacher to begin with. Dumbledore keeps Snape in the school because Snape is very useful to him and his future plans; Dumbledore is nothing if not a ChessMaster. And the well-being of students seems to always have been secondary to what Dumbledore's personal plans are - that's why there's such disgusting levels of bullying among just the students, too. Draco is no more punished for his bullying than James and Sirius were, and all of them create some terrible situations because they're not being monitored. Snape was kept at the school so he was conveniently placed for Dumbledore to use, and that may be the reason that he's not been 'cracked down' on by Dumbledore. The fact that Snape does get consistently impressive testing results from his students (even though he is doing this by creating a fear of failure) probably makes it that much easier for Dumbledore to ignore any kind of disciplinary actions against Snape that might make it more difficult for him to manipulate Snape.
** The problem with Dumbledore's 'Teachers like Snape are a lesson' theory is that the lesson the kids are actually learning is 'Despite whatever it says ''de jure'', the way it works ''de facto'' is that those in power over you can work out their sadistic jollies on you there's nothing you can do about it, except hope you can suck up and get on the bastard's good side like his Slytherins are'. Yeah, '''wonderful''' life lessons to be teaching the kiddies, Dumbledore.
*** Sometimes you just have to realise that no "lessons" are being taught in these situations. Ultimately it's just a situation where an asshole is in a position for reasons unrelated to school/the kids etc and you just have to deal with it, as you'll just have to deal with hundreds of crappt situations in life. The only positive aspect is that at least this time, the asshole is at least knowledgable about the subject they're teaching.
** I think the lesson is that there are in fact teachers and people in the real world who can act like Snape and you just have to deal with them or you're going to have a hard time being able to live in this world. I'd also like to argue that maybe we portray our ethical standards to a fantasy world and expect them to be the same and that could cause many problems when you don't take it for what it's worth. Especially since this is children's literature and it likes to make more exaggerated liberties on characters to impact the life lessons that children are more likely to take away from it.
** Or maybe the lesson is that the readers should stop taking after the biased and headstrong protagonist and ignoring the goddamned obvious, i.e. that not only did Snape have to keep up the "bad" image in case V returns and he has to wriggle back into his ranks, but he also had to suck up to Malfoys in order to stay in their good grace and keep up with their plots, and also that both Harry and Hermione deserved every last bit of verbal spanking they were given, by repeatedly violating school rules and getting away with it, disrupting Snape's classes, stealing his stuff, setting his robes on fire, not being the least bit grateful when he ''repeatedly'' saves their hides and do I even need to carry on?
** We all understand why Snape has to behave the way he does but given all these limitations on him, is really the best person to be teaching schoolchildren? And Harry and Hermione might not be model students, but the way that he goes off on Harry on the very first day of class for things beyond his control (Neville's accident is in no way his responsibility) and the fact that the oppressive atmosphere in the classroom make it harder for the students to do potions and his clear hatred of teaching really make him seem like a bad teacher. Dumbledore keeping him (and others) on for reasons that have nothing to do with and in some cases hurt the education of his students is irresponsible of him as a headmaster. Keeping a teacher he knows is bad around because the students will have to deal with unpleasant people in life so they might as well start now is also sabotaging their education. Them learning how to correctly brew potions is a bit more important than whatever lesson he's trying to teach them and those two goals seem mutually exclusive.
** "...is really the best person..." - Of course not, he was a lousy teacher, and everything you said is true. But that's kind of the point and a part of his role. The first impression is the most important, and the sooner Draco writes to his father and starts gushing over how cool the new Potion master is and how he trashed all the mudbloods and blood traitors, the better for the mission. "...is irresponsible of him as a headmaster" - welcome to the club. I'm trying to put this notion across all the seven sections. And just for the record, I consider the whole deal about Snape being a "lesson" about unpleasant people the wildest and insanest nonsense '''ever''' and the best proof of how little grasp Rowling actually has over her own writing.
** One thing you all seem to be forgetting is that Potions seems to be pretty much Advanced Chemistry+magic. Even a nice teacher has to be very strict to teach something that dangerous, so one like Snape--who has a bad temper and low opinion of most of his students anyway--is probably a complete nervous wreck trying to keep anyone from getting themselves killed. Add all his other stresses on top of that and you have someone who is very badly in need of a year's vacation.
** Except that in chemistry class, ''first'' you get lab safety lectures and exercises, ''then'' you start with harmless experiments, and only months later do you start getting to play with the sulfuric acid. Good God, we didn't get around to touching the dangerous chemicals until ''high school''. What did we see Snape do? First day of first year, he had 11-year-old students mixing a potion that could (and in Neville's case, did) easily become a mass of dangerously overflowing caustic if you made a trivial mistake in timing... with no more instruction other than 'The directions are on the board, get to work'. Conclusion: Snape didn't give two shits about lab safety.
** It seems to me the ''entire school'' doesn't give two shits about safety. Professor Sprout has the students playing with mandrakes, a plant that can ''kill you'' if you hear its cry. In Professor Hooch's class a student suffered a broken wrist during a routine flying lesson. Hagrid let a student get mauled by a Hippogriff. Professor Quirrell and Professor Moody were ''completely bug-fuck evil''. And the less said about the terror-inducing death-sport known as "Quidditch" the better. "Safety" is not a big concern at Hogwarts and apparently never has been.
** Magic means that it's much easier to heal wounds and fix problems than normal. A mess that would result in calling in a biohazard cleanup unit and sending dozens of people to the hospital can be fixed in Hogwarts by a few people waving wands for a few minutes. A bloody injury that requires surgery or would be completely impossible to fix, like ''losing all of your bones in your arm'', can be healed with a few days of bedrest and a potion or two. They can afford to be more careless than a Muggle school because the consequences simply aren't as severe. Also, I should point out that the mandrakes were specifically too young to actually kill the students and would just knock them out harmlessly.
** A fatal accident is still a fatal accident, even for a wizard and even with magical healing. If somebody's cauldron explodes and a piece of shrapnel goes through their skull, you've got a dead kid regardless of what Madam Pomfrey can do. Besides, it actually ''isn't'' typical of human behavior to be more willing to injure themselves the further medical science advances. We can do things in the burn unit now that would be considered miracles from God a century ago, but you are no more likely to deliberately ram your bare hand into a pot of boiling water than your great-grandmother would be.
** Furthermore, why does Filch even have a job? What's the point of having a pissy, foul-tempered squib running around mopping the floors of a castle with 100 magical super maids (house elves) living in it?
** He's probably coordinating them, sort of like a foreman. Putting a bunch of House Elves in charge would not fit with the human/wizard-supremacist world views of the wizarding world.
** That seems like it would be a good explanation, but it's not really backed up by what's presented in the books. If Filch was in charge of the house elves, why would he do any work himself? Why would he trudge around the school mopping mud off the floors and scraping gross crap off the walls and ceilings if he could just summon an elf and have them do it with a wave of their finger? Furthermore, everything Dobby says to Harry and company after he starts working at Hogwarts implies that house elves work directly for the current headmaster/headmistress of Hogwarts rather than the caretaker.
** Maybe Filch is there to do the 'public' cleaning up of things, [[FantasticRacism an old wizarding family holdover of not wanting to see any house elves. Ever.]] The house elves do all the 'behind the scenes' stuff, but Filch is the one to take your problems to, and who cleans up when kids are there to see it. Plus, he has a [[WordOfGod half kneazle]] "cat" , and it's (presumably) his job to patrol irritably, and confiscate things from students.
** House-elves presumably don't have the authority to discipline students, and wouldn't have the temperament to do so even if they did. (Remember Winkie, who couldn't bring herself to say anything harsher to Barty Jr. than that he was a "bad boy"?) Whatever cleanup Filch does personally is either him gathering evidence against the ones who make messes, or grumpily proving to himself that he ''can'' get things done around the place, even if it's without magic.
** Filch is good at his job. He may not have magic or care about the kids, but he has determination and gets things done.
** I always felt Filch was more like the chief of security and/or administrator than just a janitor like Groundskeeper Willie, and as such did things that House Elves can’t do like giving order to students, supervising students' behavior (with the help of his sentient cat), interact with the teachers and answering to their request (as he does with Umbridge), etc. Even if he orders the House Elves to do the stuffs (especially because even if House Elves respond to the headmaster is doubtful that Dumbledores does the micromanagement). Besides I don’t remember in the books him doing any real hard work (that is probably done by Elves), he does seem to be more like a manager of the place.
** There are still a couple of other teachers, though they aren't described much. Hermione seems to really like Professor Vector (Arithmancy), Madam Pomfrey is the nurse who really cares about the children, Madam Hooch is a fair Quidditch referee (though I don't really know what else she does), and Professor Sinistra is a total mystery (Astronomy, and we don't even know if it's a man or woman. The students never complain about their Astronomy teacher though, so we'll assume that Sinistra isn't awful at least).
** According to WordOfGod, Aurora Sinistra is female. She and the other "unseen" professors seem to be decent people, but still, at least half of the more prominent staff members are somewhat dubious. And we haven't even mentioned the various Defense teacher fiascos, so far.
** Hooch teaches Flying to first years.
** Website/ThatOtherWiki says that Quirrell was the former Muggle Studies teacher, only transferring to Defense Against the Dark Arts in ''Philosopher's Stone''. So who taught Muggle Studies in-between them and when the Carrows took over?
** Charity Burbage. She's mentioned at the beginning of ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.''
** [[spoiler:And executed by Voldemort. Personally.]]
** Not to mention Mad-Eye Moody, who teaches 14-year-olds about the three worst crimes in the Wizarding World by DEMONSTRATING THEM IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. Pretty screwed up, even if [[spoiler:he did turn out to be a Death Eater in disguise.]]
** Maybe it's only illegal to do the curses on humans and possibly the other registered sentient beings and beasts while normal spiders are fair game.
*** Huh, guys, must I remind you that one of Fake!Moody's classes involved Imperiusing the fourth year Gryffindors (and likely the whole of Hogwarts fourth year)to see if they could resist it?
** It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Out of the slightly over a dozen or so teachers at Hogwarts (not counting the continually rotating DADA instructors), only three have legitimate concerns about their ability to be a teacher - Trelawny, Snape, and Hagrid. Other than that, Filch and Binns get brought up, but there really isn't any major issue there, yes Binns is boring, but if the students just sucked it up and paid attention, they'd be learning the subject just fine. And Filch has no direct authority over the students, all he can do is yell about them "befouling the castle" while cleaning up the mess and tattle to a real teacher when they actually break an official rule. And as to the big three cases of this, let's look at them:
** Trelawny - Horrible teacher, yes. Total fraud, not really; while nowhere near as good as she likes to think, she is a legitimate seer, and even most of her non-prophecy predictions come out right, as long as they're just off-hand comments and not a deliberate attempt. Now, why would Dumbledore let someone so horribly unqualified teach? Simple; in this case, he legitimately doesn't care. He admitted in Book 6 that he was on the verge of just removing the whole subject of Divination from the school, and the only reason it's still taught is to give him a reason to keep Trelawny around. Add in that it is an elective subject, which simply can't be taught at all (you either have the gift of sight or you don't), and there's really little reason to care if the teacher teaching a literally un-teachable subject sucks.
** It is understandable to maintain the subject to keep Trelawny safe. But this un-teachable subject still gave students loads of homework to do. They could have spend their time on much more important things. Even when the course is elective.
*** There’s a possible explanation of why a bad seer like Trelawny is the Divination teacher. If there are other seers and are better and more efficient than Trelawny (who only had two major predictions in her life) they are probably doing something else better than teaching, like winning the lottery. So all good seers won’t be teachers as they probably are rich and have no reason to work. That’s why the subject is doomed, only bad seers can be teachers. The exception was Fireze and because he as a centaur had no need for money, and even he had to pay a high price becoming an outcast among centaurs.
** Snape - Yes, he is an unfair jerkass. Yes, he shows open favoritism towards certain students, and open disdain for others, but there are other factors to keep in mind. First, the only students we see him actually go out of his way to make miserable are Harry and Neville, both of whom he has personal issues with stemming from before they had ever met: [[spoiler:Harry for being the son of his most hated enemy and the love of his life, and Neville for not being the one chosen for death by Voldy (thus sparing Lily)]]. So, while he ''is'' unfairly biased towards Slytherin students, as pointed out above, it's basically Dumbledore letting him act this way so that students can learn a lesson about how, quite frankly, life ain't fair. Second, as far as just teaching his subject, he's damn good at it, even Neville ends up passing his potions O.W.L.; the only person in Harry's class who we know failed was Crabbe and/or Goyle, who are verging on being literally TooDumbToLive. Despite his personality issues, Snape is proven to be very good at getting the student to learn his subject, and those issues are not as large as they are made out to be, because as above, the only students he actively goes after are those he has a pre-existing hatred for.
** Isn't accepting that all of Snape's students passed their OWLs a bit too convenient? It is somewhat justified that his behavior is to be taken as a life lesson, but is that lesson really what one should teach 11 year olds? Acting in the manner in which he did does not seem likely to inspire his students to be better. Someone with his attitude has no business instructing children, he is certainly a genius in his field, but that doesn't necessitate him being a good or even average professor. Someone like Snape is probably best suited teaching either upperclassmen Potions or graduate work. Using fear is fine, but he clearly crossed a line where some of the kids started to hate him - a big no-no for teachers. In fact, he probably wouldn't even be considered for hiring in a Muggle school because he's affiliated with criminals.
** If Snape is supposed to be a lesson that life isn't fair, who is teaching the Slytherins that lesson? The way this troper sees it, the only thing the Slytherins get from that lesson is that behaving like a jerkass is perfectly fine. And we ''wonder'' why several of them turn out to be evil?!?
** Who's teaching the Slytherins that lesson? Pretty much everyone else in the castle, the moment the hat puts them there. The books make it relatively clear that "Slytherin = Evil" is the ruling opinion of the school, which may be true in many cases, but I doubt it's 100% accurate all of the time. One can assume that some Slytherins are jerkasses by nature, but some are jerkasses by nurture, having been groomed into it by all of the hate they seem to automatically get. Snape himself was a victim of the same prejudice pretty early on, whether his unpleasant disposition hurt his image or not. Besides - if he were just an unpleasant Hufflepuff, even the fandom's interpretation of his character likely would've been drastically different from the start.
** And I don't think teaching was really a calling for Snape. He was put in that position by Dumbledore. I think he was still learning how to teach the whole time. And I got the impression more than once that he was unbelievably offended and without hope hen it came to how his students approach potions. Snape knows how useful his subject can be and so may of the students spend their time actively forgetting everything they can. Knowing how useful this stuff is probably contributed to his desire to teach DADA as well.
** Hagrid - The exact opposite of Snape; great as a person/friend, lousy as a teacher. But again, there are mitigating factors. He does have extensive knowledge of the subject and knows what he's talking about and then some; whenever he brings them a new animal, he always does a good job in teaching them everything about it. His major problem was in choosing which animals to teach them about. Also, the first time we see his class, it is literally the first time he's trying to teach, and it's fairly obvious he's been improving as he gets used to it, since in Book 5, Umbridge, despite monitoring every one of his classes, can't find a legitimate reason to fire him until the end when she just decides to not bother with trying to find one and just attacks him, so likely it just took him awhile to get the hang of teaching, and given time, there's no reason he couldn't develop into at least a decent teacher for the subject. And again, his major problem was in setting the course syllabus, not in the actual teaching, so even if he doesn't really improve on that, all it would need is the Headmaster or another better teacher setting the course objectives and letting Hagrid do the part he's good at.
** Great as a friend? He tricks three underage wizards into promising to take care of his giant brother, a virtually impossible task. All the more, with Umbridge keeping an eye on them already. He could have asked a different teacher, but they would have outright refused that. So that's why he asks some children. That's pretty cold.
** My answer to the first question is; go back to school. My school is roughly the same size of Hogwarts and she has actually gotten the ratio of good and bad teachers quite well. The three worst teachers all represent real terrible teachers; one who torments, one who is too kind and friendly to be a teacher, and one who just doesn't understand the subject. At first I thought she missed one of the teacher archetypes, the one that doesn't do anything and tells you to "do your work" and then Umbridge came to the school. Well done.
** ^ '''Exactly.''' People seem to forget that almost every word of these books are told through the eyes of a ''child''. And children always have a skewed perception of how the world works. Don't any of you remember what it was like to be in school? Don't you remember the teachers you thought were the meanest people in the world? Don't you remember the frustration when a situation was just ''so unfair!" but none of the adults seemed to care what you think? Rowling wanted to bring back those feelings of adolescent frustration and righteous indignation, and judging by the comments on this page I'd say she did that quite well.
** Additionally, ten years after a devastating, decimating war, perhaps the cream of the crop is not available to teach? Perhaps much of the cream of the crop wound up on the front lines. Those that might have been called to teaching otherwise might have found themselves in fields like medicine or law enforcement because that was what was most needed. Ten years isn't even a generation yet.
** Also remember one thing Snape is super bitter about not being able to be the DADA teacher, but what dumbledore never tells him is that [[spoiler: Voldermort jinxed the position, meaning teachers never lasted a year, and Dumbledore used that knowlage to make his death seem like the only reason Snape fled]]
** Where are people getting the impression that Trelawney is an incompetent teacher? Harry and Ron don't do well in her class, but they think the subject is a joke and don't put any effort into it. Parvati, Lavender and Luna seem to enjoy her lessons, suggesting Divination might just be an acquired taste. Trelawney seems to teach plenty of methods of Divination - tea leaves, palm reading, crystal balls, star charts, horoscopes, fire omens - so it seems like she's attempting to give them a chance to grasp the theory and practice even if they don't have the gift. Seers do exist in this universe after all, and she does make successful prophecies.
*** Trelawny is a fraud because she's a liar. She acts dramatic and all knowing but it's all an act. She's a liar looking for attention who just happens to also be a genuine Seer, a fact she's not even aware of. While the methods in the text books may have some merit she herself is just making stuff up. Harry gets high marks in an assignment he completely falsified because he included a lot of bad things happening which she happens to like. All signs point to divination being possible but extremely vague and imprecise, nothing like what Trelawny claims to be capable of. There's a reason every competent character in the series has no respect for her.
to:
* What's up with the members of the Hogwarts staff? Of those that are described in a decent amount of detail, only [=McGonagall=], Flitwick, and Sprout seem to be both decent people ''and'' good teachers:
teachers
** Snape is a git who enjoys tormenting children and harbors prejudices against the students that are not in hishouse.
** He's also an extremely talented potions teacher who can impart great knowledge on those who pay attention and don't let their tempers get the better of them, and has a very important connection to Dumbledore.
** Trelawney is a fraud who has made only two accurate predictions in her life.
** If Trelawney's made any accurate predictions, she's clearly NOT a fraud. Divination is a difficult subject easily open to misinterpretation or being downright incorrect, but it's a legitimate subject nonetheless. SOMEONE needs to teach the basics.
*** No, the books make it clear that Trelawney's divinatory skills are really poor by divinatory standards. Her getting TWO accurate predictions in her life is an extremely poor showing and doesn't amount to anything if she's unable to muster such skills during her teachings.
*** IIRC, somewhere (Pottermore? HBP?) it says Dumbledore had intended to do away with Divination, until Trelawney gave an actual prophecy about Voldemort. He was worried that she would be in danger, so he hired her to keep her safe.
*** Divination also is tricky to teach because either you have the gift or you don't. So you're basically going to have to focus on the theory of different methods - which virtually anyone could teach if they do their research.
** Binns seems to be the wizarding equivalent of valium.
** Maybe Binns is employed because he's cheap to pay? After all, he doesn't need to eat or anything. Plus, he sort of has the ultimate tenure - he haunts the place; there's no way to get rid of him, so they decide they might as well use him, perhaps? Plus, history of magic is arguably the least important subject other than divination, because knowing the other subjects could actually save your life one day. I doubt that knowing History of Magic will.
** Perhaps history does not save your life, but knowing where you come from is still an important part of education. Also, the Wizarding World seems to be a very traditionalist society, so it would only be logical if they put a bigger emphasis on history.
** If those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, then that may well be the reason why wizarding society hasn't progressed, both culturally and technologically (I know it's a bit of a stretch). For all we know, there may have been a Voldemort-type figure every century.
** In a more immediate phrasing, history is a huge part of our view of the world. The wizarding world is a self-centered, traditional society that looks upon other creatures as sub-human at best, and it's incredibly easy to get stuck in that mindset if the kids don't get to learn that it wasn't always like this and that other creatures have their histories too, especially since this seems to be the closest thing they have to social sciences.
** What confuses me is that the only subject they seem to be doing in History is Goblin Uprises. That's it. Every time they mention how boring he makes history, it's always with something like "he even made bloody Goblin battles boring", and both times exams on history are mentioned, the topic is, surprise surprise, GOBLIN UPRISES. Is there nothing else interesting in Magic History? Or did Binns just forget he'd done the same topic more than once?
** Not true. They've also mentioned Giant Wars and various historical wizards ([[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Emeric the Evil, etc.]]) in the classes. And several of the exam questions involved international wizarding conventions.
** Having survived the Scottish education system, Binns was TruthInTelevision for me. Scotland has historically (heh) had a problem with effective teaching of history and especially of Scottish history, and the consequent neglect of the subject in recent years became [[http://www.scotsman.com/news/time-to-end-shameful-neglect-of-scottish-history-1-673740 something of an educational crisis]].
** Hagrid is a nice guy, but his teaching is a bit odd, to say the least.
** I dunno. Seems that once you've trained a Blast-Ended Skrewt, Care of any other Magical Creature is going to be a cakewalk.
** The Hagrid thing actually really bugs me. Yes, he's a darling, but he has absolutely no right to be teaching! He has what, a second-year education? Also, he's completely insane. Great guy, but he exposes children to vicious beasts. The blast-ended skrewts could have killed somebody, I seem to remember they injured plenty. Malfoy was attacked by a hippogriff -- I know he's a brat and he was told that if he insulted Buckbeak it might attack, but it is an animal that attacks people for saying the wrong thing! Am I the only person who thinks that him losing his teaching job would have been the right thing?
** You're not. According to Luna at the start of the fifth book, the Ravenclaws aren't that enamored of him either.
** Well, Hagrid's teaching methods may be odd, if not dangerous; but considering that his predecessor, Kettleburn, is reckless enough to earn himself, like, SIXTY probations, Hagrid is probably a better teacher.
** Lupin teaches in the same way, though - direct first-hand experience with dangerous, "dark" magical creatures far worse than Hagrid's common-or-garden monsters. Malfoy's injury was no worse than the countless others suffered by Hogwarts students in classes taught by other professors; Hagrid only got in trouble because his father was a school governor and in a position to put pressure on Dumbledore.
** Oh, like what? A thing that you can defeat by twisting its fingers or a thing you can defeat by imagining it in a funny way? Ri-i-i-i-ight, Hyppos and Skrewts shiver in fear before those badasses!
** That's wrong. Malfoy and the hippogriff was in book 3. Draco's dad got sacked at the end of book 2 as governor (because he had threaten the 11 other ones).\\
Consider a real-world example: a student in a science class ignores his teacher's warnings and drinks some kind of toxic chemical, leading to a trip to the hospital. Should the science teacher be sacked?
** There's a serious difference between what Lupin does and what Hagrid does. Lupin gave students "practical" lessons in fighting dark creatures while at all times making sure that an adult wizard who could deal with the situation was there at all times and could take over if things got out of control. Hagrid, on the other hand, assigned a biting book with no instructions on how to use it. He breeds a new creature out of several types of monsters with no idea how dangerous this creature might be or how to control it, and puts the students in charge of caring for large numbers of these new creatures. This is an issue, and he probably should have lost his teaching job over that. Malfoy's injury is a different story, although Hagrid probably shouldn't have ''started'' with hippogriffs.
** Magic is inherently dangerous, but magic also means that injuries typically aren't as severe as they normally would be. In the Muggle world, Malfoy's clawing would necessitate a hospital visit and surgery. In Hogwarts, a simple trip to the infirmary patches him up quickly. Even ''losing all of the bones in your arm'' just necessitates a short stay in what's essentially the nurse's station. Everyone teaching magic understands the inherent risks, which is why the infirmary is larger than normal, but St. Mungo's doesn't seem to even take anybody who doesn't have extremely serious health problems (that can only be solved through difficult professional help, like the attack by Nagini) or severe brain damage. Hagrid's class is no more dangerous than what the kids are exposed to simply through ''having'' magic that they can use on each other when the teachers aren't looking.
** As for Lupin, Boggarts aren't dangerous, anyway. Molly gets trapped by one for a minute or so, and it doesn't do anything except make her sob. There's no indication it can physically harm any student even if Lupin wasn't there. He also shows them a Hinkypunk, which misleads people into drowning in bogs...which seems safe enough to show people in a classroom with no bogs. (Strangely, Hogwarts does later get a swamp in it.) Likewise, Grindylows just grab you and won't let go. Nothing he demonstrates can cause harm that we know of.
*** Molly's boggart didn't hurt her because the form it took wasn't capable of causing her physical pain. Harry's was able to simulate the effects of a Dementor attack (albeit weaker than the real deal) and eventually caused him to pass out. Presumably they are able to hurt people, possibly even kill them, but it's dependent on the form they take. Something like Ron's (giant spider) would presumably be capable of biting you the way a real giant spider could (were giant spiders a real thing).
*** It's been I while since I read the book but IIRC Harry passes out because of the effort doing the Patronus, not because the Boggart could emulate the Dementor's attack. The indication in-universe is that the Boggarts can scare but are otherwise harmless said by Lupin openly in the books. In any case a relatively big spider doesn't seem truly dangerous in a classroom with an expert adult wizard, especially not in a school with most subjects with the exception of Divination, Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies to be equally or more dangerous.house.
** Flich seems to hate children, *** He's also an extremely talented potions teacher who can impart great knowledge on those who pay attention and don't let their tempers get the better of them, and has a very useful attribute for the caretaker of a school. But then, as a Squib, he is already an outcast in the wizarding world. Being a Squib and living in a school full of children learning magic would most likely turn even the gentlest person into a kill-joy. So I'm not sure who suffers more from that arrangement, Filch or the students.
** Well, for one, Trelawny and Snape are there so Dumbledore can protect them from the remaining Death Eaters. And while Trelawny only makes two legitimate prophesies, which is still a hell of a lot more than anyone else we ever met, the majority of her predictions did come true (Neville broke his first cup, the girl lost her pet bunny, Hermione left them for good, and Harry did die young, though he was OnlyMostlyDead.)
** Okay, I give you Trelawney. Butimportant connection to Dumbledore.
*** I cannot see any reason for Dumbledore not to crack down on Snape and give him a much-deserved attitude adjustment. Some FanFics have picked that up and stated that "Snape has to keep up appearances with the Death Eaters, so he has to be biased and torment the non-Slytherins", but that could easily be reversed: From the Death Eaters' point of view, it would easily be understandable that he has to play the part of the reformed DE towards the light siders, e.g. play nicely and befair.
** Trelawney's predictions aren't really all that impressive; they're the sort of vaguely-defined, easily-fulfilled prophecies that [[InternetColdReading any Muggle sideshow psychic]] would know. Neville's bumbling ways are probably the stuff of school legend by the Third Year, and Hermione herself points out that Lavender wasn't "dreading" her bunny's death, as Trelawney predicted; the possibility never even occurred to Lavender! Let's face it: on ''any'' given day, something shitty's probably going to happen to you.
fair.
** [[WordOfGod Rowling]] said once that Dumbledore allows Snape to keep teaching the way he does because he thinks it's just another life lesson for them: Some people in authority are cruel and unfair. [[FridgeBrilliance It was a good preparation for the Carrows at Hogwarts, don't you think]]? Also, consider that when the Carrows were at Hogwarts, ''Snape'' was the one protecting the students, through clever, under-handed means. In addition, it's not like Snape is a bad teacher; he's probably one of the best at Hogwarts because he doesn't compromise his (extremely high) standards, which in turn means that his classes have high pass rates. Notice that Neville was the only student in Harry's year who neither showed any aptitude at all for Potions ''or'' passed his Potions O.W.L.? Even Harry and Ron, who hated Snape and groused about all of his classes, passed theirs with "ExceedsExpectations".
**Expectations".
*** But he never actually helped them. Take Neville, he was obviously bad at the subject. Snape never told him why what he was doing was wrong or gave him a chance to make it up, he just insulted him for messing up. This one time in the third book, they were making a Shrinking Solution and Neville did something wrong, so Snape made him redo it. A good teacher would have explained to him what he did wrong the first time, why he was wrong, and how he could avoid it. A bad teacher would just let him at his second potion and fail him. A dick teacher would threaten him with force-feeding the potion to his beloved pet, thus making him incredibly nervous and way more likely to mess up, carry out the threat, fully expecting poor Trevor to die, and then punish Neville for... getting the potion right. I'm not one for teachers babying their students and taking care of their self-esteems, but that's got to mess a kid up, and that's not conducive to good teaching. Besides, it doesn't really seem that OWLs are that hard topass.
**pass.
*** I'll concede that Snape is a good teacher, but you can be a tough, strict teacher everyone but the nerds hate without being the utter jerkass that he is. Snape defines GoodIsNotNice. The kicker is that Hermione, an excellent student he has no reason to dislike, gets caught in the crossfires of a magical dust-up and her teeth get turned into something like a beaver's teeth. Hermione is already self-conscious about her big teeth and what does Snape do? Say "Get to the hospital wing, Granger," or just ignore it? No. He tells her he can't tell the difference and reduces her to a puddle of tears with one sentence. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Snape. Is. An. ASSHOLE.]] I would like to think that Dumbledore chewed him out about this at least, but considering J.K. Rowling apparently believes in the "bullying makes kids stronger" excuse used by generations of bully-enablers, I have a terrible feeling Snape never got so much as a harsh word for doing stuff likethat.
**that.
*** Right! I mean it's not like Hermie ever did anything dickish to him! Like, you know, burn his robe while he was saving her chump boyfriend (yes, I know they had "reasons" to suspect him, that doesn't change anything) or ''stole valuable supplies from his closet''. Have ''any'' of the Snapefobes ever considered that he'd most likely have to pay for those from his salary? Of coursenot.
**not.
*** And of course, Hermione never gets any support or recognition anywhere else, either. Except for, you know, every other class except Divination. What Hermione absolutely didn't need was another professor impressed because she read ahead. And every time Hermione answers a question that's easy for her, or fixes someone's potion, that's another kid who doesn't learn the thing, that's another kid who skates by without learning and will maybe getkilled.
**killed.
*** As the daughter of two teachers, I resent the implication that just because he has to pay out of his pocket (and yes, that sucks, and yes stealing it was a sucky thing to do) justifies an alleged fucking adult in a position of power insulting a child which at best was going very overboard staying in good with the Malfoys and at worst was him being a petty asshole. Both my parents put up with a ton of way worse shit than having things stolen (my mother got called misogynistic slurs to her face and was threatned with being beaten up and my dad once or twice had a kid actually try it) and neither of them would ever have dreamed of saying something like that to a kid. I like Snape as a character but the Snapeaboos trying to pretend he's not an asshole are in serious denial of the abuse of the power disparity and ragingly unprofessional behavior he displays throughout, not to mention all the very legitimate safety issues brought up by other people in this thread. I agree Harry is biased and needs to be chewed out for some of his actions but that doesn't mean Snape comes out of it smelling like a bouquet ofroses.
**roses.
*** I agree about Rowling's comment that 'teachers like Snape are a lesson'. But I also think that Dumbledore's selfish reasons for keeping Snape are probably more to do with it. Yes, I guess it makes sense that it could prepare students for future situations if they already know that sometimes, people bully those less powerful than them. But I do wonder what, exactly, this lesson is meant to do - to say 'you should just allow those with authority to abuse you'? That doesn't seem a healthy lesson to me. Aside from that, it seems evident that Snape does not like teaching and probably never wanted to be a teacher to begin with. Dumbledore keeps Snape in the school because Snape is very useful to him and his future plans; Dumbledore is nothing if not a ChessMaster. And the well-being of students seems to always have been secondary to what Dumbledore's personal plans are - that's why there's such disgusting levels of bullying among just the students, too. Draco is no more punished for his bullying than James and Sirius were, and all of them create some terrible situations because they're not being monitored. Snape was kept at the school so he was conveniently placed for Dumbledore to use, and that may be the reason that he's not been 'cracked down' on by Dumbledore. The fact that Snape does get consistently impressive testing results from his students (even though he is doing this by creating a fear of failure) probably makes it that much easier for Dumbledore to ignore any kind of disciplinary actions against Snape that might make it more difficult for him to manipulateSnape.
**Snape.
*** The problem with Dumbledore's 'Teachers like Snape are a lesson' theory is that the lesson the kids are actually learning is 'Despite whatever it says ''de jure'', the way it works ''de facto'' is that those in power over you can work out their sadistic jollies on you there's nothing you can do about it, except hope you can suck up and get on the bastard's good side like his Slytherins are'. Yeah, '''wonderful''' life lessons to be teaching the kiddies,Dumbledore.
***Dumbledore.
**** Sometimes you just have to realise that no "lessons" are being taught in these situations. Ultimately it's just a situation where an asshole is in a position for reasons unrelated to school/the kids etc and you just have to deal with it, as you'll just have to deal with hundreds of crappt situations in life. The only positive aspect is that at least this time, the asshole is at least knowledgable about the subject they'reteaching.
**teaching.
*** I think the lesson is that there are in fact teachers and people in the real world who can act like Snape and you just have to deal with them or you're going to have a hard time being able to live in this world. I'd also like to argue that maybe we portray our ethical standards to a fantasy world and expect them to be the same and that could cause many problems when you don't take it for what it's worth. Especially since this is children's literature and it likes to make more exaggerated liberties on characters to impact the life lessons that children are more likely to take away fromit.
**it.
*** Or maybe the lesson is that the readers should stop taking after the biased and headstrong protagonist and ignoring the goddamned obvious, i.e. that not only did Snape have to keep up the "bad" image in case V returns and he has to wriggle back into his ranks, but he also had to suck up to Malfoys in order to stay in their good grace and keep up with their plots, and also that both Harry and Hermione deserved every last bit of verbal spanking they were given, by repeatedly violating school rules and getting away with it, disrupting Snape's classes, stealing his stuff, setting his robes on fire, not being the least bit grateful when he ''repeatedly'' saves their hides and do I even need to carryon?
**on?
*** We all understand why Snape has to behave the way he does but given all these limitations on him, is really the best person to be teaching schoolchildren? And Harry and Hermione might not be model students, but the way that he goes off on Harry on the very first day of class for things beyond his control (Neville's accident is in no way his responsibility) and the fact that the oppressive atmosphere in the classroom make it harder for the students to do potions and his clear hatred of teaching really make him seem like a bad teacher. Dumbledore keeping him (and others) on for reasons that have nothing to do with and in some cases hurt the education of his students is irresponsible of him as a headmaster. Keeping a teacher he knows is bad around because the students will have to deal with unpleasant people in life so they might as well start now is also sabotaging their education. Them learning how to correctly brew potions is a bit more important than whatever lesson he's trying to teach them and those two goals seem mutuallyexclusive.
**exclusive.
*** "...is really the best person..." - Of course not, he was a lousy teacher, and everything you said is true. But that's kind of the point and a part of his role. The first impression is the most important, and the sooner Draco writes to his father and starts gushing over how cool the new Potion master is and how he trashed all the mudbloods and blood traitors, the better for the mission. "...is irresponsible of him as a headmaster" - welcome to the club. I'm trying to put this notion across all the seven sections. And just for the record, I consider the whole deal about Snape being a "lesson" about unpleasant people the wildest and insanest nonsense '''ever''' and the best proof of how little grasp Rowling actually has over her ownwriting.
**writing.
*** One thing you all seem to be forgetting is that Potions seems to be pretty much Advanced Chemistry+magic. Even a nice teacher has to be very strict to teach something that dangerous, so one like Snape--who has a bad temper and low opinion of most of his students anyway--is probably a complete nervous wreck trying to keep anyone from getting themselves killed. Add all his other stresses on top of that and you have someone who is very badly in need of a year'svacation.
**vacation.
*** Except that in chemistry class, ''first'' you get lab safety lectures and exercises, ''then'' you start with harmless experiments, and only months later do you start getting to play with the sulfuric acid. Good God, we didn't get around to touching the dangerous chemicals until ''high school''. What did we see Snape do? First day of first year, he had 11-year-old students mixing a potion that could (and in Neville's case, did) easily become a mass of dangerously overflowing caustic if you made a trivial mistake in timing... with no more instruction other than 'The directions are on the board, get to work'. Conclusion: Snape didn't give two shits about labsafety.
**safety.
*** It seems to me the ''entire school'' doesn't give two shits about safety. Professor Sprout has the students playing with mandrakes, a plant that can ''kill you'' if you hear its cry. In Professor Hooch's class a student suffered a broken wrist during a routine flying lesson. Hagrid let a student get mauled by a Hippogriff. Professor Quirrell and Professor Moody were ''completely bug-fuck evil''. And the less said about the terror-inducing death-sport known as "Quidditch" the better. "Safety" is not a big concern at Hogwarts and apparently never hasbeen.
**been.
*** Magic means that it's much easier to heal wounds and fix problems than normal. A mess that would result in calling in a biohazard cleanup unit and sending dozens of people to the hospital can be fixed in Hogwarts by a few people waving wands for a few minutes. A bloody injury that requires surgery or would be completely impossible to fix, like ''losing all of your bones in your arm'', can be healed with a few days of bedrest and a potion or two. They can afford to be more careless than a Muggle school because the consequences simply aren't as severe. Also, I should point out that the mandrakes were specifically too young to actually kill the students and would just knock them outharmlessly.
**harmlessly.
*** A fatal accident is still a fatal accident, even for a wizard and even with magical healing. If somebody's cauldron explodes and a piece of shrapnel goes through their skull, you've got a dead kid regardless of what Madam Pomfrey can do. Besides, it actually ''isn't'' typical of human behavior to be more willing to injure themselves the further medical science advances. We can do things in the burn unit now that would be considered miracles from God a century ago, but you are no more likely to deliberately ram your bare hand into a pot of boiling water than your great-grandmother wouldbe.
** Furthermore, why does Filch even have a job? What's the point of having a pissy, foul-tempered squib running around mopping the floors of a castle with 100 magical super maids (house elves) living in it?
** He's probably coordinating them, sort of like a foreman. Putting a bunch of House Elves in charge would not fit with the human/wizard-supremacist world views of the wizarding world.
** That seems like it would be a good explanation, but it's not really backed up by what's presented in the books. If Filch was in charge of the house elves, why would he do any work himself? Why would he trudge around the school mopping mud off the floors and scraping gross crap off the walls and ceilings if he could just summon an elf and have them do it with a wave of their finger? Furthermore, everything Dobby says to Harry and company after he starts working at Hogwarts implies that house elves work directly for the current headmaster/headmistress of Hogwarts rather than the caretaker.
** Maybe Filch is there to do the 'public' cleaning up of things, [[FantasticRacism an old wizarding family holdover of not wanting to see any house elves. Ever.]] The house elves do all the 'behind the scenes' stuff, but Filch is the one to take your problems to, and who cleans up when kids are there to see it. Plus, he has a [[WordOfGod half kneazle]] "cat" , and it's (presumably) his job to patrol irritably, and confiscate things from students.
** House-elves presumably don't have the authority to discipline students, and wouldn't have the temperament to do so even if they did. (Remember Winkie, who couldn't bring herself to say anything harsher to Barty Jr. than that he was a "bad boy"?) Whatever cleanup Filch does personally is either him gathering evidence against the ones who make messes, or grumpily proving to himself that he ''can'' get things done around the place, even if it's without magic.
** Filch is good at his job. He may not have magic or care about the kids, but he has determination and gets things done.
** I always felt Filch was more like the chief of security and/or administrator than just a janitor like Groundskeeper Willie, and as such did things that House Elves can’t do like giving order to students, supervising students' behavior (with the help of his sentient cat), interact with the teachers and answering to their request (as he does with Umbridge), etc. Even if he orders the House Elves to do the stuffs (especially because even if House Elves respond to the headmaster is doubtful that Dumbledores does the micromanagement). Besides I don’t remember in the books him doing any real hard work (that is probably done by Elves), he does seem to be more like a manager of the place.be.
** There are still a couple of other teachers, though they aren't described much. Hermione seems to really like Professor Vector (Arithmancy), Madam Pomfrey is the nurse who really cares about the children, Madam Hooch is a fair Quidditch referee (though I don't really know what else she does), and Professor Sinistra is a total mystery (Astronomy, and we don't even know if it's a man or woman. The students never complain about their Astronomy teacher though, so we'll assume that Sinistra isn't awful at least).
** According to WordOfGod, Aurora Sinistra is female. She and the other "unseen" professors seem to be decent people, but still, at least half of the more prominent staff members are somewhat dubious. And we haven't even mentioned the various Defense teacher fiascos, so far.
** Hooch teaches Flying to first years.
** Website/ThatOtherWiki says that Quirrell was the former Muggle Studies teacher, only transferring to Defense Against the Dark Arts in ''Philosopher's Stone''. So who taught Muggle Studies in-between them and when the Carrows took over?
** Charity Burbage. She's mentioned at the beginning of ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.''
** [[spoiler:And executed by Voldemort. Personally.]]
** Not to mention Mad-Eye Moody, who teaches 14-year-olds about the three worst crimes in the Wizarding World by DEMONSTRATING THEM IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. Pretty screwed up, even if [[spoiler:he did turn out to be a Death Eater in disguise.]]
** Maybe it's only illegal to do the curses on humans and possibly the other registered sentient beings and beasts while normal spiders are fair game.
*** Huh, guys, must I remind you that one of Fake!Moody's classes involved Imperiusing the fourth year Gryffindors (and likely the whole of Hogwarts fourth year)to see if they could resist it?
** It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Out of the slightly over a dozen or so teachers at Hogwarts (not counting the continually rotating DADA instructors), only three have legitimate concerns about their ability to be a teacher - Trelawny, Snape, and Hagrid. Other than that, Filch and Binns get brought up, but there really isn't any major issue there, yes Binns is boring, but if the students just sucked it up and paid attention, they'd be learning the subject just fine. And Filch has no direct authority over the students, all he can do is yell about them "befouling the castle" while cleaning up the mess and tattle to a real teacher when they actually break an official rule. And as to the big three cases of this, let's look at them:
** Trelawny - Horrible teacher, yes. Total fraud, not really; while nowhere near as good as she likes to think, she is a legitimate seer, and even most of her non-prophecy predictions come out right, as long as they're just off-hand comments and not a deliberate attempt. Now, why would Dumbledore let someone so horribly unqualified teach? Simple; in this case, he legitimately doesn't care. He admitted in Book 6 that he was on the verge of just removing the whole subject of Divination from the school, and the only reason it's still taught is to give him a reason to keep Trelawny around. Add in that it is an elective subject, which simply can't be taught at all (you either have the gift of sight or you don't), and there's really little reason to care if the teacher teaching a literally un-teachable subject sucks.
** It is understandable to maintain the subject to keep Trelawny safe. But this un-teachable subject still gave students loads of homework to do. They could have spend their time on much more important things. Even when the course is elective.
*** There’s a possible explanation of why a bad seer like Trelawny is the Divination teacher. If there are other seers and are better and more efficient than Trelawny (who only had two major predictions in her life) they are probably doing something else better than teaching, like winning the lottery. So all good seers won’t be teachers as they probably are rich and have no reason to work. That’s why the subject is doomed, only bad seers can be teachers. The exception was Fireze and because he as a centaur had no need for money, and even he had to pay a high price becoming an outcast among centaurs.
** Snape - Yes, he is an unfair jerkass. Yes, he shows open favoritism towards certain students, and open disdain for others, but there are other factors to keep in mind. First, the only students we see him actually go out of his way to make miserable are Harry and Neville, both of whom he has personal issues with stemming from before they had ever met: [[spoiler:Harry for being the son of his most hated enemy and the love of his life, and Neville for not being the one chosen for death by Voldy (thus sparing Lily)]]. So, while he ''is'' unfairly biased towards Slytherin students, as pointed out above, it's basically Dumbledore letting him act this way so that students can learn a lesson about how, quite frankly, life ain't fair. Second, as far as just teaching his subject, he's damn good at it, even Neville ends up passing his potions O.W.L.; the only person in Harry's class who we know failed was Crabbe and/or Goyle, who are verging on being literally TooDumbToLive. Despite his personality issues, Snape is proven to be very good at getting the student to learn his subject, and those issues are not as large as they are made out to be, because as above, the only students he actively goes after are those he has a pre-existing hatred for.
**for.
*** Isn't accepting that all of Snape's students passed their OWLs a bit too convenient? It is somewhat justified that his behavior is to be taken as a life lesson, but is that lesson really what one should teach 11 year olds? Acting in the manner in which he did does not seem likely to inspire his students to be better. Someone with his attitude has no business instructing children, he is certainly a genius in his field, but that doesn't necessitate him being a good or even average professor. Someone like Snape is probably best suited teaching either upperclassmen Potions or graduate work. Using fear is fine, but he clearly crossed a line where some of the kids started to hate him - a big no-no for teachers. In fact, he probably wouldn't even be considered for hiring in a Muggle school because he's affiliated with criminals. \n**
*** If Snape is supposed to be a lesson that life isn't fair, who is teaching the Slytherins that lesson? The way this troper sees it, the only thing the Slytherins get from that lesson is that behaving like a jerkass is perfectly fine. And we ''wonder'' why several of them turn out to beevil?!?
**evil?!?
*** Who's teaching the Slytherins that lesson? Pretty much everyone else in the castle, the moment the hat puts them there. The books make it relatively clear that "Slytherin = Evil" is the ruling opinion of the school, which may be true in many cases, but I doubt it's 100% accurate all of the time. One can assume that some Slytherins are jerkasses by nature, but some are jerkasses by nurture, having been groomed into it by all of the hate they seem to automatically get. Snape himself was a victim of the same prejudice pretty early on, whether his unpleasant disposition hurt his image or not. Besides - if he were just an unpleasant Hufflepuff, even the fandom's interpretation of his character likely would've been drastically different from thestart.
** Andstart.
***And I don't think teaching was really a calling for Snape. He was put in that position by Dumbledore. I think he was still learning how to teach the whole time. And I got the impression more than once that he was unbelievably offended and without hope hen it came to how his students approach potions. Snape knows how useful his subject can be and so may of the students spend their time actively forgetting everything they can. Knowing how useful this stuff is probably contributed to his desire to teach DADA aswell.
well.
** Trelawney is a fraud who has made only two accurate predictions in her life.
*** If Trelawney's made any accurate predictions, she's clearly NOT a fraud. Divination is a difficult subject easily open to misinterpretation or being downright incorrect, but it's a legitimate subject nonetheless. SOMEONE needs to teach the basics.
*** No, the books make it clear that Trelawney's divinatory skills are really poor by divinatory standards. Her getting TWO accurate predictions in her life is an extremely poor showing and doesn't amount to anything if she's unable to muster such skills during her teachings.
*** IIRC, somewhere (Pottermore? HBP?) it says Dumbledore had intended to do away with Divination, until Trelawney gave an actual prophecy about Voldemort. He was worried that she would be in danger, so he hired her to keep her safe.
*** Divination also is tricky to teach because either you have the gift or you don't. So you're basically going to have to focus on the theory of different methods - which virtually anyone could teach if they do their research.
*** Well, for one, Trelawny and Snape are there so Dumbledore can protect them from the remaining Death Eaters. And while Trelawny only makes two legitimate prophesies, which is still a hell of a lot more than anyone else we ever met, the majority of her predictions did come true (Neville broke his first cup, the girl lost her pet bunny, Hermione left them for good, and Harry did die young, though he was OnlyMostlyDead.)
**** Trelawney's predictions aren't really all that impressive; they're the sort of vaguely-defined, easily-fulfilled prophecies that [[InternetColdReading any Muggle sideshow psychic]] would know. Neville's bumbling ways are probably the stuff of school legend by the Third Year, and Hermione herself points out that Lavender wasn't "dreading" her bunny's death, as Trelawney predicted; the possibility never even occurred to Lavender! Let's face it: on ''any'' given day, something shitty's probably going to happen to you.
*** Trelawny - Horrible teacher, yes. Total fraud, not really; while nowhere near as good as she likes to think, she is a legitimate seer, and even most of her non-prophecy predictions come out right, as long as they're just off-hand comments and not a deliberate attempt. Now, why would Dumbledore let someone so horribly unqualified teach? Simple; in this case, he legitimately doesn't care. He admitted in Book 6 that he was on the verge of just removing the whole subject of Divination from the school, and te only reason it's still taught is to give him a reason to keep Trelawny around. Add in that it is an elective subject, which simply can't be taught at all (you either have the gift of sight or you don't), and there's really little reason to care if the teacher teaching a literally un-teachable subject sucks.
*** It is understandable to maintain the subject to keep Trelawny safe. But this un-teachable subject still gave students loads of homework to do. They could have spend their time on much more important things. Even when the course is elective.
*** There’s a possible explanation of why a bad seer like Trelawny is the Divination teacher. If there are other seers and are better and more efficient than Trelawny (who only had two major predictions in her life) they are probably doing something else better than teaching, like winning the lottery. So all good seers won’t be teachers as they probably are rich and have no reason to work. That’s why the subject is doomed, only bad seers can be teachers. The exception was Firenze and because he as a centaur had no need for money, and even he had to pay a high price becoming an outcast among centaurs.
*** Where are people getting the impression that Trelawney is an incompetent teacher? Harry and Ron don't do well in her class, but they think the subject is a joke and don't put any effort into it. Parvati, Lavender and Luna seem to enjoy her lessons, suggesting Divination might just be an acquired taste. Trelawney seems to teach plenty of methods of Divination - tea leaves, palm reading, crystal balls, star charts, horoscopes, fire omens - so it seems like she's attempting to give them a chance to grasp the theory and practice even if they don't have the gift. Seers do exist in this universe after all, and she does make successful prophecies.
**** Trelawny is a fraud because she's a liar. She acts dramatic and all knowing but it's all an act. She's a liar looking for attention who just happens to also be a genuine Seer, a fact she's not even aware of. While the methods in the text books may have some merit she herself is just making stuff up. Harry gets high marks in an assignment he completely falsified because he included a lot of bad things happening which she happens to like. All signs point to divination being possible but extremely vague and imprecise, nothing like what Trelawny claims to be capable of. There's a reason every competent character in the series has no respect for her.
** Binns seems to be the wizarding equivalent of valium.
*** Maybe Binns is employed because he's cheap to pay? After all, he doesn't need to eat or anything. Plus, he sort of has the ultimate tenure - he haunts the place; there's no way to get rid of him, so they decide they might as well use him, perhaps? Plus, history of magic is arguably the least important subject other than divination, because knowing the other subjects could actually save your life one day. I doubt that knowing History of Magic will.
***Perhaps history does not save your life, but knowing where you come from is still an important part of education. Also, the Wizarding World seems to be a very traditionalist society, so it would only be logical if they put a bigger emphasis on history.
*** If those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, then that may well be the reason why wizarding society hasn't progressed, both culturally and technologically (I know it's a bit of a stretch). For all we know, there may have been a Voldemort-type figure every century.
*** In a more immediate phrasing, history is a huge part of our view of the world. The wizarding world is a self-centered, traditional society that looks upon other creatures as sub-human at best, and it's incredibly easy to get stuck in that mindset if the kids don't get to learn that it wasn't always like this and that other creatures have their histories too, especially since this seems to be the closest thing they have to social sciences.
*** What confuses me is that the only subject they seem to be doing in History is Goblin Uprises. That's it. Every time they mention how boring he makes history, it's always with something like "he even made bloody Goblin battles boring", and both times exams on history are mentioned, the topic is, surprise surprise, GOBLIN UPRISES. Is there nothing else interesting in Magic History? Or did Binns just forget he'd done the same topic more than once?
*** Not true. They've also mentioned Giant Wars and various historical wizards ([[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Emeric the Evil, etc.]]) in the classes. And several of the exam questions involved international wizarding conventions.
*** Having survived the Scottish education system, Binns was TruthInTelevision for me. Scotland has historically (heh) had a problem with effective teaching of history and especially of Scottish history, and the consequent neglect of the subject in recent years became [[http://www.scotsman.com/news/time-to-end-shameful-neglect-of-scottish-history-1-673740 something of an educational crisis]].
** Hagrid- is a nice guy, but his teaching is a bit odd, to say the least.
*** I dunno. Seems that once you've trained a Blast-Ended Skrewt, Care of any other Magical Creature is going to be a cakewalk.
*** The Hagrid thing actually really bugs me. Yes, he's a darling, but he has absolutely no right to be teaching! He has what, a second-year education? Also, he's completely insane. Great guy, but he exposes children to vicious beasts. The blast-ended skrewts could have killed somebody, I seem to remember they injured plenty. Malfoy was attacked by a hippogriff -- I know he's a brat and he was told that if he insulted Buckbeak it might attack, but it is an animal that attacks people for saying the wrong thing! Am I the only person who thinks that him losing his teaching job would have been the right thing?
*** You're not. According to Luna at the start of the fifth book, the Ravenclaws aren't that enamored of him either.
*** Well, Hagrid's teaching methods may be odd, if not dangerous; but considering that his predecessor, Kettleburn, is reckless enough to earn himself, like, SIXTY probations, Hagrid is probably a better teacher.
*** Lupin teaches in the same way, though - direct first-hand experience with dangerous, "dark" magical creatures far worse than Hagrid's common-or-garden monsters. Malfoy's injury was no worse than the countless others suffered by Hogwarts students in classes taught by other professors; Hagrid only got in trouble because his father was a school governor and in a position to put pressure on Dumbledore.
*** Oh, like what? A thing that you can defeat by twisting its fingers or a thing you can defeat by imagining it in a funny way? Ri-i-i-i-ight, Hyppos and Skrewts shiver in fear before those badasses!
*** That's wrong. Malfoy and the hippogriff was in book 3. Draco's dad got sacked at the end of book 2 as governor (because he had threaten the 11 other ones).\\
***Consider a real-world example: a student in a science class ignores his teacher's warnings and drinks some kind of toxic chemical, leading to a trip to the hospital. Should the science teacher be sacked?
*** There's a serious difference between what Lupin does and what Hagrid does. Lupin gave students "practical" lessons in fighting dark creatures while at all times making sure that an adult wizard who could deal with the situation was there at all times and could take over if things got out of control. Hagrid, on the other hand, assigned a biting book with no instructions on how to use it. He breeds a new creature out of several types of monsters with no idea how dangerous this creature might be or how to control it, and puts the students in charge of caring for large numbers of these new creatures. This is an issue, and he probably should have lost his teaching job over that. Malfoy's injury is a different story, although Hagrid probably shouldn't have ''started'' with hippogriffs.
*** Magic is inherently dangerous, but magic also means that injuries typically aren't as severe as they normally would be. In the Muggle world, Malfoy's clawing would necessitate a hospital visit and surgery. In Hogwarts, a simple trip to the infirmary patches him up quickly. Even ''losing all of the bones in your arm'' just necessitates a short stay in what's essentially the nurse's station. Everyone teaching magic understands the inherent risks, which is why the infirmary is larger than normal, but St. Mungo's doesn't seem to even take anybody who doesn't have extremely serious health problems (that can only be solved through difficult professional help, like the attack by Nagini) or severe brain damage. Hagrid's class is no more dangerous than what the kids are exposed to simply through ''having'' magic that they can use on each other when the teachers aren't looking.
*** As for Lupin, Boggarts aren't dangerous, anyway. Molly gets trapped by one for a minute or so, and it doesn't do anything except make her sob. There's no indication it can physically harm any student even if Lupin wasn't there. He also shows them a Hinkypunk, which misleads people into drowning in bogs...which seems safe enough to show people in a classroom with no bogs. (Strangely, Hogwarts does later get a swamp in it.) Likewise, Grindylows just grab you and won't let go. Nothing he demonstrates can cause harm that we know of.
****Molly's boggart didn't hurt her because the form it took wasn't capable of causing her physical pain. Harry's was able to simulate the effects of a Dementor attack (albeit weaker than the real deal) and eventually caused him to pass out. Presumably they are able to hurt people, possibly even kill them, but it's dependent on the form they take. Something like Ron's (giant spider) would presumably be capable of biting you the way a real giant spider could (were giant spiders a real thing).
**** It's been I while since I read the book but IIRC Harry passes out because of the effort doing the Patronus, not because the Boggart could emulate the Dementor's attack. The indication in-universe is that the Boggarts can scare but are otherwise harmless said by Lupin openly in the books. In any case a relatively big spider doesn't seem truly dangerous in a classroom with an expert adult wizard, especially not in a school with most subjects with the exception of Divination, Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies to be equally or more dangerous.
*** Hagrid is the exact opposite of Snape; great as a person/friend, lousy as a teacher. But again, there are mitigating factors. He does have extensive knowledge of the subject and knows what he's talking about and then some; whenever he brings them a new animal, he always does a good job in teaching them everything about it. His major problem was in choosing which animals to teach them about. Also, the first time we see his class, it is literally the first time he's trying to teach, and it's fairly obvious he's been improving as he gets used to it, since in Book 5, Umbridge, despite monitoring every one of his classes, can't find a legitimate reason to fire him until the end when she just decides to not bother with trying to find one and just attacks him, so likely it just took him awhile to get the hang of teaching, and given time, there's no reason he couldn't develop into at least a decent teacher for the subject. And again, his major problem was in setting the course syllabus, not in the actual teaching, so even if he doesn't really improve on that, all it would need is the Headmaster or another better teacher setting the course objectives and letting Hagrid do the part he's goodat.
**at.
*** Great as a friend? He tricks three underage wizards into promising to take care of his giant brother, a virtually impossible task. All the more, with Umbridge keeping an eye on them already. He could have asked a different teacher, but they would have outright refused that. So that's why he asks some children. That's prettycold.
cold.
** Flich seems to hate children, a very useful attribute for the caretaker of a school. But then, as a Squib, he is already an outcast in the wizarding world. Being a Squib and living in a school full of children learning magic would most likely turn even the gentlest person into a kill-joy. So I'm not sure who suffers more from that arrangement, Filch or the students.
*** Furthermore, why does Filch even have a job? What's the point of having a pissy, foul-tempered squib running around mopping the floors of a castle with 100 magical super maids (house elves) living in it?
*** He's probably coordinating them, sort of like a foreman. Putting a bunch of House Elves in charge would not fit with the human/wizard-supremacist world views of the wizarding world.
*** That seems like it would be a good explanation, but it's not really backed up by what's presented in the books. If Filch was in charge of the house elves, why would he do any work himself? Why would he trudge around the school mopping mud off the floors and scraping gross crap off the walls and ceilings if he could just summon an elf and have them do it with a wave of their finger? Furthermore, everything Dobby says to Harry and company after he starts working at Hogwarts implies that house elves work directly for the current headmaster/headmistress of Hogwarts rather than the caretaker.
*** Maybe Filch is there to do the 'public' cleaning up of things, [[FantasticRacism an old wizarding family holdover of not wanting to see any house elves. Ever.]] The house elves do all the 'behind the scenes' stuff, but Filch is the one to take your problems to, and who cleans up when kids are there to see it. Plus, he has a [[WordOfGod half kneazle]] "cat" , and it's (presumably) his job to patrol irritably, and confiscate things from students.
*** House-elves presumably don't have the authority to discipline students, and wouldn't have the temperament to do so even if they did. (Remember Winkie, who couldn't bring herself to say anything harsher to Barty Jr. than that he was a "bad boy"?) Whatever cleanup Filch does personally is either him gathering evidence against the ones who make messes, or grumpily proving to himself that he ''can'' get things done around the place, even if it's without magic.
*** Filch is good at his job. He may not have magic or care about the kids, but he has determination and gets things done.
*** I always felt Filch was more like the chief of security and/or administrator than just a janitor like Groundskeeper Willie, and as such did things that House Elves can’t do like giving order to students, supervising students' behavior (with the help of his sentient cat), interact with the teachers and answering to their request (as he does with Umbridge), etc. Even if he orders the House Elves to do the stuffs (especially because even if House Elves respond to the headmaster is doubtful that Dumbledores does the micromanagement). Besides I don’t remember in the books him doing any real hard work (that is probably done by Elves), he does seem to be more like a manager of the place.
** And then there’s Mad-Eye Moody, who teaches 14-year-olds about the three worst crimes in the Wizarding World by DEMONSTRATING THEM IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. Pretty screwed up, even if [[spoiler:he did turn out to be a Death Eater in disguise.]]
** Maybe it's only illegal to do the curses on humans and possibly the other registered sentient beings and beasts while normal spiders are fair game.
*** Huh, guys, must I remind you that one of Fake!Moody's classes involved Imperiusing the fourth year Gryffindors (and likely the whole of Hogwarts fourth year)to see if they could resist it?
** There are still a couple of other teachers, though they aren't described much. Hermione seems to really like Professor Vector (Arithmancy), Madam Pomfrey is the nurse who really cares about the children, Madam Hooch is a fair Quidditch referee (though I don't really know what else she does), and Professor Sinistra is a total mystery (Astronomy, and we don't even know if it's a man or woman. The students never complain about their Astronomy teacher though, so we'll assume that Sinistra isn't awful at least).
*** According to WordOfGod, Aurora Sinistra is female. She and the other "unseen" professors seem to be decent people, but still, at least half of the more prominent staff members are somewhat dubious. And we haven't even mentioned the various Defense teacher fiascos, so far.
*** Hooch teaches Flying to first years.
*** Website/ThatOtherWiki says that Quirrell was the former Muggle Studies teacher, only transferring to Defense Against the Dark Arts in ''Philosopher's Stone''. So who taught Muggle Studies in-between them and when the Carrows took over?
*** Charity Burbage. She's mentioned at the beginning of ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.''
**** [[spoiler:And executed by Voldemort. Personally.]]
*** It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Out of the slightly over a dozen or so teachers at Hogwarts (not counting the continually rotating DADA instructors), only three have legitimate concerns about their ability to be a teacher - Trelawny, Snape, and Hagrid. Other than that, Filch and Binns get brought up, but there really isn't any major issue there, yes Binns is boring, but if the students just sucked it up and paid attention, they'd be learning the subject just fine. And Filch has no direct authority over the students, all he can do is yell about them "befouling the castle" while cleaning up the mess and tattle to a real teacher when they actually break an official rule.
** My answer to the first question is; go back to school. My school is roughly the same size of Hogwarts and she has actually gotten the ratio of good and bad teachers quite well. The three worst teachers all represent real terrible teachers; one who torments, one who is too kind and friendly to be a teacher, and one who just doesn't understand the subject. At first I thought she missed one of the teacher archetypes, the one that doesn't do anything and tells you to "do your work" and then Umbridge came to the school. Welldone.
** ^done.
*** '''Exactly.''' People seem to forget that almost every word of these books are told through the eyes of a ''child''. And children always have a skewed perception of how the world works. Don't any of you remember what it was like to be in school? Don't you remember the teachers you thought were the meanest people in the world? Don't you remember the frustration when a situation was just ''so unfair!" but none of the adults seemed to care what you think? Rowling wanted to bring back those feelings of adolescent frustration and righteous indignation, and judging by the comments on this page I'd say she did that quitewell.
**well.
*** Additionally, ten years after a devastating, decimating war, perhaps the cream of the crop is not available to teach? Perhaps much of the cream of the crop wound up on the front lines. Those that might have been called to teaching otherwise might have found themselves in fields like medicine or law enforcement because that was what was most needed. Ten years isn't even a generationyet.
** Also remember one thing Snape is super bitter about not being able to be the DADA teacher, but what dumbledore never tells him is that [[spoiler: Voldermort jinxed the position, meaning teachers never lasted a year, and Dumbledore used that knowlage to make his death seem like the only reason Snape fled]]
** Where are people getting the impression that Trelawney is an incompetent teacher? Harry and Ron don't do well in her class, but they think the subject is a joke and don't put any effort into it. Parvati, Lavender and Luna seem to enjoy her lessons, suggesting Divination might just be an acquired taste. Trelawney seems to teach plenty of methods of Divination - tea leaves, palm reading, crystal balls, star charts, horoscopes, fire omens - so it seems like she's attempting to give them a chance to grasp the theory and practice even if they don't have the gift. Seers do exist in this universe after all, and she does make successful prophecies.yet.
***Trelawny Also remember one thing Snape is a fraud because she's a liar. She acts dramatic and all knowing but it's all an act. She's a liar looking for attention who just happens to also be a genuine Seer, a fact she's super bitter about not even aware of. While the methods in the text books may have some merit she herself is just making stuff up. Harry gets high marks in an assignment he completely falsified because he included a lot of bad things happening which she happens to like. All signs point to divination being possible but extremely vague and imprecise, nothing like what Trelawny claims able to be capable of. There's the DADA teacher, but what Dumbledore never tells him is that [[spoiler: Voldemort jinxed the position, meaning teachers never lasted a year, and Dumbledore used that knowledge to make his death seem like the only reason every competent character in the series has no respect for her.Snape fled]]
** Snape is a git who enjoys tormenting children and harbors prejudices against the students that are not in his
** He's also an extremely talented potions teacher who can impart great knowledge on those who pay attention and don't let their tempers get the better of them, and has a very important connection to Dumbledore.
** Trelawney is a fraud who has made only two accurate predictions in her life.
** If Trelawney's made any accurate predictions, she's clearly NOT a fraud. Divination is a difficult subject easily open to misinterpretation or being downright incorrect, but it's a legitimate subject nonetheless. SOMEONE needs to teach the basics.
*** No, the books make it clear that Trelawney's divinatory skills are really poor by divinatory standards. Her getting TWO accurate predictions in her life is an extremely poor showing and doesn't amount to anything if she's unable to muster such skills during her teachings.
*** IIRC, somewhere (Pottermore? HBP?) it says Dumbledore had intended to do away with Divination, until Trelawney gave an actual prophecy about Voldemort. He was worried that she would be in danger, so he hired her to keep her safe.
*** Divination also is tricky to teach because either you have the gift or you don't. So you're basically going to have to focus on the theory of different methods - which virtually anyone could teach if they do their research.
** Binns seems to be the wizarding equivalent of valium.
** Maybe Binns is employed because he's cheap to pay? After all, he doesn't need to eat or anything. Plus, he sort of has the ultimate tenure - he haunts the place; there's no way to get rid of him, so they decide they might as well use him, perhaps? Plus, history of magic is arguably the least important subject other than divination, because knowing the other subjects could actually save your life one day. I doubt that knowing History of Magic will.
** Perhaps history does not save your life, but knowing where you come from is still an important part of education. Also, the Wizarding World seems to be a very traditionalist society, so it would only be logical if they put a bigger emphasis on history.
** If those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, then that may well be the reason why wizarding society hasn't progressed, both culturally and technologically (I know it's a bit of a stretch). For all we know, there may have been a Voldemort-type figure every century.
** In a more immediate phrasing, history is a huge part of our view of the world. The wizarding world is a self-centered, traditional society that looks upon other creatures as sub-human at best, and it's incredibly easy to get stuck in that mindset if the kids don't get to learn that it wasn't always like this and that other creatures have their histories too, especially since this seems to be the closest thing they have to social sciences.
** What confuses me is that the only subject they seem to be doing in History is Goblin Uprises. That's it. Every time they mention how boring he makes history, it's always with something like "he even made bloody Goblin battles boring", and both times exams on history are mentioned, the topic is, surprise surprise, GOBLIN UPRISES. Is there nothing else interesting in Magic History? Or did Binns just forget he'd done the same topic more than once?
** Not true. They've also mentioned Giant Wars and various historical wizards ([[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Emeric the Evil, etc.]]) in the classes. And several of the exam questions involved international wizarding conventions.
** Having survived the Scottish education system, Binns was TruthInTelevision for me. Scotland has historically (heh) had a problem with effective teaching of history and especially of Scottish history, and the consequent neglect of the subject in recent years became [[http://www.scotsman.com/news/time-to-end-shameful-neglect-of-scottish-history-1-673740 something of an educational crisis]].
** Hagrid is a nice guy, but his teaching is a bit odd, to say the least.
** I dunno. Seems that once you've trained a Blast-Ended Skrewt, Care of any other Magical Creature is going to be a cakewalk.
** The Hagrid thing actually really bugs me. Yes, he's a darling, but he has absolutely no right to be teaching! He has what, a second-year education? Also, he's completely insane. Great guy, but he exposes children to vicious beasts. The blast-ended skrewts could have killed somebody, I seem to remember they injured plenty. Malfoy was attacked by a hippogriff -- I know he's a brat and he was told that if he insulted Buckbeak it might attack, but it is an animal that attacks people for saying the wrong thing! Am I the only person who thinks that him losing his teaching job would have been the right thing?
** You're not. According to Luna at the start of the fifth book, the Ravenclaws aren't that enamored of him either.
** Well, Hagrid's teaching methods may be odd, if not dangerous; but considering that his predecessor, Kettleburn, is reckless enough to earn himself, like, SIXTY probations, Hagrid is probably a better teacher.
** Lupin teaches in the same way, though - direct first-hand experience with dangerous, "dark" magical creatures far worse than Hagrid's common-or-garden monsters. Malfoy's injury was no worse than the countless others suffered by Hogwarts students in classes taught by other professors; Hagrid only got in trouble because his father was a school governor and in a position to put pressure on Dumbledore.
** Oh, like what? A thing that you can defeat by twisting its fingers or a thing you can defeat by imagining it in a funny way? Ri-i-i-i-ight, Hyppos and Skrewts shiver in fear before those badasses!
** That's wrong. Malfoy and the hippogriff was in book 3. Draco's dad got sacked at the end of book 2 as governor (because he had threaten the 11 other ones).\\
Consider a real-world example: a student in a science class ignores his teacher's warnings and drinks some kind of toxic chemical, leading to a trip to the hospital. Should the science teacher be sacked?
** There's a serious difference between what Lupin does and what Hagrid does. Lupin gave students "practical" lessons in fighting dark creatures while at all times making sure that an adult wizard who could deal with the situation was there at all times and could take over if things got out of control. Hagrid, on the other hand, assigned a biting book with no instructions on how to use it. He breeds a new creature out of several types of monsters with no idea how dangerous this creature might be or how to control it, and puts the students in charge of caring for large numbers of these new creatures. This is an issue, and he probably should have lost his teaching job over that. Malfoy's injury is a different story, although Hagrid probably shouldn't have ''started'' with hippogriffs.
** Magic is inherently dangerous, but magic also means that injuries typically aren't as severe as they normally would be. In the Muggle world, Malfoy's clawing would necessitate a hospital visit and surgery. In Hogwarts, a simple trip to the infirmary patches him up quickly. Even ''losing all of the bones in your arm'' just necessitates a short stay in what's essentially the nurse's station. Everyone teaching magic understands the inherent risks, which is why the infirmary is larger than normal, but St. Mungo's doesn't seem to even take anybody who doesn't have extremely serious health problems (that can only be solved through difficult professional help, like the attack by Nagini) or severe brain damage. Hagrid's class is no more dangerous than what the kids are exposed to simply through ''having'' magic that they can use on each other when the teachers aren't looking.
** As for Lupin, Boggarts aren't dangerous, anyway. Molly gets trapped by one for a minute or so, and it doesn't do anything except make her sob. There's no indication it can physically harm any student even if Lupin wasn't there. He also shows them a Hinkypunk, which misleads people into drowning in bogs...which seems safe enough to show people in a classroom with no bogs. (Strangely, Hogwarts does later get a swamp in it.) Likewise, Grindylows just grab you and won't let go. Nothing he demonstrates can cause harm that we know of.
*** Molly's boggart didn't hurt her because the form it took wasn't capable of causing her physical pain. Harry's was able to simulate the effects of a Dementor attack (albeit weaker than the real deal) and eventually caused him to pass out. Presumably they are able to hurt people, possibly even kill them, but it's dependent on the form they take. Something like Ron's (giant spider) would presumably be capable of biting you the way a real giant spider could (were giant spiders a real thing).
*** It's been I while since I read the book but IIRC Harry passes out because of the effort doing the Patronus, not because the Boggart could emulate the Dementor's attack. The indication in-universe is that the Boggarts can scare but are otherwise harmless said by Lupin openly in the books. In any case a relatively big spider doesn't seem truly dangerous in a classroom with an expert adult wizard, especially not in a school with most subjects with the exception of Divination, Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies to be equally or more dangerous.
** Well, for one, Trelawny and Snape are there so Dumbledore can protect them from the remaining Death Eaters. And while Trelawny only makes two legitimate prophesies, which is still a hell of a lot more than anyone else we ever met, the majority of her predictions did come true (Neville broke his first cup, the girl lost her pet bunny, Hermione left them for good, and Harry did die young, though he was OnlyMostlyDead.)
** Okay, I give you Trelawney. But
*** I cannot see any reason for Dumbledore not to crack down on Snape and give him a much-deserved attitude adjustment. Some FanFics have picked that up and stated that "Snape has to keep up appearances with the Death Eaters, so he has to be biased and torment the non-Slytherins", but that could easily be reversed: From the Death Eaters' point of view, it would easily be understandable that he has to play the part of the reformed DE towards the light siders, e.g. play nicely and be
** Trelawney's predictions aren't really all that impressive; they're the sort of vaguely-defined, easily-fulfilled prophecies that [[InternetColdReading any Muggle sideshow psychic]] would know. Neville's bumbling ways are probably the stuff of school legend by the Third Year, and Hermione herself points out that Lavender wasn't "dreading" her bunny's death, as Trelawney predicted; the possibility never even occurred to Lavender! Let's face it: on ''any'' given day, something shitty's probably going to happen to you.
** [[WordOfGod Rowling]] said once that Dumbledore allows Snape to keep teaching the way he does because he thinks it's just another life lesson for them: Some people in authority are cruel and unfair. [[FridgeBrilliance It was a good preparation for the Carrows at Hogwarts, don't you think]]? Also, consider that when the Carrows were at Hogwarts, ''Snape'' was the one protecting the students, through clever, under-handed means. In addition, it's not like Snape is a bad teacher; he's probably one of the best at Hogwarts because he doesn't compromise his (extremely high) standards, which in turn means that his classes have high pass rates. Notice that Neville was the only student in Harry's year who neither showed any aptitude at all for Potions ''or'' passed his Potions O.W.L.? Even Harry and Ron, who hated Snape and groused about all of his classes, passed theirs with "Exceeds
**
*** But he never actually helped them. Take Neville, he was obviously bad at the subject. Snape never told him why what he was doing was wrong or gave him a chance to make it up, he just insulted him for messing up. This one time in the third book, they were making a Shrinking Solution and Neville did something wrong, so Snape made him redo it. A good teacher would have explained to him what he did wrong the first time, why he was wrong, and how he could avoid it. A bad teacher would just let him at his second potion and fail him. A dick teacher would threaten him with force-feeding the potion to his beloved pet, thus making him incredibly nervous and way more likely to mess up, carry out the threat, fully expecting poor Trevor to die, and then punish Neville for... getting the potion right. I'm not one for teachers babying their students and taking care of their self-esteems, but that's got to mess a kid up, and that's not conducive to good teaching. Besides, it doesn't really seem that OWLs are that hard to
**
*** I'll concede that Snape is a good teacher, but you can be a tough, strict teacher everyone but the nerds hate without being the utter jerkass that he is. Snape defines GoodIsNotNice. The kicker is that Hermione, an excellent student he has no reason to dislike, gets caught in the crossfires of a magical dust-up and her teeth get turned into something like a beaver's teeth. Hermione is already self-conscious about her big teeth and what does Snape do? Say "Get to the hospital wing, Granger," or just ignore it? No. He tells her he can't tell the difference and reduces her to a puddle of tears with one sentence. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Snape. Is. An. ASSHOLE.]] I would like to think that Dumbledore chewed him out about this at least, but considering J.K. Rowling apparently believes in the "bullying makes kids stronger" excuse used by generations of bully-enablers, I have a terrible feeling Snape never got so much as a harsh word for doing stuff like
**
*** Right! I mean it's not like Hermie ever did anything dickish to him! Like, you know, burn his robe while he was saving her chump boyfriend (yes, I know they had "reasons" to suspect him, that doesn't change anything) or ''stole valuable supplies from his closet''. Have ''any'' of the Snapefobes ever considered that he'd most likely have to pay for those from his salary? Of course
**
*** And of course, Hermione never gets any support or recognition anywhere else, either. Except for, you know, every other class except Divination. What Hermione absolutely didn't need was another professor impressed because she read ahead. And every time Hermione answers a question that's easy for her, or fixes someone's potion, that's another kid who doesn't learn the thing, that's another kid who skates by without learning and will maybe get
**
*** As the daughter of two teachers, I resent the implication that just because he has to pay out of his pocket (and yes, that sucks, and yes stealing it was a sucky thing to do) justifies an alleged fucking adult in a position of power insulting a child which at best was going very overboard staying in good with the Malfoys and at worst was him being a petty asshole. Both my parents put up with a ton of way worse shit than having things stolen (my mother got called misogynistic slurs to her face and was threatned with being beaten up and my dad once or twice had a kid actually try it) and neither of them would ever have dreamed of saying something like that to a kid. I like Snape as a character but the Snapeaboos trying to pretend he's not an asshole are in serious denial of the abuse of the power disparity and ragingly unprofessional behavior he displays throughout, not to mention all the very legitimate safety issues brought up by other people in this thread. I agree Harry is biased and needs to be chewed out for some of his actions but that doesn't mean Snape comes out of it smelling like a bouquet of
**
*** I agree about Rowling's comment that 'teachers like Snape are a lesson'. But I also think that Dumbledore's selfish reasons for keeping Snape are probably more to do with it. Yes, I guess it makes sense that it could prepare students for future situations if they already know that sometimes, people bully those less powerful than them. But I do wonder what, exactly, this lesson is meant to do - to say 'you should just allow those with authority to abuse you'? That doesn't seem a healthy lesson to me. Aside from that, it seems evident that Snape does not like teaching and probably never wanted to be a teacher to begin with. Dumbledore keeps Snape in the school because Snape is very useful to him and his future plans; Dumbledore is nothing if not a ChessMaster. And the well-being of students seems to always have been secondary to what Dumbledore's personal plans are - that's why there's such disgusting levels of bullying among just the students, too. Draco is no more punished for his bullying than James and Sirius were, and all of them create some terrible situations because they're not being monitored. Snape was kept at the school so he was conveniently placed for Dumbledore to use, and that may be the reason that he's not been 'cracked down' on by Dumbledore. The fact that Snape does get consistently impressive testing results from his students (even though he is doing this by creating a fear of failure) probably makes it that much easier for Dumbledore to ignore any kind of disciplinary actions against Snape that might make it more difficult for him to manipulate
**
*** The problem with Dumbledore's 'Teachers like Snape are a lesson' theory is that the lesson the kids are actually learning is 'Despite whatever it says ''de jure'', the way it works ''de facto'' is that those in power over you can work out their sadistic jollies on you there's nothing you can do about it, except hope you can suck up and get on the bastard's good side like his Slytherins are'. Yeah, '''wonderful''' life lessons to be teaching the kiddies,
***
**** Sometimes you just have to realise that no "lessons" are being taught in these situations. Ultimately it's just a situation where an asshole is in a position for reasons unrelated to school/the kids etc and you just have to deal with it, as you'll just have to deal with hundreds of crappt situations in life. The only positive aspect is that at least this time, the asshole is at least knowledgable about the subject they're
**
*** I think the lesson is that there are in fact teachers and people in the real world who can act like Snape and you just have to deal with them or you're going to have a hard time being able to live in this world. I'd also like to argue that maybe we portray our ethical standards to a fantasy world and expect them to be the same and that could cause many problems when you don't take it for what it's worth. Especially since this is children's literature and it likes to make more exaggerated liberties on characters to impact the life lessons that children are more likely to take away from
**
*** Or maybe the lesson is that the readers should stop taking after the biased and headstrong protagonist and ignoring the goddamned obvious, i.e. that not only did Snape have to keep up the "bad" image in case V returns and he has to wriggle back into his ranks, but he also had to suck up to Malfoys in order to stay in their good grace and keep up with their plots, and also that both Harry and Hermione deserved every last bit of verbal spanking they were given, by repeatedly violating school rules and getting away with it, disrupting Snape's classes, stealing his stuff, setting his robes on fire, not being the least bit grateful when he ''repeatedly'' saves their hides and do I even need to carry
**
*** We all understand why Snape has to behave the way he does but given all these limitations on him, is really the best person to be teaching schoolchildren? And Harry and Hermione might not be model students, but the way that he goes off on Harry on the very first day of class for things beyond his control (Neville's accident is in no way his responsibility) and the fact that the oppressive atmosphere in the classroom make it harder for the students to do potions and his clear hatred of teaching really make him seem like a bad teacher. Dumbledore keeping him (and others) on for reasons that have nothing to do with and in some cases hurt the education of his students is irresponsible of him as a headmaster. Keeping a teacher he knows is bad around because the students will have to deal with unpleasant people in life so they might as well start now is also sabotaging their education. Them learning how to correctly brew potions is a bit more important than whatever lesson he's trying to teach them and those two goals seem mutually
**
*** "...is really the best person..." - Of course not, he was a lousy teacher, and everything you said is true. But that's kind of the point and a part of his role. The first impression is the most important, and the sooner Draco writes to his father and starts gushing over how cool the new Potion master is and how he trashed all the mudbloods and blood traitors, the better for the mission. "...is irresponsible of him as a headmaster" - welcome to the club. I'm trying to put this notion across all the seven sections. And just for the record, I consider the whole deal about Snape being a "lesson" about unpleasant people the wildest and insanest nonsense '''ever''' and the best proof of how little grasp Rowling actually has over her own
**
*** One thing you all seem to be forgetting is that Potions seems to be pretty much Advanced Chemistry+magic. Even a nice teacher has to be very strict to teach something that dangerous, so one like Snape--who has a bad temper and low opinion of most of his students anyway--is probably a complete nervous wreck trying to keep anyone from getting themselves killed. Add all his other stresses on top of that and you have someone who is very badly in need of a year's
**
*** Except that in chemistry class, ''first'' you get lab safety lectures and exercises, ''then'' you start with harmless experiments, and only months later do you start getting to play with the sulfuric acid. Good God, we didn't get around to touching the dangerous chemicals until ''high school''. What did we see Snape do? First day of first year, he had 11-year-old students mixing a potion that could (and in Neville's case, did) easily become a mass of dangerously overflowing caustic if you made a trivial mistake in timing... with no more instruction other than 'The directions are on the board, get to work'. Conclusion: Snape didn't give two shits about lab
**
*** It seems to me the ''entire school'' doesn't give two shits about safety. Professor Sprout has the students playing with mandrakes, a plant that can ''kill you'' if you hear its cry. In Professor Hooch's class a student suffered a broken wrist during a routine flying lesson. Hagrid let a student get mauled by a Hippogriff. Professor Quirrell and Professor Moody were ''completely bug-fuck evil''. And the less said about the terror-inducing death-sport known as "Quidditch" the better. "Safety" is not a big concern at Hogwarts and apparently never has
**
*** Magic means that it's much easier to heal wounds and fix problems than normal. A mess that would result in calling in a biohazard cleanup unit and sending dozens of people to the hospital can be fixed in Hogwarts by a few people waving wands for a few minutes. A bloody injury that requires surgery or would be completely impossible to fix, like ''losing all of your bones in your arm'', can be healed with a few days of bedrest and a potion or two. They can afford to be more careless than a Muggle school because the consequences simply aren't as severe. Also, I should point out that the mandrakes were specifically too young to actually kill the students and would just knock them out
**
*** A fatal accident is still a fatal accident, even for a wizard and even with magical healing. If somebody's cauldron explodes and a piece of shrapnel goes through their skull, you've got a dead kid regardless of what Madam Pomfrey can do. Besides, it actually ''isn't'' typical of human behavior to be more willing to injure themselves the further medical science advances. We can do things in the burn unit now that would be considered miracles from God a century ago, but you are no more likely to deliberately ram your bare hand into a pot of boiling water than your great-grandmother would
** Furthermore, why does Filch even have a job? What's the point of having a pissy, foul-tempered squib running around mopping the floors of a castle with 100 magical super maids (house elves) living in it?
** He's probably coordinating them, sort of like a foreman. Putting a bunch of House Elves in charge would not fit with the human/wizard-supremacist world views of the wizarding world.
** That seems like it would be a good explanation, but it's not really backed up by what's presented in the books. If Filch was in charge of the house elves, why would he do any work himself? Why would he trudge around the school mopping mud off the floors and scraping gross crap off the walls and ceilings if he could just summon an elf and have them do it with a wave of their finger? Furthermore, everything Dobby says to Harry and company after he starts working at Hogwarts implies that house elves work directly for the current headmaster/headmistress of Hogwarts rather than the caretaker.
** Maybe Filch is there to do the 'public' cleaning up of things, [[FantasticRacism an old wizarding family holdover of not wanting to see any house elves. Ever.]] The house elves do all the 'behind the scenes' stuff, but Filch is the one to take your problems to, and who cleans up when kids are there to see it. Plus, he has a [[WordOfGod half kneazle]] "cat" , and it's (presumably) his job to patrol irritably, and confiscate things from students.
** House-elves presumably don't have the authority to discipline students, and wouldn't have the temperament to do so even if they did. (Remember Winkie, who couldn't bring herself to say anything harsher to Barty Jr. than that he was a "bad boy"?) Whatever cleanup Filch does personally is either him gathering evidence against the ones who make messes, or grumpily proving to himself that he ''can'' get things done around the place, even if it's without magic.
** Filch is good at his job. He may not have magic or care about the kids, but he has determination and gets things done.
** I always felt Filch was more like the chief of security and/or administrator than just a janitor like Groundskeeper Willie, and as such did things that House Elves can’t do like giving order to students, supervising students' behavior (with the help of his sentient cat), interact with the teachers and answering to their request (as he does with Umbridge), etc. Even if he orders the House Elves to do the stuffs (especially because even if House Elves respond to the headmaster is doubtful that Dumbledores does the micromanagement). Besides I don’t remember in the books him doing any real hard work (that is probably done by Elves), he does seem to be more like a manager of the place.
** According to WordOfGod, Aurora Sinistra is female. She and the other "unseen" professors seem to be decent people, but still, at least half of the more prominent staff members are somewhat dubious. And we haven't even mentioned the various Defense teacher fiascos, so far.
** Hooch teaches Flying to first years.
** Website/ThatOtherWiki says that Quirrell was the former Muggle Studies teacher, only transferring to Defense Against the Dark Arts in ''Philosopher's Stone''. So who taught Muggle Studies in-between them and when the Carrows took over?
** Charity Burbage. She's mentioned at the beginning of ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.''
** [[spoiler:And executed by Voldemort. Personally.]]
** Not to mention Mad-Eye Moody, who teaches 14-year-olds about the three worst crimes in the Wizarding World by DEMONSTRATING THEM IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. Pretty screwed up, even if [[spoiler:he did turn out to be a Death Eater in disguise.]]
** Maybe it's only illegal to do the curses on humans and possibly the other registered sentient beings and beasts while normal spiders are fair game.
*** Huh, guys, must I remind you that one of Fake!Moody's classes involved Imperiusing the fourth year Gryffindors (and likely the whole of Hogwarts fourth year)to see if they could resist it?
** It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Out of the slightly over a dozen or so teachers at Hogwarts (not counting the continually rotating DADA instructors), only three have legitimate concerns about their ability to be a teacher - Trelawny, Snape, and Hagrid. Other than that, Filch and Binns get brought up, but there really isn't any major issue there, yes Binns is boring, but if the students just sucked it up and paid attention, they'd be learning the subject just fine. And Filch has no direct authority over the students, all he can do is yell about them "befouling the castle" while cleaning up the mess and tattle to a real teacher when they actually break an official rule. And as to the big three cases of this, let's look at them:
** Trelawny - Horrible teacher, yes. Total fraud, not really; while nowhere near as good as she likes to think, she is a legitimate seer, and even most of her non-prophecy predictions come out right, as long as they're just off-hand comments and not a deliberate attempt. Now, why would Dumbledore let someone so horribly unqualified teach? Simple; in this case, he legitimately doesn't care. He admitted in Book 6 that he was on the verge of just removing the whole subject of Divination from the school, and the only reason it's still taught is to give him a reason to keep Trelawny around. Add in that it is an elective subject, which simply can't be taught at all (you either have the gift of sight or you don't), and there's really little reason to care if the teacher teaching a literally un-teachable subject sucks.
** It is understandable to maintain the subject to keep Trelawny safe. But this un-teachable subject still gave students loads of homework to do. They could have spend their time on much more important things. Even when the course is elective.
*** There’s a possible explanation of why a bad seer like Trelawny is the Divination teacher. If there are other seers and are better and more efficient than Trelawny (who only had two major predictions in her life) they are probably doing something else better than teaching, like winning the lottery. So all good seers won’t be teachers as they probably are rich and have no reason to work. That’s why the subject is doomed, only bad seers can be teachers. The exception was Fireze and because he as a centaur had no need for money, and even he had to pay a high price becoming an outcast among centaurs.
**
*** Isn't accepting that all of Snape's students passed their OWLs a bit too convenient? It is somewhat justified that his behavior is to be taken as a life lesson, but is that lesson really what one should teach 11 year olds? Acting in the manner in which he did does not seem likely to inspire his students to be better. Someone with his attitude has no business instructing children, he is certainly a genius in his field, but that doesn't necessitate him being a good or even average professor. Someone like Snape is probably best suited teaching either upperclassmen Potions or graduate work. Using fear is fine, but he clearly crossed a line where some of the kids started to hate him - a big no-no for teachers. In fact, he probably wouldn't even be considered for hiring in a Muggle school because he's affiliated with criminals.
*** If Snape is supposed to be a lesson that life isn't fair, who is teaching the Slytherins that lesson? The way this troper sees it, the only thing the Slytherins get from that lesson is that behaving like a jerkass is perfectly fine. And we ''wonder'' why several of them turn out to be
**
*** Who's teaching the Slytherins that lesson? Pretty much everyone else in the castle, the moment the hat puts them there. The books make it relatively clear that "Slytherin = Evil" is the ruling opinion of the school, which may be true in many cases, but I doubt it's 100% accurate all of the time. One can assume that some Slytherins are jerkasses by nature, but some are jerkasses by nurture, having been groomed into it by all of the hate they seem to automatically get. Snape himself was a victim of the same prejudice pretty early on, whether his unpleasant disposition hurt his image or not. Besides - if he were just an unpleasant Hufflepuff, even the fandom's interpretation of his character likely would've been drastically different from the
** And
***And I don't think teaching was really a calling for Snape. He was put in that position by Dumbledore. I think he was still learning how to teach the whole time. And I got the impression more than once that he was unbelievably offended and without hope hen it came to how his students approach potions. Snape knows how useful his subject can be and so may of the students spend their time actively forgetting everything they can. Knowing how useful this stuff is probably contributed to his desire to teach DADA as
** Trelawney is a fraud who has made only two accurate predictions in her life.
*** If Trelawney's made any accurate predictions, she's clearly NOT a fraud. Divination is a difficult subject easily open to misinterpretation or being downright incorrect, but it's a legitimate subject nonetheless. SOMEONE needs to teach the basics.
*** No, the books make it clear that Trelawney's divinatory skills are really poor by divinatory standards. Her getting TWO accurate predictions in her life is an extremely poor showing and doesn't amount to anything if she's unable to muster such skills during her teachings.
*** IIRC, somewhere (Pottermore? HBP?) it says Dumbledore had intended to do away with Divination, until Trelawney gave an actual prophecy about Voldemort. He was worried that she would be in danger, so he hired her to keep her safe.
*** Divination also is tricky to teach because either you have the gift or you don't. So you're basically going to have to focus on the theory of different methods - which virtually anyone could teach if they do their research.
*** Well, for one, Trelawny and Snape are there so Dumbledore can protect them from the remaining Death Eaters. And while Trelawny only makes two legitimate prophesies, which is still a hell of a lot more than anyone else we ever met, the majority of her predictions did come true (Neville broke his first cup, the girl lost her pet bunny, Hermione left them for good, and Harry did die young, though he was OnlyMostlyDead.)
**** Trelawney's predictions aren't really all that impressive; they're the sort of vaguely-defined, easily-fulfilled prophecies that [[InternetColdReading any Muggle sideshow psychic]] would know. Neville's bumbling ways are probably the stuff of school legend by the Third Year, and Hermione herself points out that Lavender wasn't "dreading" her bunny's death, as Trelawney predicted; the possibility never even occurred to Lavender! Let's face it: on ''any'' given day, something shitty's probably going to happen to you.
*** Trelawny - Horrible teacher, yes. Total fraud, not really; while nowhere near as good as she likes to think, she is a legitimate seer, and even most of her non-prophecy predictions come out right, as long as they're just off-hand comments and not a deliberate attempt. Now, why would Dumbledore let someone so horribly unqualified teach? Simple; in this case, he legitimately doesn't care. He admitted in Book 6 that he was on the verge of just removing the whole subject of Divination from the school, and te only reason it's still taught is to give him a reason to keep Trelawny around. Add in that it is an elective subject, which simply can't be taught at all (you either have the gift of sight or you don't), and there's really little reason to care if the teacher teaching a literally un-teachable subject sucks.
*** It is understandable to maintain the subject to keep Trelawny safe. But this un-teachable subject still gave students loads of homework to do. They could have spend their time on much more important things. Even when the course is elective.
*** There’s a possible explanation of why a bad seer like Trelawny is the Divination teacher. If there are other seers and are better and more efficient than Trelawny (who only had two major predictions in her life) they are probably doing something else better than teaching, like winning the lottery. So all good seers won’t be teachers as they probably are rich and have no reason to work. That’s why the subject is doomed, only bad seers can be teachers. The exception was Firenze and because he as a centaur had no need for money, and even he had to pay a high price becoming an outcast among centaurs.
*** Where are people getting the impression that Trelawney is an incompetent teacher? Harry and Ron don't do well in her class, but they think the subject is a joke and don't put any effort into it. Parvati, Lavender and Luna seem to enjoy her lessons, suggesting Divination might just be an acquired taste. Trelawney seems to teach plenty of methods of Divination - tea leaves, palm reading, crystal balls, star charts, horoscopes, fire omens - so it seems like she's attempting to give them a chance to grasp the theory and practice even if they don't have the gift. Seers do exist in this universe after all, and she does make successful prophecies.
**** Trelawny is a fraud because she's a liar. She acts dramatic and all knowing but it's all an act. She's a liar looking for attention who just happens to also be a genuine Seer, a fact she's not even aware of. While the methods in the text books may have some merit she herself is just making stuff up. Harry gets high marks in an assignment he completely falsified because he included a lot of bad things happening which she happens to like. All signs point to divination being possible but extremely vague and imprecise, nothing like what Trelawny claims to be capable of. There's a reason every competent character in the series has no respect for her.
** Binns seems to be the wizarding equivalent of valium.
*** Maybe Binns is employed because he's cheap to pay? After all, he doesn't need to eat or anything. Plus, he sort of has the ultimate tenure - he haunts the place; there's no way to get rid of him, so they decide they might as well use him, perhaps? Plus, history of magic is arguably the least important subject other than divination, because knowing the other subjects could actually save your life one day. I doubt that knowing History of Magic will.
***Perhaps history does not save your life, but knowing where you come from is still an important part of education. Also, the Wizarding World seems to be a very traditionalist society, so it would only be logical if they put a bigger emphasis on history.
*** If those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, then that may well be the reason why wizarding society hasn't progressed, both culturally and technologically (I know it's a bit of a stretch). For all we know, there may have been a Voldemort-type figure every century.
*** In a more immediate phrasing, history is a huge part of our view of the world. The wizarding world is a self-centered, traditional society that looks upon other creatures as sub-human at best, and it's incredibly easy to get stuck in that mindset if the kids don't get to learn that it wasn't always like this and that other creatures have their histories too, especially since this seems to be the closest thing they have to social sciences.
*** What confuses me is that the only subject they seem to be doing in History is Goblin Uprises. That's it. Every time they mention how boring he makes history, it's always with something like "he even made bloody Goblin battles boring", and both times exams on history are mentioned, the topic is, surprise surprise, GOBLIN UPRISES. Is there nothing else interesting in Magic History? Or did Binns just forget he'd done the same topic more than once?
*** Not true. They've also mentioned Giant Wars and various historical wizards ([[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Emeric the Evil, etc.]]) in the classes. And several of the exam questions involved international wizarding conventions.
*** Having survived the Scottish education system, Binns was TruthInTelevision for me. Scotland has historically (heh) had a problem with effective teaching of history and especially of Scottish history, and the consequent neglect of the subject in recent years became [[http://www.scotsman.com/news/time-to-end-shameful-neglect-of-scottish-history-1-673740 something of an educational crisis]].
** Hagrid
*** I dunno. Seems that once you've trained a Blast-Ended Skrewt, Care of any other Magical Creature is going to be a cakewalk.
*** The Hagrid thing actually really bugs me. Yes, he's a darling, but he has absolutely no right to be teaching! He has what, a second-year education? Also, he's completely insane. Great guy, but he exposes children to vicious beasts. The blast-ended skrewts could have killed somebody, I seem to remember they injured plenty. Malfoy was attacked by a hippogriff -- I know he's a brat and he was told that if he insulted Buckbeak it might attack, but it is an animal that attacks people for saying the wrong thing! Am I the only person who thinks that him losing his teaching job would have been the right thing?
*** You're not. According to Luna at the start of the fifth book, the Ravenclaws aren't that enamored of him either.
*** Well, Hagrid's teaching methods may be odd, if not dangerous; but considering that his predecessor, Kettleburn, is reckless enough to earn himself, like, SIXTY probations, Hagrid is probably a better teacher.
*** Lupin teaches in the same way, though - direct first-hand experience with dangerous, "dark" magical creatures far worse than Hagrid's common-or-garden monsters. Malfoy's injury was no worse than the countless others suffered by Hogwarts students in classes taught by other professors; Hagrid only got in trouble because his father was a school governor and in a position to put pressure on Dumbledore.
*** Oh, like what? A thing that you can defeat by twisting its fingers or a thing you can defeat by imagining it in a funny way? Ri-i-i-i-ight, Hyppos and Skrewts shiver in fear before those badasses!
*** That's wrong. Malfoy and the hippogriff was in book 3. Draco's dad got sacked at the end of book 2 as governor (because he had threaten the 11 other ones).\\
***Consider a real-world example: a student in a science class ignores his teacher's warnings and drinks some kind of toxic chemical, leading to a trip to the hospital. Should the science teacher be sacked?
*** There's a serious difference between what Lupin does and what Hagrid does. Lupin gave students "practical" lessons in fighting dark creatures while at all times making sure that an adult wizard who could deal with the situation was there at all times and could take over if things got out of control. Hagrid, on the other hand, assigned a biting book with no instructions on how to use it. He breeds a new creature out of several types of monsters with no idea how dangerous this creature might be or how to control it, and puts the students in charge of caring for large numbers of these new creatures. This is an issue, and he probably should have lost his teaching job over that. Malfoy's injury is a different story, although Hagrid probably shouldn't have ''started'' with hippogriffs.
*** Magic is inherently dangerous, but magic also means that injuries typically aren't as severe as they normally would be. In the Muggle world, Malfoy's clawing would necessitate a hospital visit and surgery. In Hogwarts, a simple trip to the infirmary patches him up quickly. Even ''losing all of the bones in your arm'' just necessitates a short stay in what's essentially the nurse's station. Everyone teaching magic understands the inherent risks, which is why the infirmary is larger than normal, but St. Mungo's doesn't seem to even take anybody who doesn't have extremely serious health problems (that can only be solved through difficult professional help, like the attack by Nagini) or severe brain damage. Hagrid's class is no more dangerous than what the kids are exposed to simply through ''having'' magic that they can use on each other when the teachers aren't looking.
*** As for Lupin, Boggarts aren't dangerous, anyway. Molly gets trapped by one for a minute or so, and it doesn't do anything except make her sob. There's no indication it can physically harm any student even if Lupin wasn't there. He also shows them a Hinkypunk, which misleads people into drowning in bogs...which seems safe enough to show people in a classroom with no bogs. (Strangely, Hogwarts does later get a swamp in it.) Likewise, Grindylows just grab you and won't let go. Nothing he demonstrates can cause harm that we know of.
****Molly's boggart didn't hurt her because the form it took wasn't capable of causing her physical pain. Harry's was able to simulate the effects of a Dementor attack (albeit weaker than the real deal) and eventually caused him to pass out. Presumably they are able to hurt people, possibly even kill them, but it's dependent on the form they take. Something like Ron's (giant spider) would presumably be capable of biting you the way a real giant spider could (were giant spiders a real thing).
**** It's been I while since I read the book but IIRC Harry passes out because of the effort doing the Patronus, not because the Boggart could emulate the Dementor's attack. The indication in-universe is that the Boggarts can scare but are otherwise harmless said by Lupin openly in the books. In any case a relatively big spider doesn't seem truly dangerous in a classroom with an expert adult wizard, especially not in a school with most subjects with the exception of Divination, Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies to be equally or more dangerous.
*** Hagrid is the exact opposite of Snape; great as a person/friend, lousy as a teacher. But again, there are mitigating factors. He does have extensive knowledge of the subject and knows what he's talking about and then some; whenever he brings them a new animal, he always does a good job in teaching them everything about it. His major problem was in choosing which animals to teach them about. Also, the first time we see his class, it is literally the first time he's trying to teach, and it's fairly obvious he's been improving as he gets used to it, since in Book 5, Umbridge, despite monitoring every one of his classes, can't find a legitimate reason to fire him until the end when she just decides to not bother with trying to find one and just attacks him, so likely it just took him awhile to get the hang of teaching, and given time, there's no reason he couldn't develop into at least a decent teacher for the subject. And again, his major problem was in setting the course syllabus, not in the actual teaching, so even if he doesn't really improve on that, all it would need is the Headmaster or another better teacher setting the course objectives and letting Hagrid do the part he's good
**
*** Great as a friend? He tricks three underage wizards into promising to take care of his giant brother, a virtually impossible task. All the more, with Umbridge keeping an eye on them already. He could have asked a different teacher, but they would have outright refused that. So that's why he asks some children. That's pretty
** Flich seems to hate children, a very useful attribute for the caretaker of a school. But then, as a Squib, he is already an outcast in the wizarding world. Being a Squib and living in a school full of children learning magic would most likely turn even the gentlest person into a kill-joy. So I'm not sure who suffers more from that arrangement, Filch or the students.
*** Furthermore, why does Filch even have a job? What's the point of having a pissy, foul-tempered squib running around mopping the floors of a castle with 100 magical super maids (house elves) living in it?
*** He's probably coordinating them, sort of like a foreman. Putting a bunch of House Elves in charge would not fit with the human/wizard-supremacist world views of the wizarding world.
*** That seems like it would be a good explanation, but it's not really backed up by what's presented in the books. If Filch was in charge of the house elves, why would he do any work himself? Why would he trudge around the school mopping mud off the floors and scraping gross crap off the walls and ceilings if he could just summon an elf and have them do it with a wave of their finger? Furthermore, everything Dobby says to Harry and company after he starts working at Hogwarts implies that house elves work directly for the current headmaster/headmistress of Hogwarts rather than the caretaker.
*** Maybe Filch is there to do the 'public' cleaning up of things, [[FantasticRacism an old wizarding family holdover of not wanting to see any house elves. Ever.]] The house elves do all the 'behind the scenes' stuff, but Filch is the one to take your problems to, and who cleans up when kids are there to see it. Plus, he has a [[WordOfGod half kneazle]] "cat" , and it's (presumably) his job to patrol irritably, and confiscate things from students.
*** House-elves presumably don't have the authority to discipline students, and wouldn't have the temperament to do so even if they did. (Remember Winkie, who couldn't bring herself to say anything harsher to Barty Jr. than that he was a "bad boy"?) Whatever cleanup Filch does personally is either him gathering evidence against the ones who make messes, or grumpily proving to himself that he ''can'' get things done around the place, even if it's without magic.
*** Filch is good at his job. He may not have magic or care about the kids, but he has determination and gets things done.
*** I always felt Filch was more like the chief of security and/or administrator than just a janitor like Groundskeeper Willie, and as such did things that House Elves can’t do like giving order to students, supervising students' behavior (with the help of his sentient cat), interact with the teachers and answering to their request (as he does with Umbridge), etc. Even if he orders the House Elves to do the stuffs (especially because even if House Elves respond to the headmaster is doubtful that Dumbledores does the micromanagement). Besides I don’t remember in the books him doing any real hard work (that is probably done by Elves), he does seem to be more like a manager of the place.
** And then there’s Mad-Eye Moody, who teaches 14-year-olds about the three worst crimes in the Wizarding World by DEMONSTRATING THEM IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. Pretty screwed up, even if [[spoiler:he did turn out to be a Death Eater in disguise.]]
** Maybe it's only illegal to do the curses on humans and possibly the other registered sentient beings and beasts while normal spiders are fair game.
*** Huh, guys, must I remind you that one of Fake!Moody's classes involved Imperiusing the fourth year Gryffindors (and likely the whole of Hogwarts fourth year)to see if they could resist it?
** There are still a couple of other teachers, though they aren't described much. Hermione seems to really like Professor Vector (Arithmancy), Madam Pomfrey is the nurse who really cares about the children, Madam Hooch is a fair Quidditch referee (though I don't really know what else she does), and Professor Sinistra is a total mystery (Astronomy, and we don't even know if it's a man or woman. The students never complain about their Astronomy teacher though, so we'll assume that Sinistra isn't awful at least).
*** According to WordOfGod, Aurora Sinistra is female. She and the other "unseen" professors seem to be decent people, but still, at least half of the more prominent staff members are somewhat dubious. And we haven't even mentioned the various Defense teacher fiascos, so far.
*** Hooch teaches Flying to first years.
*** Website/ThatOtherWiki says that Quirrell was the former Muggle Studies teacher, only transferring to Defense Against the Dark Arts in ''Philosopher's Stone''. So who taught Muggle Studies in-between them and when the Carrows took over?
*** Charity Burbage. She's mentioned at the beginning of ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.''
**** [[spoiler:And executed by Voldemort. Personally.]]
*** It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Out of the slightly over a dozen or so teachers at Hogwarts (not counting the continually rotating DADA instructors), only three have legitimate concerns about their ability to be a teacher - Trelawny, Snape, and Hagrid. Other than that, Filch and Binns get brought up, but there really isn't any major issue there, yes Binns is boring, but if the students just sucked it up and paid attention, they'd be learning the subject just fine. And Filch has no direct authority over the students, all he can do is yell about them "befouling the castle" while cleaning up the mess and tattle to a real teacher when they actually break an official rule.
** My answer to the first question is; go back to school. My school is roughly the same size of Hogwarts and she has actually gotten the ratio of good and bad teachers quite well. The three worst teachers all represent real terrible teachers; one who torments, one who is too kind and friendly to be a teacher, and one who just doesn't understand the subject. At first I thought she missed one of the teacher archetypes, the one that doesn't do anything and tells you to "do your work" and then Umbridge came to the school. Well
** ^
*** '''Exactly.''' People seem to forget that almost every word of these books are told through the eyes of a ''child''. And children always have a skewed perception of how the world works. Don't any of you remember what it was like to be in school? Don't you remember the teachers you thought were the meanest people in the world? Don't you remember the frustration when a situation was just ''so unfair!" but none of the adults seemed to care what you think? Rowling wanted to bring back those feelings of adolescent frustration and righteous indignation, and judging by the comments on this page I'd say she did that quite
**
*** Additionally, ten years after a devastating, decimating war, perhaps the cream of the crop is not available to teach? Perhaps much of the cream of the crop wound up on the front lines. Those that might have been called to teaching otherwise might have found themselves in fields like medicine or law enforcement because that was what was most needed. Ten years isn't even a generation
** Also remember one thing Snape is super bitter about not being able to be the DADA teacher, but what dumbledore never tells him is that [[spoiler: Voldermort jinxed the position, meaning teachers never lasted a year, and Dumbledore used that knowlage to make his death seem like the only reason Snape fled]]
** Where are people getting the impression that Trelawney is an incompetent teacher? Harry and Ron don't do well in her class, but they think the subject is a joke and don't put any effort into it. Parvati, Lavender and Luna seem to enjoy her lessons, suggesting Divination might just be an acquired taste. Trelawney seems to teach plenty of methods of Divination - tea leaves, palm reading, crystal balls, star charts, horoscopes, fire omens - so it seems like she's attempting to give them a chance to grasp the theory and practice even if they don't have the gift. Seers do exist in this universe after all, and she does make successful prophecies.
***
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*** I call bullshit on this calling of bullshit. Harry and Ron aren't academically driven like Hermione to the point she tries to take every elective and get the highest grade in every single one of them, but both Ron and Harry get grades of "exceeds expectations" in the bulk of their OWLs, and the lower grades were a few notable exceptions that involved either a specific ability they didn't have like in Divination, or extenuating circumstances beyond their control, like the Astronomy OWL happening on the night aurora assault a professor on the grounds in view of the Astronomy tower, or Harry passing out and being shown a vision during his History of Magic OWL. In Harry's case he even beats out Hermione in Defense Against the Dark Arts. They all lasted a year on the run hunting horcruxen, seeing that through, and reform from within the "ministry" (which takes the form of both the legislative and judicial and executive functions of wizarding government as far as we know, certainly encompassing the court system and the police force of magical Britain, the latter of which we know from the extended canon Harry had the drive to work his way to the top of). And finally for all that we see a teenage Harry hate it, by the time the war is over he's bound to be an even bigger celebrity, and having someone nearly universally beloved spearheading positive reform can do a lot to make those things happen faster.
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*** Keep in mind that the books are all told from Harry's point of view - It could be that the pocket dimension of Platform 9 3/4 is accessable from multiple stations across the UK and we only know about the one at King's Cross because of where Harry lives specifically, and we'd have little way of knowing. (This of course being post-hoc justification in a watsonian interpretation where the real answer is that it wasn't thought out particularly well by the author).
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** It might be that they do have actual physical education classes run by Madam Hooch when she's not involved with the Quidditch teams and that being on a Quidditch team exempts you as you'd be doing training several times a week, which probably like real sports training focuses on other exercises other than playing mock matches. Aside from that the general scale of Hogwarts Castle is such that your probably doing some pretty heavy exercises throughout the day getting to and from classes in time especially if you've got to get from the top of a tower to the dungeons for potions within 5 minutes and Snape does not like you being late.
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* How is the Hogwarts student body not extremely overweight? I understand that the feasts are for special occasions, but even the every day meals in the great hall seem to consist of fattening foods (Hedwig is mentioned to frequently visit Harry at breakfast to have some bacon, and I certainly can't recall any salads being mentioned). There doesn't seem to be any rationing, in fact I believe it's indicated that the food for the meals will keep spawning until people stop eating it. I find it very hard to believe that a bunch of preteen and teenage kids would be able to control themselves when presented with an infinite amount of delicious food every day, and there's never any reference to an attempt on the part of the Hogwarts staff to control or temper their appetites. Now, I suppose it's possible that Harry just never mentioned the health food meals that Hogwarts served most of the time, since we certainly don't see every meal. But beyond the issue of diet, Hogwarts has no physical education class or gym. The closest thing we get to a P.E. class is Quidditch, which most of the students don't participate in, and the health benefits and exercise achieved from a sport where you spend the entire time seated on a magic broom is highly dubious anyway. Transfiguration and Charms only exercise the student's wand arm, Astronomy, History of Magic, Arithmancy, Muggle Studies and Divination seem entirely sedentary, and Potions might have the occasional sweaty moment but it's not like students are having to lug heavy containers of supplies around. I can see Defense Against The Dark Arts, Care of Magical Creatures, and Herbology being occasionally physically strenuous, but emphasis on occasionally. So they're not getting their exercise in their classes either. And somehow, the kids all keep in what seems to be pretty great shape.
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* How is the Hogwarts student body not extremely overweight? I understand that the feasts are for special occasions, but even the every day meals in the great hall seem to consist of fattening foods (Hedwig is mentioned to frequently visit Harry at breakfast to have some bacon, and I certainly can't recall any salads being mentioned). mentioned in any of the books). There doesn't seem to be any rationing, in fact I believe it's indicated that the food for the meals will keep spawning on the tables until people stop eating it. I find it very hard to believe that a bunch of preteen and teenage kids would be able to control themselves when presented with an infinite amount of delicious food every day, and there's never any reference to an attempt on the part of the Hogwarts staff to control or temper their appetites. Now, I suppose it's possible that Harry just never mentioned the health food meals that Hogwarts served most of the time, since we certainly don't see every meal. But beyond the issue of diet, Hogwarts has no physical education class or gym. The closest thing we get to a P.E. class is Quidditch, which most of the students don't participate in, and the health benefits and exercise achieved from a sport where you spend the entire time seated on a magic broom is highly dubious anyway. Transfiguration and Charms only exercise the student's wand arm, Astronomy, History of Magic, Arithmancy, Muggle Studies and Divination seem entirely sedentary, and Potions might have the occasional sweaty moment but it's not like students are having to lug heavy containers of supplies around. I can see Defense Against The Dark Arts, Care of Magical Creatures, and Herbology being occasionally physically strenuous, but emphasis on occasionally. So they're not getting their exercise in their classes either. And somehow, the kids all keep in what seems to be pretty great shape. Also, just to get the 'magic' explanation out of the way, there are most certainly overweight wizards and witches depicted in the series, so if there was a way to just magically keep in perfect shape I imagine they'd all be using it.
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[[folder:Child obesity at Hogwarts]]
* How is the Hogwarts student body not extremely overweight? I understand that the feasts are for special occasions, but even the every day meals in the great hall seem to consist of fattening foods (Hedwig is mentioned to frequently visit Harry at breakfast to have some bacon, and I certainly can't recall any salads being mentioned). There doesn't seem to be any rationing, in fact I believe it's indicated that the food for the meals will keep spawning until people stop eating it. I find it very hard to believe that a bunch of preteen and teenage kids would be able to control themselves when presented with an infinite amount of delicious food every day, and there's never any reference to an attempt on the part of the Hogwarts staff to control or temper their appetites. Now, I suppose it's possible that Harry just never mentioned the health food meals that Hogwarts served most of the time, since we certainly don't see every meal. But beyond the issue of diet, Hogwarts has no physical education class or gym. The closest thing we get to a P.E. class is Quidditch, which most of the students don't participate in, and the health benefits and exercise achieved from a sport where you spend the entire time seated on a magic broom is highly dubious anyway. Transfiguration and Charms only exercise the student's wand arm, Astronomy, History of Magic, Arithmancy, Muggle Studies and Divination seem entirely sedentary, and Potions might have the occasional sweaty moment but it's not like students are having to lug heavy containers of supplies around. I can see Defense Against The Dark Arts, Care of Magical Creatures, and Herbology being occasionally physically strenuous, but emphasis on occasionally. So they're not getting their exercise in their classes either. And somehow, the kids all keep in what seems to be pretty great shape.
[[/folder]]
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*** Sometimes you just have to realise that no "lessons" are being taught in these situations. Ultimately it's just a situation where an asshole is in a position for reasons unrelated to school/the kids etc and you just have to deal with it, as you'll just have to deal with hundreds of crappt situations in life. The only positive aspect is that at least this time, the asshole is at least knowledgable about the subject they're teaching.
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**** Harry took cover behind a grave stone to avoid the AK, you cant just dodge an AK.
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** Wiki/TheOtherWiki states that JKR did not name the school after the plant, at least not deliberately. Also, naming a school after a plant that contains a laxative seems just as inappropriate as a pig's skin condition.
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** Wiki/TheOtherWiki Website/TheOtherWiki states that JKR did not name the school after the plant, at least not deliberately. Also, naming a school after a plant that contains a laxative seems just as inappropriate as a pig's skin condition.
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** The only information this Troper could find was the source information in the 'Hogwarts' Article of Wiki/TheOtherWiki. According to that, it's WordOfGod. IIRC, the books never explicitly state the location.
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** The only information this Troper could find was the source information in the 'Hogwarts' Article of Wiki/TheOtherWiki.Website/TheOtherWiki. According to that, it's WordOfGod. IIRC, the books never explicitly state the location.
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Wiki/ namespace cleaning.
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** Wiki/ThatOtherWiki says that Quirrell was the former Muggle Studies teacher, only transferring to Defense Against the Dark Arts in ''Philosopher's Stone''. So who taught Muggle Studies in-between them and when the Carrows took over?
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** Wiki/ThatOtherWiki Website/ThatOtherWiki says that Quirrell was the former Muggle Studies teacher, only transferring to Defense Against the Dark Arts in ''Philosopher's Stone''. So who taught Muggle Studies in-between them and when the Carrows took over?
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** It's not even the class - it's just the professor who teaches it. Harry mentioned in one of the books that the subject matter they're learning about ''would'' actually be somewhat interesting to the class, if it wasn't for Binns' lackluster method of teaching them.
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** It's not even the class - it's just the professor who teaches it. Harry mentioned in one of the books that the subject matter they're learning about about[[note]]Goblin rebellions, for the record[[/note]] ''would'' actually be somewhat interesting to the class, if it wasn't for Binns' lackluster method of teaching them.
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**Thank you, I wasn't aware of the potions before. Hopefully, this technology advances enough that one day, magical security cameras really ''can'' exist.
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The reason Hogwarts has no security cameras, and the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into Hogwarts in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology malfunctions in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!
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* The reason Hogwarts has no security cameras, and the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into Hogwarts in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology malfunctions in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!pictures!
** Those moving pictures are photos that were developed in a special potion, and said photos are taken by cameras manually. Do ''you'' want to do that for every corner of Hogwarts, every minute, of every hour, of every ''day'', just on the off-chance someone has managed to sneak into the school? Then there's the fact that the cameras used in the wizarding world are old-fashioned and need to be routinely restocked with paper in order to print out the pictures.
** Those moving pictures are photos that were developed in a special potion, and said photos are taken by cameras manually. Do ''you'' want to do that for every corner of Hogwarts, every minute, of every hour, of every ''day'', just on the off-chance someone has managed to sneak into the school? Then there's the fact that the cameras used in the wizarding world are old-fashioned and need to be routinely restocked with paper in order to print out the pictures.
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The latest entries should be at the bottom
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[[folder:We can't have a camera system in a ''magic'' school, because ''Muggle'' techonology doesn't work here!]]
The reason Hogwarts has no security cameras, and the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into Hogwarts in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology malfunctions in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!
[[/folder]]
The reason Hogwarts has no security cameras, and the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into Hogwarts in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology malfunctions in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!
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[[folder:We can't have a camera system in a ''magic'' school, because ''Muggle'' techonology doesn't work here!]]
The reason Hogwarts has no security cameras, and the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into Hogwarts in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology malfunctions in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!
[[/folder]]
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[[folder:Hogwarts location]]
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The reason that Hogwarts has no security cameras, and also the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into the school in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology tends to malfunction in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!
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The reason that Hogwarts has no security cameras, and also the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into the school Hogwarts in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology tends to malfunction malfunctions in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!
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[[folder:We can't have a camera system in a ''magic'' school, because ''Muggle'' techonology doesn't work here!]]
The reason that Hogwarts has no security cameras, and also the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into the school in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology tends to malfunction in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!
[[/folder]]
The reason that Hogwarts has no security cameras, and also the reason why everyone who tried to kill Harry got into the school in the first place, is because cameras are Muggle technology, and Muggle technology tends to malfunction in a magical environment. That may have been a good excuse, were it not for one teeny detail: there is no reason a ''magic'' school requires ''Muggle'' technology for security. Why wasn't it possible to build a magical security system that would function the same as a Muggle's camera security system? Magical videography already exists; the photo album of Harry's parents had moving pictures!
[[/folder]]
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** There is a theory suggesting that Mary Cattermole is actually Mary Macdonald, only without her maiden name. Make of it what you wish.
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** Interesting is that the only kids Severus Snape is confirmed beyond a doubt to bully are Harry, Hermione (whenever she raises her hand), Neville, and whoever tries to defend them. As for the others it is only speculation, and probably just harsh reprimands to whoever he thinks is bad at potions. And even if being a SadistTeacher is his persona, he'd need to give special treatment to slytherins anyway and bully anyone Death Eaters would disaprove of, so the slytherin kids don't go scurrying to their parents to tell them and prevent Snape from being a valuable double agent again in case Voldemort returned someday (remember, Dumbledore at least suspects Voldemort is not dead yet at that point) and it would endanger Severus's life even more. But he decidedly hates Harry and Neville, and should never have been in a teaching role in the first place (especially potions, considering he prefers DADA), so the fact that he remains there is probably another of Dumbledore's machinations.
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** Wizards clearly aren't iliterate, or they would not be able to complete their Hogwarts assignments in the first place. Even Crabbe and Goyle would not ace their first year if they were iliterate, and [[https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/wizarding-schools word of god confirms homeschooling is definitely a thing]], and that is basically what they need for surviving. Furtermore, if some career on the wizarding world would need knowledge in muggle courses, it is presumably expected the wizard will do the legwork or be trained specifically for that career and event to compensate. And there is probably much more wizard culture, we just never see it due to TheLawOfConservationOfDetail -- unless Shakespeare [[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy was secretly a wizard]] as well. What seems to be genuinely missing, though, is support for that wizard that wants to have a muggle job.
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** The biggest and badest problem with Hogwarts houses, I think, is about how {{Fanon}} tend to see them, I.E, taking everything the Sorting Hat says completely at face value and reducing them to their most basic stereotypes, without aknowledging the existence of flexibility and that even for people within the same house, there will be different personalities, opinions, and standings, as supported directly by canon. Why this hapens is not because the characters have been missorted, but because they (even if subconsciously) value at least one trait associated with a particular house. The Sorting Hat will allow the person to argue with it, and hatstalls hapen not because the hat is confused about what traits are more prominent, but what traits the person subconsciously VALUES BEST. That (for me at least), explains every canonical sorting the hat has ever done and offers insights on the upbringing and thought process of those characters.
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** The biggest and badest problem with Hogwarts houses, I think, is about how {{Fanon}} tend to see them, I.E, taking everything the Sorting Hat says completely at face value and reducing them to their most basic stereotypes, without aknowledging the existence of flexibility and that even for people within the same house, there will be different personalities, opinions, and standings, as supported directly by canon. Why this hapens is not because the characters have been missorted, but because they (even if subconsciously) value at least least one trait associated with a particular house. The Sorting Hat will allow the person one to argue with it, and hatstalls it so it can offer the person in question a choice, but only if you manage to convince it. Hatstalls hapen not because the hat is confused about what traits are more prominent, but what traits the person subconsciously VALUES BEST. That (for me at least), explains every canonical sorting the hat has ever done and offers insights on the upbringing and thought process of those characters.
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** The biggest and badest problem with Hogwarts houses, I think, is about how {{Fanon}} tend to see them, I.E, taking everything the Sorting Hat says completely at face value and reducing them to their most basic stereotypes, without aknowledging the existence of flexibility and that even for people within the same house, there will be different personalities, opinions, and standings, as supported directly by canon. Why this hapens is not because the characters have been missorted, but because they (even if subconsciously) value at least one trait associated with a particular house. The Sorting Hat will allow the person to argue with it, and hatstalls hapen not because the hat is confused about what traits are more prominent, but what traits the person subconsciously VALUES BEST. That (for me at least), explains every canonical sorting the hat has ever done and offers insights on the upbringing and thought process of those characters.
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*** Hermione even mention to Harry in Book 4, that Krum considered Harry more skilled with a broom than himself and Krum's the Bulgarian Quiddich Team seeker. And Harry made a succesful Wronski Feint at the first attempt.
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[[folder:Percy's Ambition]]
* So the defining trait of Slytherin is ambition, right? They're ambitious, power-hungry, somewhat selfish, self-centred, interested only in what will get them to a better positions. So why is Percy Weasley, the absolute personification of arrogant ambition, in Gryffindor, when he is always described as being severely ambitious? I can only guess that he asked the hat to be put in Gryffindor so as not to shame his family, but still. Percy is the living incarnation of Slytherin House's traits, excluding the pure-blood mania. It makes a lot less sense than Peter, even, if the Hat gave him the benefit of the doubt. Percy would have HAD to beg for Gryffindor specifically, since he's got more traits from Slytherin and Hufflepuff than Gryffindor and Ravenclaw.
** Gryffindor is thought of as being the 'best' house to be placed in. No doubt the Sorting Hat would suggest Percy be better suited for Slytherin but Percy asked for Gryffindor because he doesn't want to shame his family, and being in Gryffindor would get him some praise that being in Slytherin would not. This is probably the same reason Hermione was put in Gryffindor rather than Ravenclaw, not only did she ask, she knew Gryffindor was thought of as the best house.
** It's also because, despite having the academic prowess that usually lands you in Ravenclaw, she values courage as far more important than intelligence.
** These children are sorted at 11 YEARS OF AGE. This is really too early, as even Dumbledore muses at one point. Personalities change over time, particularly through puberty. The expectations and environments of the House the wizards and witches are sorted into probably help to shape their developing personalities, but there are other factors as well. In Percy's case, determined ambition was how he coped with the Twins' constant teasing. The Twins likely started with the teasing the first time he came home with good results, because he was a bit of a nerd, lacking the 'coolness' of older brothers Bill and Charlie.
** All of the REALLY good Slytherins go into other houses so no one will suspect them.
** The end of The Chamber of Secrets establishes that the choices of an individual matter more than his or her aptitude when it comes to getting into a house. Maybe Wormtail wanted to possess the "daring, nerve, and chivalry" of Griffindor House, and that was enough for the Sorting Hat.
** Wait, if Gryffindor is the "BEST" house, then why is it that Slytherin had been the House to win the House Cup every year until Harry's first year? Seems to me that Percy was being thrown into an underdog house. And before you say something like "Gryffindor looks best on a resume", remember that Slyhterin housed the children of quite a few higher-ups in the ministry, so it was probably the Harvard of British Wizards.
*** Slytherin winning the House Cup every year is implied to be the result of Snape's bias, as he is incredibly strict and often outright unfair with students from the other three houses, but never punishes the Slytherins at all. The other heads of houses all try to remain unbiased.
** Wouldn't Oxford be more appropriate? Anyway, one of the traits Salazar Syltherin valued was a willingness to bend or break rules to one's benefit. Now the sorting hat doesn't place in the exact same manner as the founders, as Salazar only wanted pure bloods but the hat will put half bloods into his house, but Percy, on top of being a goody goody rule follower, is ''also'' a blood traitor. Those two traits may be enough to cancel out his ambition. And hard working as he is, he's more pompous, or brazen, or ''bold'' than you'd expect from Hufflepuff, which combined with Griffindor running in the family probably sealed it.
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*** Actually, [=OotP=] was updated a while ago to state that Prefects can't dock points from ''other'' Prefects, and Percy took five House Points off Ron in CoS for being near a girls' bathroom. So Prefects can take away House Points from other students, as long as the are not fellow Prefects. And we don't know if unjustified point docking can be reported or not because the entire series is from Harry's point of view - in the beginning, he's weary of authority figures and such, but as the series progresses, he cares less and less on House Points. For all we know, disregarding the Inquisitorial Squad and their abuse of power since they had Umbridge controlling everything at the time, a student can head to a teacher and explain what happened (such as the threat of docking points in exchange for sex), and the teacher can decide what to do next (essentially, reporting the bully).
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*** Actually, [=OotP=] was updated a while ago to state that Prefects can't dock points from ''other'' Prefects, and Percy took five House Points off Ron in CoS [=CoS=] for being near a girls' bathroom. So Prefects can take away House Points from other students, as long as the are not fellow Prefects. And we don't know if unjustified point docking can be reported or not because the entire series is from Harry's point of view - in the beginning, he's weary of authority figures and such, but as the series progresses, he cares less and less on House Points. For all we know, disregarding the Inquisitorial Squad and their abuse of power since they had Umbridge controlling everything at the time, a student can head to a teacher and explain what happened (such as the threat of docking points in exchange for sex), and the teacher can decide what to do next (essentially, reporting the bully).
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*** Actually, OotP was updated a while ago to state that Prefects can't dock points from ''other'' Prefects, and Percy took five House Points off Ron in CoS for being near a girls' bathroom. So Prefects can take away House Points from other students, as long as the are not fellow Prefects. And we don't know if unjustified point docking can be reported or not because the entire series is from Harry's point of view - in the beginning, he's weary of authority figures and such, but as the series progresses, he cares less and less on House Points. For all we know, disregarding the Inquisitorial Squad and their abuse of power since they had Umbridge controlling everything at the time, a student can head to a teacher and explain what happened (such as the threat of docking points in exchange for sex), and the teacher can decide what to do next (essentially, reporting the bully).
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*** Actually, OotP [=OotP=] was updated a while ago to state that Prefects can't dock points from ''other'' Prefects, and Percy took five House Points off Ron in CoS for being near a girls' bathroom. So Prefects can take away House Points from other students, as long as the are not fellow Prefects. And we don't know if unjustified point docking can be reported or not because the entire series is from Harry's point of view - in the beginning, he's weary of authority figures and such, but as the series progresses, he cares less and less on House Points. For all we know, disregarding the Inquisitorial Squad and their abuse of power since they had Umbridge controlling everything at the time, a student can head to a teacher and explain what happened (such as the threat of docking points in exchange for sex), and the teacher can decide what to do next (essentially, reporting the bully).
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* If you lacked a single oune of loyalty you wouldn't have accepted the letter and gone on the train
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*** Trelawny is a fraud because she's a liar. She acts dramatic and all knowing but it's all an act. She's a liar looking for attention who just happens to also be a genuine Seer, a fact she's not even aware of. While the methods in the text books may have some merit she herself is just making stuff up. Harry gets high marks in an assignment he completely falsified because he included a lot of bad things happening which she happens to like. All signs point to divination being possible but extremely vague and imprecise, nothing like what Trelawny claims to be capable of. There's a reason every competent character in the series has no respect for her.
