The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles
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What seems cool to a kid, though, may not seem so swift to an adult—or to a philosopher. What would great educational thinkers—philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and John Dewey—say about teaching and learning at Hogwarts? Is Hogwarts a “model school,” as Susan Engel, the director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College, has claimed?2 Or are there real problems with Hogwarts academics that need to be addressed? Here we’ll look at the pros and cons of a Hogwarts education through the lenses of both classic philosophers of education and contemporary educational research.
The Good
The philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) was the most influential thinker in American education. Early in the twentieth century, Dewey criticized traditional education for its stress on passive listening, rote memorization, undemocratic values, and disconnect with practical, real-life concerns. In opposition to traditional education, Dewey advocated a “progressive” approach to teaching and learning that emphasized three features that have now been widely adopted in American education: hands-on learning, building on the natural interests of children, and connecting schoolwork to everyday life.3 One of the clear strengths of education at Hogwarts is that it reflects these three progressivist ideals.
Hands-On Learning
As we’ve seen, kids don’t come to Hogwarts to learn calculus or Spanish or world history; they come to learn how to do magic. And by this yardstick, Hogwarts is clearly a successful school; most of its students do learn loads of useful potions and spells, pass their O.W.L.s. and N.E.W.T.s, and graduate as capable magicians. How do the students learn so effectively? Not through listening to Professor Binns’s boring lectures on the history of magic or by reading Professor Umbridge’s purely theoretical textbook assignments. Instead, they learn to do magic in an apprenticelike way that typically involves (1) demonstration of a magical technique by a skilled teacher, (2) practice of the technique by the students, (3) individualized coaching by the instructor to correct faults, and (4) continued practice by the students until the technique is mastered. Nearly all of the examples of effective pedagogy in the Potter books—for instance, Remus Lupin’s teaching Harry how to conjure a Patronus or Harry’s teaching of defensive magic to Dumbeldore’s Army—involve this kind of hands-on learning by doing. Given that magic is portrayed in the Potter series as a hard-to-acquire skill that can be mastered only through coaching and practice, this kind of teaching makes perfect sense.
Building on the Natural Interests of Children
Dewey believed that children are naturally active and curious, and he urged educators to use kids’ natural interests and real-life experiences as hooks to encourage learning. Research has shown that students are more engaged and learn more when they study things they find interesting and relevant.4
Hogwarts students are clearly eager to learn magic. They love having magical abilities and enjoy developing those abilities and learning new spells and skills. Moreover, they clearly understand the practical value of what they’re learning. When Umbridge won’t allow her Defense Against the Dark Arts students to practice defensive magic, the pupils organize their own class to practice on their own. They know that learning to do defensive magic is vital to their success on school exams, in their lives and careers after Hogwarts, and to their efforts as part of Dumbledore’s Army to thwart Voldemort’s return to power.
Connecting Schoolwork to Everyday Life
Too often, Dewey believed, classwork is seen as a preparation for some remote and speculative future, rather than as part of life itself. Learning the names of Uruguay’s three largest rivers might be useful to some pupils (for example, if they plan to open a tugboat business there someday). But for most students, this information will be what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) called “inert” knowledge—lumps of undigested, untested, unused information.5 Dewey believed that education has a practical function and should not be seen as a series of pointless hurdles to jump over before “real life” begins. Education isn’t a preamble to life; it’s part of life, and it exists to solve practical human problems and meet human needs.
Some of what students learn at Hogwarts is pretty inert. For example, Harry and his friends can’t see much point in Rubeus Hagrid’s lessons on raising ugly and dangerous Blast-Ended Skrewts or Professor Trelawney’s bogus crystal-ball gazing. But, generally, students can recognize right away the practical payoff of what they’re learning. They realize that when they leave Hogwarts, they will need to know how to Apparate and Disapparate, to transfigure objects, to defend themselves against dark wizards, and so forth. This makes them eager students and motivates them to learn.
The Bad
What’s not to love about Hogwarts? As we’ve seen, the three real strengths of a Hogwarts education are that it encourages hands-on learning, builds on the natural interests of students, and teaches important, real-life skills. There are other features of Hogwarts academics, however, that are not so attractive. Three major negatives are:• The school is too dangerous.
• There are too few qualified teachers.
• Students don’t get a well-rounded education.
Let’s look at these points, one by one.
Too Dangerous
Let’s face it, Hogwarts is a pretty hazardous place to go to school. It’s located next to a magical forest, where unwary or reckless students may get eaten by giant spiders or set upon by hostile centaurs. There’s an ice-cold lake next to the castle full of treacherous water demons (grindylows) and a giant squid. All kinds of lethal creatures (three-headed dogs, trolls, basilisks) may on occasion be found in the school. There’s a mischievous resident poltergeist, Peeves, who’s constantly trying to trip students up or drop heavy objects onto their heads. Staircases contain vanishing steps that students need to remember to jump over. Unmindful students wandering near the Forbidden Forest may be pounded to a pulp by the Whomping Willow. Students sometimes work with dangerous magical creatures (Professor Kettleburn retires at the end of Harry’s second year “in order to spend more time with his remaining limbs”).6 Potions often go awry and injure or disfigure students. The most popular game at Hogwarts, Quidditch, can easily result in serious injuries to players. The Triwizard Tournament involves three high-risk challenges. And even the youngest students carry potentially lethal weapons (wands) that they regularly use to hex and jinx one another.
True, many injuries that students suffer at Hogwarts can be healed quickly by Severus Snape’s potions or Madame Pomfrey’s skilled nursing care. But not all injuries can be cured (or cured quickly) by magical means, and as Albus Dumbledore says, no magic can reawaken the dead.7
Granted, the Potter books are only fiction, and all of this danger and violence makes for exciting stories.8 But you can bet that if Hogwarts really existed, the WTA (Wizard Teacher Association) would be up in arms!
Unqualified Teachers
Hogwarts teachers are a mixed bag. There are good teachers who are competent, caring, and fair. These include Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, Pomona Sprout, and Remus Lupin.9 Other teachers are fairly decent but have significant shortcomings. These include Hagrid, who is knowledgeable and engaging but can’t resist exposing his students to dangerous creatures; Moody/Crouch, who teaches his students “loads,” but, unfortunately (as Dean Thomas notes), turns out to be a disguised homicidal “maniac”; and Snape, who certainly knows his stuff but is bullying, sarcastic, and blatantly biased in favor of Slytherin students.10
There are also downright crummy teachers at Hogwarts. The four worst (if you don’t count the Death Eaters who briefly join the faculty in Deathly Hallows) are Binns, Sybill Trelawney, Gilderoy Lockhart, and Dolores Umbridge. Binns, a ghost who apparently doesn’t know that he’s dead, regularly puts his History of Magic students to sleep with his droning lectures, doesn’t know the names of his pupils, and is barely aware that there are actually any students in his classes. Trelawney is an “old fraud” who teaches a “woolly” subject (Divination)
and enjoys predicting her students’ early and gruesome deaths.11 Lockhart is a narcissistic and ineffectual blowhard. And Umbridge, of course, is a twisted, power-hungry racial supremacist who tries to undermine any effective education at the school.
Dumbledore has great difficulties hiring qualified faculty at Hogwarts. Mostly, this isn’t his fault. After Professor Quirrell’s shocking demise, we’re told that no one would take the job of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher except the hapless Lockhart. Yet the larger problem, as Arthur E. Levine notes, is that the wizarding world has no teacher education programs or certification requirements.12 Apparently, anybody can teach at Hogwarts, including those with little or no formal magical education, such as Firenze or Hagrid. Without effective teacher training and credentialing procedures, teacher quality at the wizarding school is bound to be sketchy and even pose risks to students.
No Well-Rounded Education
If Harry and his friends were attending a Muggle British boarding school, they would have classes in subjects such as English, history, science, geography, music, mathematics, foreign languages, physical education, citizenship, and religious education. At Hogwarts, the only thing students learn is how to do magic.13
Why is this a problem? Because Hogwarts offers a narrow and vocationally oriented education.14 It provides its students with the tools of power but not the wisdom to use them.
As the noted philosopher of education Mortimer Adler (1902-2001) remarked, a good secondary school should prepare its students to do three things: “to earn a living in an intelligent and responsible fashion, to function as intelligent and responsible citizens, and to make both of these things serve the purpose of leading intelligent and responsible lives—to enjoy as fully as possible all the goods that make a human life as good as it can be.”15 Hogwarts is devoted almost exclusively to the first of these three goals—vocational training. It teaches its students how to make a living in the wizarding world but not how to live.16
What is the aim of education? Great educational thinkers have defended various views. For Plato, the first great philosopher of education in Western civilization, the purpose of education is to achieve wisdom, goodness, and a just and well-ordered society.17 For Plato’s pupil Aristotle, education should promote human fulfillment (eudaimonia), which he defined as a life filled with intrinsically excellent activities (especially purely intellectual activities).18 John Locke (1632-1704) claimed that “virtue and wisdom” are “the great business” of education.19 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) advocated a “natural,” child-centered education aimed at producing happy, virtuous citizens uncorrupted by the hypocrisies and false values of civilization.20 Immanuel Kant believed that character development—becoming a good moral person who wills the right things for the right reasons—is the primary aim of education. 21 Even John Dewey, who, as we’ve seen, criticized traditional education for its disconnect with real-world concerns, argued that the ultimate aim of education is simply “more education,” or “growth” in one’s capacity for enriching experiences. 22
An educated person should be able to write and speak well, think critically, and be well-grounded in the sciences and the humanities that form the foundation of a liberal education. The goal of a liberal education is not to help students “get a good job” but to impart the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to fulfill one’s human potential; to understand and appreciate the supreme productions of human thought and art; and to live a rich, full, and vibrant life. A good secondary school should lay the foundation for such a liberal education. Above all, as Adler noted, it should seek to impart to its students both “the skills of learning and the wish to learn, so that in adult life they will want to go on learning and will have the skills to use in the process.”23
Because there are no universities in the wizarding world, it is critical that secondary wizarding schools such as Hogwarts encourage and equip their students to become lifelong learners.24 Yet Hogwarts clearly fails in this regard. At Hogwarts, Harry and his friends are taught how to perform spells and brew potions. They are not taught to love reading or ideas, to think scientifically, to appreciate art and literature, or to reflect in an informed and disciplined way about the problems of society and the human condition.
Of course, not all education at a residential school like Hogwarts takes place in the classroom, and Harry and his friends learn many important life lessons outside formal class settings. In fact, Harry’s most important teacher and role model at Hogwarts is clearly Dumbledore, although he isn’t one of Harry’s regular instructors. For Harry, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood, and their circle, Hogwarts does prove to be a kind of “school of virtue” of the sort that ancient philosophers praised. In assessing the value of a Hogwarts education, it’s important to keep in mind what is learned both inside and outside the classroom. My point is simply that Hogwarts’ formal curriculum is too narrow and vocational. Remember that most Hogwarts students have relatively little contact with Dumbledore during their years at the school. Harry may pick up priceless nuggets of wisdom in Dumbledore’s office, but for most Hogwarts students, it’s what they learn—or fail to learn—in the classroom that makes the greatest difference in their lives.
Some might argue that people with magical powers don’t really need a well-rounded, liberal education—that they can find happiness and achieve their life goals without one. Besides, they might say, any serious misuse of magic will likely be detected and severely punished by the Ministry of Magic.
This misses the point of a liberal education, however. A liberal education is one suited to a free individual. It liberates the mind by enlarging its perspective, refining its sensibilities, and freeing it from ignorance and the limitations of one’s time, place, and culture. As Adler said, a proper education cultivates a person’s “capacities for mental growth and moral development” and helps her “acquire the intellectual and moral virtues requisite for a good human life.”25
The Hogwarts curriculum is not well-suited to provide the broad-based knowledge, the intellectual skills, and the solid character virtues that a good school—wizarding or Muggle—should seek to impart. Because of the narrow vocational education they receive, Hogwarts students are ill-equipped to deal with the many problems that confront wizarding society, including (as Hermione says) “this horrible thing wizards have of thinking they’re superior to other creatures.”26
The Ugly
This “horrible thing” is in fact the greatest problem wizards face. The Potter books are a morality tale about a wizard civil war. On one side are Voldemort’s racial supremacists, who want wizards to rule over Muggles and pureblooded wizards to rule over those of mixed ancestry. On the other side are Dumbledore and those who reject such radical supremacist views and believe, instead, in the basic equality of all rational (or, at least, all human) creatures on earth.
I say this is the biggest problem wizards face not only because of the repulsiveness of such racial elitism, but because of what is at stake. Totalitarianism, thought control, secret police, mock trials, racial cleansing—all are real possibilities if the supremacists win. And, of course, they nearly do win in the Potter books, just as the Nazis nearly won in World War II.
So, what is Dumbledore doing to educate Hogwarts students about the dangers and the irrationality of racial supremacism? Not a heck of a lot. At least, not directly.
True, Hogwarts is open to all students with magical powers, regardless of ancestry, race, or social class. And Dumbledore makes a point of being an equal-opportunity employer, hiring half-bloods such as Snape and members of marginalized groups such as half-giants (Hagrid), centaurs (Firenze), and werewolves (Lupin).
But that’s about it. There are, so far as we are told, no class discussions of racism, no workshops, no school assemblies on the topic. Racial slurs are rampant at Hogwarts, but no student is ever disciplined for using one. The fact that Hogwarts houses the largest population of oppressed house-elves
in England is nowhere mentioned in the thousand pages of Hogwarts, A History, and Hermione’s efforts to alleviate the house-elves’ plight are given no public support from Dumbledore. Most seriously, Dumbledore does nothing to remedy the great festering source of militant purebloodism at Hogwarts, Slytherin House.
Slytherin is a breeding ground for dark wizards. As Hagrid says, when Voldemort rose to power there wasn’t “a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin.”27 And this is no accident; students are sorted into Slytherin because they will “use any means to achieve their ends.”28 Because people—especially impressionable children—tend to become like those they associate with, Slytherin is a hothouse of racial intolerance. It is also, inevitably, a source of “fifth columnists” in Hogwarts—students whose ultimate loyalties aren’t to Dumbledore or their classmates, but to Voldemort and his warped racist agenda.