OOTP Chapter Twelve: "Professor Umbridge"
Apr. 22nd, 2011 06:46 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslock* “Does he think he’ll turn into a nutter if he stays in a room with me too long?” Given that you threatened to curse him yesterday, he probably thinks you’ve already turned into one.
* So having favoured Harry over Seamus, Ron’s now reluctant to keep his brothers in line. A prefect should really be more impartial.
* Nice to see Harry and Ron dismissing the prospect of uniting with the Slytherins out of hand like that. And to think that some people say Slytherins aren’t treated like proper members of the school!
* So Angelina’s only holding try-outs for Wood’s replacement, whereas Harry will make everybody try-out next year. Is this something that varies depending on who’s captain, or did JKR just make up the “everyone tries out” idea to add some Ron-related angst in Book 6?
* Note how Ron’s already decided that he won’t like Umbridge before having one lesson with her. As it is he’ll be proved right, but still, it’s not like they’re giving her much of a chance, is it?
* “‘Leave me out of it,’ said Ron hastily.” Nice to see him undermining the authority of his fellow-prefect like that, isn’t it?
* As if the prospect of taking exams which determine whether or not you stay at school isn’t stress enough, Fred and George go and give people boils. Charming.
* As an aside, how does the exam system in Hogwarts work? In some ways it seems like GCSEs/O-levels, but if this were the case we’d expect quite a few people to leave school after taking them and take up jobs, rather than study to NEWT level. Or is it more a case of them being necessary to progress to NEWT level, but otherwise not really affecting your final qualifications, a bit like some university exams?
* Poor Ron, wanting to be an Auror. He’s spent his entire school career being overshadowed by Harry, and now he’ll spend his entire professional career being overshadowed, too. What he really needs is some time working/travelling without Harry or Hermione, so that he can become more confident and discover that he can actually cope without them. I doubt JKR would give him that, though.
* Besides, Aurors are, like, the élite. You can’t be one of them unless you’re really good. Or unless you’re the Chosen One, in which case you are entitled to take up whatever job you want. And get your friends into the Aurors, too.
* Ugh, Hermione’s so easy to manipulate. “Oh, you’re so clever, please lend us your notes.” She really ought to stop helping them, or at least scale back her help to a level where she’s not practically doing their work for them.
* Although I am rather attracted to the idea that she’s subconsciously trying to make herself indispensible to the boys due to her deep-seated insecurity. Especially given what happened to her when she last seriously stood up to them, over the broom in POA.
* So Harry meets Cho, makes a complete faux pas and reminds her of her dead boyfriend. Ron quickly steers the conversation away onto something more happy, i.e., Quidditch, before Cho can get too upset. Nevertheless, Ron is apparently the insensitive jerk around here, not Harry.
* And Ron and Hermione keep bickering about it all the way to Potions class. I’ve heard of couples getting into friendly arguments, but really, this is just ridiculous.
* Snape has apparently come to expect a high pass level from his students, suggesting that he’s actually quite a good teacher, after all.
* No matter how “worthless” Harry’s potion is, Ron’s has to be even worse.
* For Divination, they work from The Dream Oracle, by Inigo Imago. Which makes me wonder: where do people get the time to research all this complicated magic stuff and write up books about it? Apart from teaching positions in Hogwarts, there don’t really seem to be any academic jobs in the WW, and there aren’t enough wizards to make writing books a viable way of making a living (which perhaps explains the lack of wizarding fiction – there just isn’t a big enough audience for such works to be profitable). But surely a regular day job wouldn’t leave much time for research, so perhaps there’s some form of Ministry grant to allow people to take time off work and research these topics, or the people who do so are all wealthy enough that they can afford not to work full-time.
* Keeping a dream diary doesn’t seem as onerous as Harry and Ron seem to make out. After all, it’s not like most people have many dreams, and I’d be surprised if they’d end up remembering more than one or two over that whole period.
* Professor Umbridge’s wand is “unusually short”. Freudian, anyone?
* Knowing the WW, those kids really need a Defence class involving some considerations of the ethics involved. Like Umbridge’s. Still, no wonder they don’t take to it. Ethics? Pah! What sort of cowardly thing is this?
* Picking a fight with a teacher like this seems a bit OOC for someone like Hermione. Maybe the real Hermione Granger’s been drugged and locked in a magical trunk with the real Ginny Weasley, and has now been taken over as JKR’s sock-puppet.
* At least Dean acknowledged that Moody “turned out to be a maniac”, but doesn’t seem to dwell on it too much because “we still learned loads”. Which seems… somewhat worrying, TBH. Sort of like a Muggle saying “Yes, well, I know Myra Hindley turned out to be a mass-murderer, but she taught me loads of great childcare tips.”
* So Professor Umbridge states that Voldemort’s return is a lie, which seems to be the Ministry line. But never does anybody suggest that Harry killed Cedric himself, despite him having the means, motive and opportunity, and despite the fact that Cedric’s body doesn’t seem to bear animal attack marks on it. Perhaps it’d just be too difficult for Harry to rebut, and hence would get in the way of JKR’s planned storyline.
* “Well, I’m glad you listen to Hermione Granger, at any rate,” says Professor McGonagall, somewhat ironically, given that Hermione’s the one who started the trouble.
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Re: SSHG
Date: 2011-04-26 03:27 pm (UTC)Same here, but that was probably more due to the fact that most of them were middleaged and older, and married to boot, except for the music teacher, who was middleaged and gay. LOL
The only young, good-looking male teachers we ever got were the occasional student teachers; but while the girls would gush about how nice the new student teacher looked, I don't know anyone who ever considered trying to get a date with one.
And they may have been good loooking, but the ones I remember either had zero personalities, or thought very highly of themselves! :-o
The teacher is in a position of power and it is seen as morally wrong.
Thank you, Karen. I was beginning to wonder if it's a generational thing, but I know you're 20 years younger than me.
The teacher is still an authority figure, even after the student graduates. I know that when I ran into former teachers 10 or more years after I graduated, I still referred to them as "Mr.", "Mrs.", or "Miss" Whatever; some of them would insist that I now call them by their first name and I'd comply to be polite, but it just didn't feel right.
Hogwarts professors become the parent, the relationship becomes more personal
Here! Here! :-)
Re: SSHG
Date: 2011-04-29 04:55 am (UTC)Well, we transitioned from calling our teachers 'Teacher' (with no name) to 'Mr/Ms lastname' (Hebrew doesn't have the equivalent of the Mrs/Miss difference) to first names over the course of our secondary school years. The timing of the transitions varied with individual students and teachers. And by the time we were in 11th or 12th grade (varied with teacher) teachers stopped expecting us to stand until given permission to sit down at the beginning of class.
But what really matters is that once you graduate the teacher can't control your grades, make you repeat a year, give school punishments etc - they lose the power to do so in all senses.
I don't know if any of the boys thought of female teachers as date-material though one (married, mother of a small child) is described in a yearbook as the friend-teacher. Of the make teachers at least 2 come to mind as having a bit of a Lockhart-like following (though each of them had real brains, unlike Gilderoy).
Re: SSHG
Date: 2011-04-29 02:55 pm (UTC)We would never, ever have referred to a teacher by their first name, at least not in class and definitely not to their face. Some teachers who were not respected by students were referred to by their first names when students talked about them behind their backs; referring to a teacher by their first name was universally understood to be a sign of disrespect.
But I graduated from high school back in the Dark Ages (1971), I wouldn't be surprised if students in American schools openly use teachers' first names now...
And by the time we were in 11th or 12th grade (varied with teacher) teachers stopped expecting us to stand until given permission to sit down at the beginning of class.
Standing at attention before class isn't common practice in American public schools.
What we did have in my day was standing at attention at the beginning of the school day when the National Anthem was played over the school PA system. We then continued to stand to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, and then finished with the Lord's Prayer. But we were expected to be seated, and remain seated, at all other times.
The prayer thing stopped when I was in 5th grade (10 years old) when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to be required to say a prayer in a public school.
In high school we had "home room" at the beginning of the school day, that was where the home room teacher would take attendence and handle any general school administrative tasks. We were expected to come in and sit in our assigned seats; if we weren't sitting when the final bell rang, even if we were standing a few feet away, we would be marked as being late.
But like in elementary school, as soon as the National Anthem started playing over the PA we were expected to stand, and then remain standing as we recited the pledge.
The first day of high school our new home room teacher actually started saying the Lord's Prayer after the pledge, and looked at us in surprise when we didn't follow suit -- it had been illegal for at least 4 years at that point. We probably looked as surprised as he did. After a harangue about how the world was going to hell in a handbasket, he announced that there would be a "moment of silence" every day after the pledge for those who wanted to pray...we all had to remain standing for this period of silence.
I think the teacher was the only one who prayed, because it didn't look like any of the students bothered.
And this was during the height of the Vietnam War...by the end of sophomore year almost none of us were bothering to say the pledge to the flag, altho we did all relunctantly and sloppily still stand up when the anthem started playing.
But one day in junior year one girl announced before the teacher came in that she was no longer going to stand for the anthem or the pledge; she was actually one of the last people I would have expected to do that, but it turned out that her brother was serving in Vietnam, and his letters home convinced her that the war was wrong.
So Diana didn't stand up when the music started; even her friends stood up, because they were afraid of getting punished. But I continued to sit, because I too didn't support the war, and I figured that it would make more of a statement if more than one person didn't stand...and it would be easier for the teacher to punish just one student, but more than one would be more difficult.
When her friends saw what I was doing (or more accurately, not doing), they shame-facedly sat back down. Then a couple of other kids sat down. I thought the teacher was going to have a stroke, but I could also see the gears going in his mind...and he didn't say anything. Didn't make an issue of it.
Next day, no one stood up for the anthem or the pledge except the teacher; and that is how things remained for the next year and a half, until we graduated. And word spread, soon almost no students in the whole school stood up for the anthem and/or pledge.
Re: SSHG
Date: 2011-04-29 06:15 pm (UTC)Re: SSHG
Date: 2011-04-29 11:43 pm (UTC)I work as a substitute teacher on the extremely conservative Florida Gulf Coast. My sister is a teacher in extremely liberal southern California. Students in both places are still expected to address teachers by their titles and last names. If two such different places still pursue that custom, it's probably the same all over the U. S.
I graduated in 1977, and in fifth grade, I stopped saying the Pledge as a protest against the Vietnam War, also. That was in New Jersey, not Florida.