death to capslock

You have a good point, though I wonder when they would have the time to be in these clubs, since Hogwarts takes up so much of their time. Sure, there's the summer, but three months a year is still not that much time. Plenty of students would probably resent the special treatment that the house players get, and not just getting to use the brooms. I mean, they don't even have to do their homework when a big game is coming up! That is some serious favoritism right there. Essentially, the system breeds privileged jocks and a whole bunch of discontented other people. So, quite a bit like high school. ;-)

Edited Date: 2012-06-01 12:51 pm (UTC)

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I still cannot figure out why they don't have alternates. What kind of team sport doesn't have at least one extra person sitting in the bench for each position? And rotate them during long games and/or for various strategic reasons? Even I know you're supposed to do that, and I don't follow sports at all. (Why isn't Dean Thomas the West Ham fan all over this problem?)

Yeah, I bet there are a lot of bitter kids who almost made the team at Hogwarts, and a lot of bitter kids who are involved in equally time-consuming activities offscreen who don't get out of doing homework. And for that matter, a lot of kids bitter that with the entire British wizarding world being Hogwarts alumni, there is still apparently never any kind of fundraising drive to replace the school brooms. Seriously, only one single parent ever donates sporting equipment? They can't get a dozen or so Gryffindor parents to chip in to buy even a couple of nice brooms for their team? For that matter, why can you even donate to a particular team rather than there being an all-House Quidditch fund from which all donations will be distributed equally?

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Well said. Looks like just one more thing that JKR didn't think through. *sigh*

I kind of wonder what the point of dividing the school up into houses is at all. Doesn't it just make the students even more cliquish than they would be anyways? It's hard enough to make friends at that age, even without the artificial separation. Especially since they have classes with people from other houses, so they could probably develop friendships with them otherwise. I can understand splitting up the dorms, but why make them compete against each other like that as well? And if they wanted to keep the competitiveness, why not have multiple Hogwarts campuses so that the students are not constantly antagonizing their rivals? It seems like the house system causes a lot of unnecessary strife.

I know that if I were in Gryffindor that I would probably be wanting to make friends in the non-jock house. ;-)

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Maybe it's a British thing? But then, I've heard some British people say that they were divided into houses but didn't have that kind of cutthroat competition, so I don't know. It sounds like originally, it was just that they had four teachers who divvied up the students according to their personal teaching preferences, and they thought maybe grouping students with similar interests or inclinations would be useful and so made the Hat. Which isn't necessarily a terrible idea, depending on the execution.

Given that you started university around age 14 in medieval times, maybe what was really happening was that Hogwarts was on the cutting edge of the university movement and they were grouping the students into different degree tracks - doctorate in potions, doctorate transfiguration, etc. (Well, given that they apparently took any magical kids, not just already-educated ones, they would have had to teach a fair number of them to read just to start because they would be statistically more likely to be farmers, so it wouldn't be exactly a university. More like a cathedral school with university tacked on for advanced students? Idk. There could have been some outside influence on their academic structure, anyway.) And there was some kind of strife between the houses due to "external deadly foes," so maybe that's what started the bitter rivalry. But they might never have intended for the houses to be quite so competitive (maybe friendly competitions now and then or something, but not so bitter and longstanding).

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maybe what was really happening was that Hogwarts was on the cutting edge of the university movement and they were grouping the students into different degree tracks - doctorate in potions, doctorate transfiguration, etc

That would definitely make sense, but it seems pretty silly to divide them up at age 11, rather that letting them at least first learn enough about the different choices that are available. If I had to pick a career at that age I would have been a princess lawyer veterinarian. ;-)

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Oh, it doesn't work very well any more, that's for sure! That's what happens when traditions fossilize and no one remembers the original reason for doing it...

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This is reminding me of 'The Lottery' for some reason. Although at least in that story people could state a reason for what it was that they did, even if it seems like a pretty perverse one.

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*shivers* That story is so creepy.

I wonder whether they used to associate personality traits with different disciplines, maybe based on humoral theory or something? Transfiguration is warm and... well, I suppose it could be moist or dry, depending on what you're transfiguring... therefore you're either choleric or sanguine and thus bad-tempered and courageous, or something. Probably it would require a lot of ridiculous backbends to make it work, but then, that's kind of par for the course for humoral theory anyway.

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That's a really interesting idea! I hadn't thought of it that way.

And yes, it's a fantastic story, isn't it? I think what really makes it work is the rather mundane way in which Jackson leads up to it, so that when the reader finally catches on it's absolutely horrifying.

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oryx_leucoryx

The Gryffindors actually had alternates before Harry arrived. In Lee Jordan's commentary in PS he mentions that Alicia Spinnet was a reserve player the previous year. I guess having Harry on the team blew Oliver Wood's mind too much.

They can't get a dozen or so Gryffindor parents to chip in to buy even a couple of nice brooms for their team?

I guess the problem was that none of the children of rich Gryffs made the team and nobody bothered to donate if their own child wasn't going to benefit?

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The only extra-curricular activity ever mention is Quidditch or the DA.

What no Chess club? We know wizards play chess. Ron could join, but then it would interfere with Harry being the center of his universe.

Snape's mother was the Gobstone champion when she was a student. Is there a competition while Harry was at school? Or was it discontinued?

Or how about study groups? Why is Hermione is a study group? Silly me she has Harry why would she need anyone else?

The problem is if it doesn't involve Harry it doesn't matter.

Another example of JK poor world building. It would be easy to throw in a reference to some other activity. A Quidditch teammate worrying about a schedule conflict with another club. A house mate mentioning that they had to go because x club was meeting. When Umbridge bans groups have other students complaining about their group no longer being able to meet.

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sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

Now that would have been cool, to see the depth and breadth of extracurricular activities wizards could do.

If Rowling wanted Harry to see everything important, all it would have taken would have been for him to run into the wrong clubroom by mistake, for example. Or Rowling could have derived some humor from doing what I did in one of my stories, where I had the protagonist deliberately seek out a food club he wasn't part of so he could ~~peek on the cute girls~~ get new ideas for recipes he could try.

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What really rankles is that she actually made a joke out of anyone trying to start up another extracurricular activity in print. Remember that anecdote about the time they tried to stage a play at Hogwarts, and not being Quidditch the mishaps were not considered something one should overlook as part of the experience, and they never ever had a drama club again? Yeah.

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She said that? Good grief.

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Wow, she really said that? Is everybody at Hogwarts a dumb jock or something?

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I think it was in one of Dumbledore's notes in Beadle the Bard. Ages ago, Professor Beery did try to stage a play, and due to love triangles and magical mishaps (not Dumbledore's, of course!), it was a disaster and they never tried it again. Ever. Beery went on to found his own little school for drama or something and it's a total failure from what I remember.

He didn't have the aside about Quidditch, but if they don't give up on Quidditch after rogue Bludgers target particular players, Dementors swarm the field, etc., I think it's fair to say they value Quidditch more and will continue no matter what the obstacles, while they think of drama (and possibly other activities) as jokes which you can just ditch with the excuse that something didn't go smoothly.

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I think it's fair to say they value Quidditch more and will continue no matter what the obstacles, while they think of drama (and possibly other activities) as jokes which you can just ditch with the excuse that something didn't go smoothly.

Pretty much, this. I guess it's pretty clear where their priorities lie.

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where I had the protagonist deliberately seek out a food club he wasn't part of so he could peek on the cute girls get new ideas for recipes he could try.

My dad said he liked figures, that's why he took typing in High School. (That would have been in the 50s, when typing was full of girls)

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ladyzenobia.livejournal.com

It would be easy to throw in a reference to some other activity. A Quidditch teammate worrying about a schedule conflict with another club.

We did have that. In OotP, I think when Harry thanked Angelina for accepting Ron to the team and Angelina said that there was some guy who flew better but who also had charms club and said that if it came to a conflict he preferred charms. The whole thing was treated as a joke. Silly kid with his charms club acting like it's more important than quidditch. Oh well...

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