oryx_leucoryx ([personal profile] oryx_leucoryx) wrote in [community profile] deathtocapslock2014-02-01 07:29 pm

11 Magical Schools

The recent Pottermore blurb about Durmstrang says, "Durmstrang once had the darkest reputation of all eleven wizarding schools, though this was never entirely merited." IOW there are 11 wizarding schools worldwide. I find this number surprisingly small, considering that the magical population served by Hogwarts comes from a population of roughly 64 million (UK) plus 4.7 million (Ireland) totaling some 69 million, out of a global population of about 7 billion, so just under 1%. I was expecting there to be several dozens of schools, not fewer than one dozen. (Yes, we only knew about 2 other schools in Europe, but surely those were merely the oldest ones, and additional schools could have been founded over the centuries?)

So how do we reconcile these?

If the proportion of magical to non-magical people in the UK is typical, then one possibility is that other schools have about 10 times the student body of Hogwarts, supporting the impression some readers here have of Hogwarts as a magical backwater.

Alternatively, it is possible that some parts of the world do not use wizarding schools as the way to pass on magical education. It is possible that some areas rely on home-education, private tutors serving improvised small groups of children, or apprenticeships with locally famous wizards. Perhaps some traditional societies still have magical folk living openly within the local non-magical community, with no requirement for separate education, just specific training in magic with a local adult wizard on top of whatever education is typically available in that community.

Or perhaps the UK and Ireland have an exceptionally high proportion of magical folk, and there really aren't all that many wizards in the world. Or other wizarding communities don't make an effort to include every magical child in their educational system as Hogwarts does with the quill. We are told (by Draco) that Durmstrang doesn't educate Muggleborns. Perhaps anyone who doesn't have parents that know about the magical school or whose parents don't make an effort to get their child into the magical school doesn't learn there. Not only Muggleborns, but also orphans like Tom Riddle (or only orphaned of their magical parent, like Dean), children of parents who didn't like the school or disagree with how it is run, children of neglectful parents, children of parents who lack the means to provide transportation, and so forth. In this case, there may be many undiscovered wizards within non-magical society, while the magical society outside of the UK and Ireland would be significantly more inbred.

What is your preferred scenario?

Also, where do you think these schools should be located?

In this blog post Andrew claims:

However, Goblet of Fire does also briefly mention an unnamed Brazilian wizarding school, where Bill Weasley once had a pen pal. In Wonderbook: Book of Potions, which also includes new content written by J.K. Rowling (as both Book of Spells and Book of Potions were created through an extension of Sony’s “Pottermore partnership” with Rowling), we also learn of a wizarding school in Japan named the “Mahoutokoro School of Magic” (see the Harry Potter Wikia), as well as one in Russia and another in South Africa, the names of which I was not quite able to catch while playing this game.

If we accept the details then the Russian school may be a 4th European school, or it may be somewhere in Siberia. IMO there should be more Asian schools, maybe in Tibet or Nepal, serving wizards from China, India and other parts of eastern and southern Asia. Then there should be a school serving wizards from the Middle East and northern Africa, perhaps with connections to the alchemy center in Alexandria. No Quidditch in this school, but they may race flying carpets. Probably 2 schools in the Americas?

Any thoughts?

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-02-03 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
Rather a long time ago I tried to esitmate magical population. It's ultimately a futile exercise since nothing that Rowling says about the subject makes any kind of sense or fits what she shows us in the books. The essay is on Red Hen at:

www(dot)redhen-publications(dot)com/wizpopulation(dot)html

Her *claim* that there are some 3000 witches and wizards in the UK is nonsense. It is even greater nonsense if we accept her claim that there are 600 students at Hogwarts. But then we know that Rowling has no sense of proportion.

Although, if the magical population of Great Britain *is* as low as 3000 it would explain how Albus Dumbledore ended up with all those honors and ceremonial offices. A population of 3000 doesn't give you much of a "talented tenth" to parcel out all of the leadership positions *to* does it?

But in any event, unless Great Britain's magical population is vastly higher or lower than that of the rest of the world, I ended up extrapolating a worldwide magical population of something under half a million (something like 320,000). Of whom those of school age would be a mere seven 1-year cohorts within an extrapolated age range of 0-120.

It still comes to more than 11 schools of the size that Rowling claims Hogwarts to be and never actually showed us.

[identity profile] malic-ba.livejournal.com 2014-02-03 02:38 pm (UTC)(link)
All true. A school 10 times the size of the Hogwarts we saw (about 2800?), OTOH, isn't unbelievable. Also, I wonder if the larger continental ones (I mean the ones with a catchment of up to a continent - sounds like there might be just one or two schools for South America, for example) might have multiple campuses, like lots if universities do?

I love the flying carpet racing :)

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-02-03 09:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Well the major issue of the functional school size is the size of the staff. We *never* got any indication that there was more than one teacher for each subject. For the *whole school*. One teacher would not be able to handle a courseload of 600 students. There isn't enough *time* to handle a courseload of 600 students. In the real world a teacher with a full courseload handles the teaching of maybe a couple of hundred if that. Even estimating 280 students at Hogwarts -- which would fit with the size of Harry's year -- is pushing it considerably, and really only doable fore the core classes if you assume that rather a lot of kids don't go beyond OWL-level on most of them.

And the teacher being magical isn't something that is going to make a difference considering the actual demands. Not unless anyone who teaches is required to use a time-turner and burn themselves out in the process.

[identity profile] annoni-no.livejournal.com 2014-02-03 10:57 pm (UTC)(link)
I've seen the suggestion that T.A.s could make up the labor deficit if we assume that they're the ones marking the students' (particularly the lower years') assignments, with the primary teachers doing spot checks for quality. General class prep and material inventory/quality checks could also be foisted off on them. This would leave the core teachers responsible for setting the lesson plans in addition to their actual classroom time, and probably more personal oversight of homework assignments once students reach N.E.W.T level work. Still a heavy load, but more reasonable than assuming they'd be responsible for all duties for each grade level.

If the T.A.s were never really in the classroom proper, nor given pride of place with the main staff in the dining hall, Harry could easily never have noticed them (nor is he curious or empathetic enough to wonder how his teachers deal with so many students without the issue being shoved under his nose).

Do you think this is reasonable?

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-02-03 11:24 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a reasonably plausible tap dance past the problem, but t's absolutely not supported by anything in canon. Hell there isn't even a school secretary, for ghod's sake. Just passwords to keep everyone from addressing the staff directly. No matter what the issue or how urgent the situation.

Indeed, all of Hogwarts is consistent with an 8-year-old's interpretation of how a school works. And that was just fine when these were all obviously children's books. But Rowling doesn't seem to give any thought past a certain point in the planning stage on any of the elements that she sets up. She never made any attempt to *keep* them children's books (and indeed claimed that she always intended them NOT to remain so). But whenever she wanted Harry to learn something new, she always dragged him out of Hogwarts to someplace else. She never seems to have shown him anything new *about Hogwarts* after she introduced the RoR. She certainly never let him notice that things worked in a more complex way or needed more staff to run it.

[identity profile] nx74defiant.livejournal.com 2014-02-08 02:18 am (UTC)(link)
Indeed, all of Hogwarts is consistent with an 8-year-old's interpretation of how a school works.

That sums up it up really well. Once the story goes beyond the children's book level she really needed to start adding depth.

She certainly never let him notice that things worked in a more complex way or needed more staff to run it.

That's true of the entire HP world. She never goes beyond the surface to think about the complexities need to make it really work.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-02-08 02:32 am (UTC)(link)
She never undertook reweaving new information back into the existing setup. Instead she made grand pronouncements that contradicted what she's already told us.

One of the worst examples was when she used Slughorn as an exposition machine in Book 6 to explain to the reader about Horcruxes. And makes it necessary at that time because *there was no other information about them at Hogwarts*. The subject was *banned*. This works just fine. But then in book 7 when she tries to carry forth, she's already changed her mind (or forgotten) about who knew what when and has Harry abruptly *explaining* to us that of course Tom already knew what they were -- he just wanted to know about multiple ones.

This just makes Slughorn's explanation to Tom a useless diversion and probably untrue as well *for no good reason*. Harry had already seen that the RoR is full of banned books. Slughorn had inadvertantly told Tom where to go to find information on any banned subject. I mean can anyone say that Tom didn't discover the RoR at some time during his time at Hogwarts? It's perfectly obvious that he did -- he used it to hide a Horcrux after all. He didn't learn that after he left. He probably discovered at least the Room of Lost Things while he was hunting for the Chamber of Secrets.

Admittedly this isn't as bad as contradicting information handed us in the *same book* a handful of chapters later. But it's bad enough.

[identity profile] nx74defiant.livejournal.com 2014-02-08 02:40 am (UTC)(link)
And makes it necessary at that time because *there was no other information about them at Hogwarts*. The subject was *banned*

And no student ever smuggles in banned thing!

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-02-08 02:54 am (UTC)(link)
Well, unless the theory I floated in my 'Minding the Gap' essay actually has grounds, the facts we *have* suggest that Tom, off in his orphanage for the summers had no access to the information that he was fishing for.

Yes he probably did spend some time with his classmates over the summers, but until he came across the term and knew what he was looking *for* he wouldn't have any idea where to look.

What fits with what we were given in HBP is that Tom came across the same reference that Hermione did some 50 years later -- which appears to be the only reference to the subject left in the library, and decided to investigate it. Sluggy gave him the basic summary and disavowed all personal knowledge. He also tried to head him off at the pass by letting him know that he wouldn't find that information at Hogwarts.

It also reads that Tom, now having been given a clue of a procedure that would further his attempt at immortality, started chasing the possibilities to the wrong person, off the top of his head, which resulted in frightening Slughorn out of his wits, and, belatedly warning Tom to shut up about it and back off. A bit of further consideration would probably have had him thinking of checking the Room of Lost Things for further information. If he had in mind what he was looking *for* in that room when he was pacing in front of the door it wouldn't have been a protracted search.

Admittedly, by the time the trio is at Hogwarts, those books are safely in the Headmaster's office, but when Tom was there, Dippett was Head and I'm not sure that he's have wanted them in *his* office. Indeed, Albus may not have retrieved them until after Tom showed up after his years away from Britain to ask for the DADA post.
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[personal profile] sunnyskywalker 2014-02-25 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
Never mind staffing ratios, what about language? Let's assume for the poor teachers' sakes that the other schools have appropriate faculty sizes. If you have one school taking students from--let's say--most of eastern Europe and Scandinavia, what language are classes in? Ditto Beaubatons if they're taking Spanish and Portuguese as well as French students.

I'd bet Latin is still a living (second) language for most Continental wizards. Perhaps students at the Asian schools (there has to be more than one) speak Sanskrit and write with classical Chinese characters? Arabic and Swahili maybe for their relevant regions?

I would love if there were a wizarding creole somewhere. Given that with wizarding travel methods Paris and Naples might as well be just down the street from each other, there ought to be even more mingling than Muggles with our trains and planes manage--and more importantly, since Floo powder is centuries old, it should have been going on far longer than Muggles have been zipping around at high speeds. At least if I were a magical merchant in 1500 and had made a cross-continent trip once, I'd be willing to put a lot of resources into building a humongous fireplace or inventing a special industrial Portkey to transport goods back. (Can you Portkey or side-along a wagon full of spices?) Even if that doesn't work, since Seclusion the small marriage market in any given region would provide some motivation to stay in touch. Maybe on the Continent these days an Italian pureblood is a more desirable match than a French halfblood, if you're French. Add in a multinational, multilingual student body being locked up together with no Muggle contact for most of the year and there ought to be at least a bit of linguistic difference from the Muggle neighbors.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-01 04:54 am (UTC)(link)
Ooooh yes. Language. We know for sure that Durmstrang at least has to take students from several different nations, because of those fur-lined cloaks, which are a required part of the uniform. Given that Bulgaria, the homeland of the only named, current Durmstrang student we know, borders on Turkey and Greece, a fur-lined cloak sounds a bit in excess of probable requirements. The school sounds more likely to at least be on the Baltic ocean, and possibly more north than that. It's also an indication that if there is a division between its catchment area and Beaubatons' it is likely to be between west and east rather than north and south.

But in fact there is probably no official catchment area for either school, and both take students from wherever they can get them.

Of course there seem to be translation spells, but I'd hate to base my education on one.
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[personal profile] sunnyskywalker 2014-03-01 06:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Poking around a bit, it seems Bulgaria has some nice mountains and parts can get quite cold... but the way Viktor describes the glacier and the forests, plus the fur cloaks and Germanic (-ish) school name, does sound like it's meant to point farther north. The headmaster is named Igor (a Slavic name, and Karkaroff is probably supposed to be as well). We know Gellert Grindelwald (er... Swiss, and into skiiing? though turns out Gellert can be a Hungarian name as well as German...) was a former student. Stuff outside the books gives the founder of the school as Nerida Vulchanova, and her successor as Harfang Munter. I'd bet on "somewhere north." Quite varied possibilities for the student body, too, so yeah, I would not want to rely on a translation spell. The more I think about it, the more I think wizarding European schools just never quit using Latin like Muggle schools did. Little Viktor probably learned it at his mother's knee, to be prepared for school when he was old enough.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-01 06:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Thinking a little more, I suspect that the real issues of both the European schools is some specialization of the curiculum. We know that Durmstrang does actually teach the Dark Arts (we do not know in what context, but I doubt that Amycus Carrow's handling of the subject would have passed muster). I would imagine that there is some specialty for which Beaubatons is justly famed as well.

Hogwarts appears to mainly teach only English-speaking students and doesn't appear to teach them anything out of the ordinary -- although it is possible that one of the optional subjects may be a Hogwarts specialty. I doubt that Divination, Muggle Studies, or Ancient Runes would be the specialty, but Care of Magical Creatures or Arithmancy seem at least possibles.

[identity profile] annoni-no.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 02:25 am (UTC)(link)
Hogwarts would be well-suited to specialize in magical creatures given its proximity to the Forbidden Forest. They were able to conceal four dragons there for the Tri-wizard Tournament in addition to the colony of acromantulae and the herd of thestrals it normally conceals. It's also home to a number of centaurs and who knows how many other magical beasts and beings.

Durmstrang is so paranoid about secrecy it probably doesn't want large numbers of difficult to control magical beasts living nearby. Beauxbatons may be poorly positioned to maintain them while protecting Secrecy.

If so, then I think we have further evidence of Dumbledore sabotaging Hogwarts as an educational institution. Weren't even the thestrals brought in under Dippet?
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[personal profile] sunnyskywalker 2014-03-04 03:47 am (UTC)(link)
Depends on whether they have to keep the beasts nearby to have it as a viable class. Could they Floo the students over to the dragon reserve in Romania and wherever else for classes twice a week? Maybe Charlie is actually the plucky token foreigner on the team over there.

It would still be easier to actually have it all on site, since constant Flooing or Portkeying still opens potential security holes. But it might not be as tricky as it would be for a Muggle school facing an equivalent challenge.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 05:56 am (UTC)(link)
Not necessarily. Kettleburn was a complete flake by all accounts and he was the previous instructor.

Frankly, I'd say that Arithmancy is about the only real likely *subject* to be a specialty of the school. Although more than one of the instructors of the core subjects are probably *very* highly rated.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
That makes a tremendous amount of sense. And Arithmancy probably is very useful in a number of other fields as well. British-trained Arithmancers may be an certain elite group -- not that we would ever assume so if the only person we listened to regarding wizarding society was Ron Weasley.

But yes, Hermione would have picked up exactly that kind of information by the end of her first year -- in the remote chance that it wasn't mentioned in any of her prep reading before she ever boarded the Hogwarts Express. And she's fortunate that she has the kind of mind that can handle the demands of the subject. Wizardly illogic is not advantage in anything that deals -- however peripherally -- with math.
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[personal profile] sunnyskywalker 2014-03-04 03:42 am (UTC)(link)
Ooh, interesting thoughts! I would so read about this in a fic series if someone wrote it.

[identity profile] snapes-witch.livejournal.com 2014-02-03 06:05 pm (UTC)(link)
I think she eventually changed that 3,000 to 30,000, which still seems awfully small to me.

[identity profile] sharaz-jek.livejournal.com 2014-02-03 07:28 pm (UTC)(link)
The problem is, the higher the population, the harder it is to keep them a secret. Obliviators must be the Wizarding World's largest industry.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-02-03 09:30 pm (UTC)(link)
30,000 would be impossible to hide in the kind of nooks and crannies that magicals hide in.

On the other hand, the standard of living that we see requires substantially more than the 3000 she claims. I'd be more inclined to put it at up to 10,000, but assuming a projected lifespan of 150 years that would indicate a school-aged population of 450-500 which would fit what she has to say about Hogwarts size, but never actually shows, and what she shows demands that it be no more than half of that.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 06:00 am (UTC)(link)
That is a valid point. Yet nobody appears to be noticing that if the number of students declines (and that really sounds like a 50% drop at least), clearly the population is also going to decline -- unless they expect to get a lot of adult immigrants from other nations.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 08:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Yup. People deciding not to have kids in an unstable political situation will reduce a population *much* more effectively than a small band of maniacs running around and killing people.

And makes a bit of sense that upon arrival at Hogwarts, Harry noticed that "there were an awful lot of muggle-borns".

Yet we don't get an impression that starting around Harry's year 3 the annual intake of new students was suddenly increasing -- which it ought to have, starting right around then. Ginny's year might still be small because of the September 1 cut-off date. The post-war celebration births would have only started showing up around July (she was born in August). Most of the potential "baby" boom would have been in the year following.

[identity profile] dorea-ysleen.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 09:18 pm (UTC)(link)

Just a slight nitpick - the "celebration births" wouldn't have started until the year AFTER Ginny's birth: she was born in August 1981, Voldemort was vanquished on Halloween 1981, so the baby boom shouldn't have started before July/August 1982, noticebly affecting the Hogwarts student body only from Sept. 1994 (Harry's fourth year) onward. Not that there was any hint of that, either.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Duh. Right.

Starting (slowly) with Harry's year 3, then and descending in force with year 4.

And a Tournament disrupting things on top of everything! Who the hell thought *that* was a good idea? Can't they count?

[identity profile] dorea-ysleen.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 09:36 pm (UTC)(link)

Apparently not. Guess all the arithmancers found greener pastures... :-)

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 11:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, Minerva chivvyed everyone out who was under age, but we don't know they all went. Ginny came back for the battle, so she flew in under the radar, since she was still underage by 3+ months. Luna and Colin may have both been of age by that time, as were a large percentage of the 6th year, but no one 5th year or under.
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[personal profile] sunnyskywalker 2014-03-04 04:10 am (UTC)(link)
Maybe when they said they wanted to promote international cooperation, they actually meant matchmaking? Showing off to the foreign students and have a largish group of them living there long enough to form attachments to Hogwarts students in hopes of bringing in a few future brides and grooms? It seems to have worked in Fleur Delacour's case. Krum invited Hermione to Bulgaria, which is the wrong way about, but given how impressed the Durmstrang students were with the gold plates and lack of forced rowing at Hogwarts maybe it would have ended with him moving to Britain if the relationship had worked out.

If it hadn't been for Cedric dying, who knows? Maybe a few students would have wanted to transfer to Hogwarts because they'd made friends and it seemed cool and the whole Voldemort thing had blown over ages ago so their parents might think it was safe enough. But student deaths tend to put a damper on plans like that, regardless of the cause.

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-02 09:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah. Finally something from Pottermore that doesn't make a pig's breakfast of everything we've seen in the books.

The potential for a staff reduction wouldn't have happened until about 1980, from what we can see squinting around the edges of the text. Even though Rowling may not have *meant* anything by it, Albus's comment in chapter 1, book 1, that "there's been little to celebrate for 11 years" rather solidly pins the probable date that wizarding society as a whole became both aware of Lord Voldemort, and afraid to speak his nom-de-guerre.

Still that would indicate a decade of falling student numbers before Harry's cohort (presumably the smallest one in the whole 20th century) showed up.

We don't know how much the Ministry meddles with the Hogwarts budget, if at all, but it is possible that the Board of Governors insisted on those reductions as the student body declined. We know Albus was willing to discard Divination from the curriculum, but eliminating a study that most students are not actually qualified to practice professionally isn't exactly sabotaging anything.
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[personal profile] sunnyskywalker 2014-03-04 04:02 am (UTC)(link)
You bringing up immigration makes me wonder how much international migration actually occurs in the Potterverse. Do purebloods marry foreign purebloods in preference to local less-than-purebloods? How often? We don't seem to see much of this in the family histories we get for some reason. Draco says his father almost sent him to Durmstrang, but we never hear about anyone from Hogwarts actually transferring, or mentioning a friend who went abroad for school instead of Hogwarts. Fleur Delacour seems like one of the only people ever to actually move to another country (Ludovic Bagman's name is suggestive of him or his parents having immigrated, and maybe Dolohov). Bill and Charlie, though Bill moves back home after a few years, and doesn't seem to have become a citizen of magical Egypt so maybe it was more a long-term assignment overseas. Really we don't see enough to draw any firm conclusions, I think.

Maybe the drop in population isn't so much due to a decrease in births but to British wizards moving to Canada and Australia in droves during Voldemort's peak years? And the remaining British wizards think a lot of them will be coming back eventually?

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-04 04:05 am (UTC)(link)
Always possible. But then it's been a decade since Voldemort was supposedly defeated and everything is back to business as usual. If they were going to come back, you'd have expected them to do it already.
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[personal profile] sunnyskywalker 2014-03-04 04:14 am (UTC)(link)
Well, yes, but that's because we have common sense. Wizards might still be going, "Oh, they didn't ever intend to move permanently, so I'm sure they just need a little more time to get their affairs in order. After all we're by far the best, so why wouldn't they come back?" (And meanwhile the expats are going, wait, this Canadian school seems to have... standards? Maybe we'd better stay, for the children...)

[identity profile] jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com 2014-03-04 04:18 am (UTC)(link)
Right!
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[personal profile] sunnyskywalker 2014-02-25 05:13 am (UTC)(link)
My preferred scenario is (a) some schools are much larger, and (b) JKR is also wrong about the number of schools ;-) Let's say there are 11 old, major schools with endowments and rich and famous alumni, and then some little bitty local schools with barely enough funding. No one counts them because most of them don't last anywhere near a thousand years and most people haven't heard of them.

Possibly there are also still apprenticeship programs in place of institutional schooling, so that an 8 year old might apprentice to a Potions master, learn potioneering and maybe a bit of whatever else is useful for the job, and be licensed to use magic only for that job. That might be the fate of some of the Muggleborns in Durmstrang's catchment area, if there isn't a lower-tier school handy--get "discovered" and the rights to your training sold off to whomever is willing to take you on (wouldn't want you out there performing accidental magic and drawing attention, after all), work in a shop and marry another Muggleborn former apprentice, and if you're lucky, your grandkids will be more or less acceptable in "proper" wizarding society.

Kwikspell-type courses might more or less work for some people (just not Squibs). Sort of like the magical equivalent of studying to take the GED maybe?