wherein Liz's inner teacher disapproves of J. K. Rowling

[edenfalling]

I wrote 600 words of "Secrets" tonight, but only 300 of them actually count. This is because they are both the beginning of scene... wait, what scene am I on, anyway? *checks file* Scene 7, apparently. Good to know.

Anyway, I worked out a class schedule for Ginny years ago, which relies on the assumptions that A) Hogwarts only has one teacher for each subject, B) classes are one-house unless they are Doubles, in which case they are two-house, and C) the professors do not use Time-Turners all day long. This necessitated a couple other assumptions, such as NEWT-level classes being four-house (I did the scheduling between GoF and OotP, so for all I knew, this was valid -- actually, I cannot recall off the top of my head whether canon contradicted me on that later on) and Hogwarts using a rotating two-week block schedule and lots of homework rather than students having a lesson in every subject every day.

The upshot of this is that the week after the mess in the Chamber is a Week Two schedule in my world, which means Ginny ought to have Defense at 8am on Wednesday (I have successfully navigated through Monday and Tuesday... though I still need to fix the end of the Hagrid scene, which is scene 6). But Lockhart is unavailable.

"No problem!" I thought. "Obviously Dumbledore will do most of the substitute teaching himself, and have other professors (mostly ones who teach electives) fill in as needed, basing their lessons off reading Lockhart's books and summarizing the useful bits, or simple exercises cribbed from previous Defense teachers' old lesson plans." I was just getting into the swing of this when it occurred to me that perhaps I should check canon to make sure there was not a 'real' Defense teacher for the final month of term.

And I found that there was no Defense class for the final month of term.

...

As an occasional teacher myself (homeschool and Sunday school), I find that abhorrent. There are times I really hate being constrained by Rowling's more juvenile wish-fulfillment story elements.

But the point of "Secrets" is to be utterly faithful to canon (except when that is literally impossible, because canon is, y'know, wrong -- like having school on Valentine's Day, which was a Sunday that year), so I stuck my little Dumbledore scenelet in my alt. scenes file and wrote a new scene opening instead. This means my 'Ginny continues to ease back into school' scene will now occur with Professor McGonagall (Transfiguration, 9am) instead. That's okay. It's mostly filler to get to the confrontation with Daphne anyway, which is the real point of scene 7.

Comments

[branchandroot]

Rowling's scheduling of all sorts of things is extremely difficult to contort a rationale around, I totally agree. I'm still rolling my eyes over the bit about no tertiary education, and yet surgeons and lawyers and other training-intensive professions.

[edenfalling]

The only way I can make sense of that is via an apprenticeship system, which would not be too out of place with the general retro feel of the wizarding world... and which might help explain why many wizarding 'systems' are corrupt and/or broken and dysfunctional. They have never organically developed the idea of standardization and have only haphazardly copied bits and pieces of standardized systems from the Muggle world.

[branchandroot]

*nods* That was what I figured, too. Guild-type arrangements for internships or trade school. If I recall, that was the entry where I concluded that the non-wizard world would totally steamroller the wizards if the two were ever in true conflict, because of that difference in organization on top of numbers.

[lukita.livejournal.com]

I'm right here spazzing along with you, dood, no class just because the teacher went to the hospital? Does not compute. Schools tries to stay open up until a confirmed case of H1N1 (pig flu) from a student or faculty member here in Hong Kong. Then a couple of private schools reopened after.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Do not attempt to understand why J.K. Rowling wrote anything the way she did. It's too hard on your brain, though sometimes the WTFery will make you giggle...in a crazed way.

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

I do wonder how they managed to take exams without that month of extra knowledge..

[silverblade219.livejournal.com]

I still sometimes have trouble with the just one teacher per subject, but that might be because I go to overpopulated schools. And it does seem canon that there are few to none official substitutes, with Snape taking over Lupin's class that one time, except for the lady who taught Hagrid's class while he was away. (I don't remember Dumbledore subbing a class in the books, but I haven't reread them in a while)

It makes me wonder about the students who want to become teachers. There must be a lot of competition, because there seem to few positions that aren't already taken, especially if we count Hogwarts as the wizarding school in the UK (unless I'm forgetting about other schools).

[edenfalling]

Yeah, I am just like, "Okay, so finding Defense teachers is obviously hard and finding one to teach just one month off of someone else's (bad) lesson plans is also hard, but... if Dumbledore could find people to sub for Lupin during full moons, surely he can rearrange schedules to cover Lockhart for a month, right?"

Because you don't cancel class when there is ANY reasonable way you could manage to continue lessons.

[edenfalling]

Oh, I KNOW! But "Secrets" has to work with and alongside canon, and I am constitutionally incapable of letting some of the stupider things go by without an explanation (if for no other reason than the tone of my story being more realistic and thus making the stupid stand out like a sore thumb), so I am forced to rationalize Rowling's logical, numerical, and chronological errors somehow. *sigh*

[edenfalling]

Fortunately, exams were cancelled that year. (Except, one assumes, for OWLs and NEWTs, though perhaps those were postponed until the summer.) That's another bit of stupid wish-fulfillment, but I am slightly more willing to let that one go than I am to ignore a whole month of cancelled lessons.

[edenfalling]

I don't think Dumbledore subbed a class in canon, but... I think he must have gotten more people than just Snape to cover for Lupin during full moons, since Snape did have his own classes to teach. So there is really no telling who subbed the other Defense lessons that day.

And I cannot make the numbers work out to any more than 350 students in Hogwarts, with 300 being a more likely average, so it's not as if the teachers are overwhelmed by class size. I think it works out to roughly 10 students per house per year, so they shouldn't have to cope with classes larger than 20-25 students max. Granted, that's larger than ideal, but that's in Double lessons where the kids are generally paired off for labwork, which reduces the numbers to 10 teams.

...I have a file on this somewhere, I know I do.

I think it is possible that some wizards are homeschooled, and some are sent elsewhere, and there are vague hints now and then that Hogwarts is prestigious and not everybody gets in so perhaps there is the equivalent of a vocational school to complement it, but no, generally speaking I think Hogwarts is the only magical school in the UK and Ireland. (I am not totally sure about Ireland -- Seamus might be from Northern Ireland and thus a British citizen, while the Republic could have its own school -- but I think Hogwarts was the school back when Ireland was entirely ruled by England and remained so even after independence. Wizards do not change institutions lightly.)