I am a theoretical physicist and currently Director of 
August 02, 2005
Harry Potter's school life and mine (safe to read - no spoilers!)
One of the appealing things for me personally about the Potter books are the similarities with my own education, which results in waves of nostalgia sweeping over me as I read the stories. I went to a single-sex private school in Sri Lanka that was modeled on the British boarding school like Hogwarts, although about half the students (including me) commuted from home. We were called 'day-scholars' which, looking back now, seems like a quaint but dignified label when compared to the more accurate 'commuters.'
As in Hogwarts, we had teachers (some of whom we liked and others whom we disliked), who mostly taught in a didactic style, and we did have punishments like detention, writing lines, and even canings. In my own school, only the principal and vice principals could officially cane students, though some teachers still resorted to painful raps on the knuckles with rulers or even slaps across the face. Our chemistry teacher, who was an exceedingly kind and gentle man, nevertheless could be provoked to fits of violent rage which completely transformed him for a short time into a raging monster, during which he would lash out with the rubber hoses that were readily available in the laboratories, sometimes raising welts on an offending student's arm. The rage would subside as quickly as it was triggered and the teacher would be immediately overcome with remorse, apologizing profusely and begging for forgiveness, which we always agreed to because we liked him. We were fascinated by his Jekyll-and-Hyde transformations.
We also had the system of 'houses', which involved the separation of students into separate groups (such as Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw), each of which had a master in charge. The boarded students (or 'boarders') even had separate dormitories based on the houses. These houses were set in competition with each other, earning points for various achievements, These points were totaled at the end of the year, with a trophy going to the winning house, giving them bragging rights for a year.
The houses were a good way of encouraging team spirit and intramural competition, and provided opportunities for students who were not good enough to be in the school teams (or 'varsity' teams as they are known here) to still take part in a competitive program with their fellow students. I think that this system helped to increase participation of students in extracurricular activities because most students took seriously their responsibilities to help their house do well. The downside was that the competition could sometimes be too fierce, leading to churlish and unsportsmanlike behavior. The intramural quidditch games that take place at Hogwarts were mirrored in the cricket, rugby, and hockey matches at my school.
We also had the 'prefect' system, which must sound strange to American readers. (Hermione is a prefect in book 6 and I too was a prefect during my last two years in school.) A prefect was essentially a student who was given authority over his fellow students. A prefect was selected by the master in charge of each house and appointed by the school principal. Very few students were prefects. We had special privileges that others did not, such as being allowed to leave school premises during the day and a special lounge reserved exclusively for our use. We had the power to enforce rules during the school day, at special functions, and at athletic events, and could issue punishments such as detentions to 'evil doers.' In earlier times, prefects at my school were also allowed to use corporal punishments (such as caning misbehaving students), but that was taken away before my time as the use of corporal punishments became more restricted.
At that time, we saw it as a great privilege and honor to be selected as a prefect. It was viewed as recognizing and building leadership qualities. Looking back now, it does not seem to be such an unadulterated good thing. I sometimes wonder whether the house and prefect system was not also a cheap means of extending the reach of the school administration by creating a free labor force of rule enforcers. The house system and the prefect system may also have been a means of enhancing teacher and administration control over students by weakening overall student cohesion, another manifestation of the 'divide and rule' philosophy that the British used so successfully to maintain control over their colonies but which often resulted in ethnic strife and civil wars when they left.
But at other times I think that I am reading too much into this, and seeing too many dark undercurrents in well meaning, if perhaps misguided, attempts at encouraging student participation and developing student leadership. Perhaps I should lighten up.
POST SCRIPT
I find William Faulkner difficult to read and understand, and struggled through The Sound and the Fury. But I found the winning essay in the 2005 FAUX FAULKNER contest hilarious. It is by Sam Apple and is called The Administration and the Fury: If William Faulkner were writing on the Bush White House. You can read it here.
Comments
Great connection Mano - missed by all. I can understand people in the US missing the connection with the classic boarding school paperback - but those from the old Commnwealth?
Enid Blyton's Mallory Towers girls boarding school series, and then the Jennings post-war school bay series (kinder and gentler teachers) are interesting studies of what was considered "proper" then - the 1950s. Billy Bunter of all the boarding school farces is the darkest and is a good attempt to make light of Nicholas Nickleby (I had great trouble reading the book - I simply couldn't bear to read about all the cruel caning). In one Bunter - my favourite - Billy discovers ventriloquy and has a great time fooling everyone including Quelch until he is found out in the end - sadly. James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist... (?) contains sections on boarding school life - grim stuff. Maybe Rowling isn't talking about epic good vs. evil stuff at all. She may simply be puffing up the Quelch like characters into evil sorcerers and the playful children into warriors on the side of goodness.
George Orwell in his essay "Such such were the joys..." also writes about the dark side of boarding school life with its cruelty and petty humiliations and class distinctions. As a "scholarship" boy from a poor family, he was the lowest on the totem pole of class and it is clear that his experience left scars on him.
I went to a rather traditional school in Britain, which resembled yours in many ways except that boarding and corporal punishment were both phased out at around the time I started. The difference was that somehow my school had failed to persuade any of the children to take it seriously, so neither the positive parts of the system (like inter-house competition motivating people) nor the ugly parts (like authority for prefects and in-group/out-group strife) took hold. I've never quite figured out why these things didn't work in this particular school; I like to tell myself it's because we were all too clever to be taken in by it, but I know that's really just conceit on my part.
Perhaps the boarding school culture is the driving force for creating that kind of special world. After all, with boarding schools, you have students there 24/7 and you really need to pump up the extramural and extracurricular activities so that students have something to do and stay out of mischief after classes end. Although many of us were day-scholars, the school culture was very much that of a boarding school, and that carried the rest of us along.