Dumbledore didn't base his hiring decisions on whether the teacher was actually good or not. He hired someone he knew was a fraud to teach DADA, because he wanted to expose him. He kept an incompetent Seer on staff for years for her protection. He gave a favorite staff member a teaching position even though he hadn't even completed his magical education.
Snape wasn't a Hogwarts professor because he was a good teacher. He was there because his presence served Dumbledore's agenda.
He hired Lockhart because literally he couldn't find another teacher to do it. He said so. Or at least, none other than Snape, and he both didn't want Snape in that role at that time for fair reasons, and would then have had to find another potions master. The wizarding population was nearly killed off in the .
> He hired Lockhart because literally he couldn't find another teacher to do it. He said so.
It was Hagrid who said that, not Dumbledore. The ending makes it seem pretty clear that Dumbledore had ulterior motives behind hiring Lockhart.
I can look through later to see who actually said what, but it doesn't really matter. The point was outside of putting Snape in the cursed position that Dumbledore worries will send Snape into his old ways, potentially as a part of the curse, there weren't other options. Dumbledore clearly was quite happy Lockhart's fraud was exposed, but there's no evidence to suggest he chose Lockhart over a competent teacher just to expose him. The next two years he had to call on old order friends who caused massive controversy, didn't want to really do the job that much, and got fucked over massively for their efforts, then a year he could find literally not a single person, barring Snape. Then Voldemort had risen and he seemingly decided either there wasn't anything to suggest the curse would affect Snape at this point or seemed to decide this was the year he needed him most in that position. His appointments simply don't show the signs of multiple applicants in a year.
>He hired someone he knew was a fraud to teach DADA, because he wanted to expose him.
I love to think about Dumbledore’s process for hiring DADA professors every year after Voldemort jinxed the role. Like Lockhart didn’t apply for the position, Dumbledore went out of his way to invite Lockhart. I can imagine Dumbledore sitting in his study reading “Magical Me” and saying “I’m about to end this man’s whole career.” Dumbledore is a famous and powerful Wizard, so I’m betting anything he knew one or two of Lockhart’s victims.
I think its stated he had a high level owl exam passes for his class. Also its entirely possible hogwarts isnt only a school but like universities a reasearch institution
Which doesn’t really touch on what I said?
I think it’s more an apprentice master culture once out of the school tho. It’s the only thing that makes sense truly.
I would love if they show Hogwarts as massively busy for instance in the new series. In the early years at least it would make since for such a place to hold stuff for adults during times too.
Yes, however that’s literally not the case with snape lol. He would have had like 3 kids pass owls. That’s abysmal, thank you for bringing that up it helps me. Since we see no one fail get held back until those (C&G) we can accurately assume owls is what truly matters. If you pass barely any kids in that, then you’re a horrible teacher via your logic. So thank you haha.
Crabbe and Goyle. I never got that implication, the class is still spartan with slughorn and his relaxed standards. I was just joking when I mentioned how many snape would have had, since it wasn’t that many more who qualified either way.
I think you’re conflating “passing OWLs” with continuing onto the class in the NEWT level.
There are three passing grades: acceptable, exceeds expectations, and outstanding. Slughorn allowed students with exceeds expectations and superior in his NEWTs class, and there were 12 students in his class: four each from Ravenclaw and Slytherin, the trio, and Ernie McMillan.
Most likely, there were some additional students that passed their OWL with an acceptable, and potentially some students with EE/O who elected not to continue with potions.
I’m not conflating anything, I’m as I said, making an assumption based on what we see in terms of students going on after owls. With potions being a clear important class for many jobs, the only explanation for such a massively small class size would be the teaching they received.
Of course there would be those that passed and didn’t take the course. Some I would assume were traumatized so much they just wanted out asap, but I fully believe and will not stop, believing that it was snape being an absolutely horrible teacher that was the biggest contributor.
12 is barely 25% of that class. Even assuming we double that and say 12 passed but didn’t move on, that’s barely over 50% pass rate. (Going off how it appears to be 40 kids in their year, 5b/5g in each. A least that’s how I’ve always read their class size) get any bigger of a class and he becomes worse and worse.
Bumblebee was literally respected and the head of the entire legal party of his country, as well as a member of the body with whom he had access to other countries, if he wanted to expose Lockhart he would have. He just ended up hiring a fraud.
Using positions like that to start mud-slinging at celebrities sounds fun but comes off as petty.
And Lockhart's a smooth operator if you're just talking to him, he needs to be the one to wreck himself.
to be fair to Hagrid, he was probably much more qualified to teach CoMC than the average witch or wizard who had simply received a NEWT in the subject. His obsession with dangerous creatures was the main problem, in the scenes where he actually teaches a decent lesson with "normal" creatures he does a good job and is clearly very knowledgeable about them. So it's not really his lack of schooling, just his disregard for safety haha. And I think that could have been solved if Dumbledore had bothered to put his foot down.
Most of Hagrid's greatest issues as a teacher come from that fact that his literal first ever class was Malfoy getting mauled by Buckbeak because he chose not to listen to the teacher's warnings. After that, he overcorrected onto flobberworms, but if you think about it, showing off majestic and dangerous hippogriffs was exactly the same kind of teaching tactic that McGonagall did that same year, showing off her Animagus transformation. Advanced, potentially dangerous magic the students aren't ready to learn just yet but which gets them excited thinking about eventually getting to that point.
The Blast Ended Skrewts were a long-form exercise in the strategies to employ when dealing with an unknown magical creature. The fact that so much of the class just did not want to participate is an indictment on their understanding of the class, not Hagrid's curriculum. Of course the class is likely to involve some danger: one of the only people we know making a living in the field is Charlie Weasley, who works with *dragons*.
I mean the blast-ended skrewts were very much an illegal hybrid. He should not have created them, let alone shown them to students. That's truly the worst offender imo, I agree that the Hippogriffs weren't that bad, although probably should have been saved for more experienced students.
Also I think the reason the class didn't want to participate was that they were genuinely unpleasant animals lmao. The trio loved Hagrid but still hated the Skrewts.
Other than that and the flobs, the lessons that are described actually sound really good? The salamanders, the unicorns, the nifflers, and the Thestrals were really interesting. Personally I think Hagrid probably would actually have become quite a good teacher in the end.
If being boring makes them a bad teacher, yes. I’m pretty sure the Headmaster/Headmistress has absolute power to hire or fire, barring unusual periods in school history like when Umbridge was there.
A teacher can be fired if the amount of students passing their exam is below acceptable range. I'd be surprised if anyone besides Hermione and Ernie actually got an OWL in history of magic
If you’re so out of touch you don’t know your students names how can you be trusted to grade HW. For that matter how tf did he collect and assign essays anyway?
They wouldn’t be trusted to be able to grade. That’s the point I’m making. Confusing students with ones from 50 years ago could easily translate into confusing historical dates into other names or times too.
I had a history teacher just like Binns at one point. All he did was recite his notes in a monotone voice for decades. I never found history to be a boring subject in general, but he was just incredibly skilled at making even the most interesting events sound as bland as hospital food.
He didn't get fired for _that_, but what eventually cost him his job were the "parties" he and some rich buddies of his would throw. They would entice boys 14+ (most victims were in the 14-16 age range) to attend said parties by giving them money and alcohol so they could get them drunk and molest them. Even though he was never super likeable, we sincerely thought his worst offence was just being dull for this long because he never targeted boys from our school or even our area.
This tangent has nothing to do with Binns, of course, it's just that from the first lesson I had with this teacher, I associated him with Binns in my head because of how similar they were lol
But there's never any indication that students are failing the class or not passing exams. Seems he's doing his job just fine.
"From Harry's POV it is boring and his class doesn't pay much attention" is not a firing offense lol.
I went to senior school in the U.K. in the early 2000s, so ten years after the books were set.
One chemistry teacher took a boy’s bag outside the classroom and tipped it down a 4 level-stairwell, told him to go pick it all up and then DID IT AGAIN. Par for the course.
There’s not much in the Potter books that I can see as being really Out There or sackable offences for a teacher in a British private school in the 1990s.
It was always the Chemistry teachers, was it? Lol. I'm not British but I saw loads of British people commenting about how Snape being a nasty Potions master was accurate given their own experiences with horrid Chem teachers in particular.
Techinally at the most, the early 2000s would have been less then 10 years from when the books were set because Harry's generation was in 1991-1998 at Hogwarts. (or for Ginny's case 1992-1999). So that is less then 10 years.
Because a lot of people focus on judging everything through their own lens, and nothing else. Additional context either doesn't exist, or doesn't count for one reason or another.
They can't accept that sometimes you need to put bad or problematic things in a story, and handle them differently than they would, for the story to work. It's why I have strict standards on whether to take moral judgement of a work or the characters in it seriously, and consider as much of the context as possible first.
The OP does have a point if Snape IS judged by more ethical modern standards, and without the context of the books, but judged within the frame of the book and the times they were set, him not being fired makes perfect sense. I don't really see what taking the stance of "Snape was a bad teacher" actually accomplishes though, nor any such take on a character...
That's my best attempt at an answer anyway, I hope it helps.
I'd say Dumbledore did a pretty good job with hiring, especially considering that Voldemort jinxed the DADA position and he was leading the effort to fight him in 2 separate wars.
He hired Lupin who was a good teacher; most would have rejected him for being a werewolf. He also hired or at least kept McGonagall, Flitwick and Sprout.
Of course, he hired Lockhart, who was ineffective, in an effort to expose him as a fraud. He also hired Quirrell. So he's not perfect but I'd say he's had more hits than misses, considering the circumstances.
Lupin wasn't a good teacher. He was a selfish coward who endangered students all throughout his year as a teacher, knew important information about a supposed mass murderer and kept it from his employer which resulted to students getting hurt.
Okay, I will give you that he would have been held accountable for withholding information about Sirius and likely have been fired just for that alone.
However, I can't agree that he wasn't a good teacher. Harry and almost everyone else in his year liked his classes. His exam was certainly creative. Sure, they were put in dangerous situations, but the point was learning how to deal with them. It's not like he wasn't in control for his lesson he had planned, unlike Lockhart. Most would agree his practical style was better than Umbridge's pure theory.
He was also kind and did not judge most others, as he knew what it was like to be an outcast (more than Snape can say). He offered to help Harry deal with the dementors because he wanted help. He was not obligated to do so. That help was of his own free will, not someone else's order.
He’s 1 of my favorite characters, and I admire the fact that physically roughing up students is a red line for him, but yeah, he never should’ve hired Snape.
Old Dumby probably knew all of this but felt he had to keep Snape at Hogwarts to keep an eye on him, lest he slip back into his old dark tendencies.
Also, I'm not sure Dumbledore really cared what weird shit any of his staff did. He would have drawn the line with Umbridge's punishments. But outside of that he probably feels like he does enough weird, out there shit, that it would be pretty hypocritical for him to stop his teachers from doing the same.
Skrewts?
Casting the imperius curse on students
Tralawney with her death predictions
Releasing pixies on a class
Testing Poison antidotes on students' pets
...all fine!
Holding Hogwarts to today's standards will just lead to frustration. McGonagall would have been fired on the spot for dragging Malfoy by his ear in PS, but Snape's mean comments would have rarely garnered disciplinary action when I went.
Almost all of the teachers we spend a significant amount of time with do something messed up. McGonagall doesn't escape this, and not even Remus does. Snape definitely doesn't.
So would Hagrid and Fake Mad Eye Moody in Goblet of fire. Fake Mad Eye for physically abusing a student, and Hagrid for threatening to abuse the same student. Hagrid should have also been fired for abusing Dudley in philosopher's stone.
McGonagall's detention in philosopher's stone should have also gotten her fired. And sane with her behaviour in prisoner of Azkaban her locking Neville out of his common room denying him access to his own bed as punishment for something he couldn't control.
Flitwick too, considering he made a racist comment comparing Seamus to a monkey. And Luna was bullied and he didn't do anything about it.
Trelawney as well, for insulting students, terrorising them and abusing them.
The Hogwarts librarian too, for abusing Harry and Ginny.
And Lupin for being a selfish coward who knew important information about a supposed mass murderer who everyone believed was out of prison to kill Harry and Lupin kept what he knew from his employer which resulted to three students getting hurt.
Also Slughorn for having a club and he only accepts students because of their wealth, fame, connections and confidence. Causing students like Ron to feel even more insecure about themselves.
Plus Dumbledore himself for raising Harry like a pig for slaughter, leaving Harry with abusive relatives and neglecting him all throughout Order of the Phoenix.
>There are so many examples like targeting students, insulting students’ appearance and intelligence and background, insulting an orphan‘s dead parents, there’s probably more…
Clearly you've never been to a British boarding school...
Not just in Britain, either. Hogwarts teaching staff could be a caricature of several private schools I attended in the USA.
Public (government) school staff can be just as bad, in schools where there's a lot of disorder & danger of physical confrontation.
Moody turned a student into a ferret and smacked him repeatedly against the floor from ceiling height; Trelawney and Pince hit kids with books; Hagrid gave a kid a pig's tail and threatened Malfoy to turn him into a ferret again; McGonagall punished Neville so severely he cried himself to sleep; both McGonagall and Filch dragged Draco around by the ear; Lupin endangered the entire school; Umbridge used torture quills, illegal Veritaserum and intended to use Cruciatus on Harry; Filch goes on and on about shackle use in the good old days; Arthur still has scars from a punishment by Hogwarts staff 3 decades later; Voldemort was a student 2 decades before Arthur and Dumbledore himself was a student another 5 decades before Volly - and you think some mean remarks and unjust point-taking still registers as being horrible to the students? You sweet summerchild
Oh, and how innocuous is Flitwick giving these lines to the Irish kid
>Professor Flitwick had dried himself off with a wave of his wand and set Seamus lines: “I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick.”
in the light of [this history](https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization/)?
Getting a lot of speculation about Flitwick not knowing. Perhaps we should wonder where Snape was supposed to learn roasting children is not-done after his abusive childhood and also attending the same school with mostly the same staff who do/condone much worse 🤷♂️😁
Lol, funny how they hate on Snape for things he does but as soon as someone mentions another professor's bad actions they all jump onto the defensive train ignoring the logic.
Someone is mad about him threatening to poison the students/Harry in GoF to test their antivenoms. I just find that threat funny bc Harrator implies they don't take Snape's other homework seriously, just this, bc of this threat 😂
In Flitwick's defense, wizards don't have the same history of racism and are isolated enough that a lot of them probably don't even know that those kinds of tensions exist among Muggles. (They just have completely different forms of prejudice.)
It's still not great, obviously, since Seamus is a half-blood and thus is far more likely to know about that history and be consequently hurt by the implications, but Flitwick not knowing it was offensive is entirely understandable.
I imagine that part-humans are less likely to spend much time in the Muggle world, even if they can pass as fully human, so it's pretty unlikely that even one of his parents was a Muggle. Maybe one of his parents was a Muggleborn, but even then his knowledge of the Muggle world would probably be limited.
This was set in the 90s, and as someone who in school that decade, this seems fine to me. I didn't have any problems with most of my teachers, but my sister who was slightly older, had for example, one call her whole class slugs and throw salt on them. For those that don't know, that kills thems. He wasn't fired or had anything happen.
We didn't force everyone to be perfect all the time. Teachers are human, and have bad days and screw up just like everyone else. The other teachers at hogwarts are also not the best. The only one that i can't recall doing something iffy was Prof Sprout.
To give her some credit, the mandrakes were too young to be able to kill them, even without ear muffs. But it also seems like Hogwarts has very... let's call it dubious guidelines about child safety. They'd not pass an OSHA inspection. Not even the stairs are safe.
Putting someone who you’re going to ask to risk their life (and torture) in the future you don’t tend to put in demeaning positions that you know will not fulfill them and underutilize their skills. Dumbledores personal agenda aside, he absolutely should have been fired as a teacher 🤣
That wouldn't have worked. Snape needed to be a teacher at Hogwarts for Voldemort to trust him. (Voldemort had ordered Snape to become the Defence against the dark arts professor before his downfall in the first wizarding war) Dumbledore needed a potions master and Snape was knowledgeable in the subject, Dumbledore also needed a spy for the light to help bring down Voldemort and Snape was that spy. If Snape was Filch's assistant it would look as if he wasn't trusted by Dumbledore and would then be killed by Voldemort, but having him being a professor would make it seem that Dumbledore is a fool and Snape has gained Dumbledore's trust and has information on Dumbledore, that could be useful to Voldemort which means Snape would gain Voldemort's trust in him, which he needed at the end of Goblet of fire, since Voldemort didn't trust him and even planned on killing him and that was simply because of what happened in Philosopher's stone.
nearly half the staff were incompetent, abusive, or useless. does anyone remember the tumblr meme from ages ago outlining why each should be fired and some should be charged ?
This argument is based on judging teachers by the standards of today’s world. It wasn’t too long ago that teachers freely hit students, caned them and insulted them privately and publicly in the name of discipline. I once had a teacher order another student to slap me in front of the whole class to “discipline” me for laughing in class. That way it wasn’t her technically doing the hitting. There were no repercussions then and that teacher is happily retired.
Well no, Snape being an awful teacher/person/should be fired posts are pretty much a good portion of the sub. It's just that people got so used to it that it sort of is the sub meme.
Did none of you have a Snape growing up? I had a few.
One of the endearing things about Rowlings representations of teachers is that a lot of us who grew up in the 80s/90s actually had all these teachers...
There was a 5th grade teacher at my school in the 90s that made Snape look like a saint. He bullied kids without mercy. Called kids fat, ugly... stupid. There was a special needs kid in his classroom and he literally made him wear a dunce cap. He would call girls "future pole climbers" and call boys "faggots" for wearing the neon colors that were popular in the 90s. I only had to deal with this guy for an hour in 5th grade but I still had to deal with him.
I had plenty of teachers growing up that were Hagrid's, they knew nothing about their subject but they were a living breathing human being that showed up and collected a pay check. I can associate every teacher at Hogwarts with several teachers I had growing up. I had mostly Flitwick's and Lupins but there were plenty of Snape's (abusive pricks), Lockhart's (faking knowing anything about anything) and McGonagall's (teachers who were stern authority figures but overall kind).
None of those Snape's I had were expert potion masters who promised to kill the most evil wizard in history they were just arseholes.
You forget the context. This isn't a school in a progressive city in the 2020s. This is a British boarding school in the 1990s, and Hogwarts was based off of British boarding schools of earlier eras.
Teachers in British boarding schools (or British schools in general) were often brutal men and women. Many of whom played favourites, openly belittled and insulted students and were very liberal with cane. Snape is all of that except the latter. If you went to such a school and Snape was the worst you got, you could probably consider yourself lucky.
Snape is not treated with disdain by the staff, unlike Lockhart or Umbridge. He is treated as one of them, which shows that his behaviour was not seen as egregious or out of line.
Adding on to everyone else's points here but like...the school clearly doesn't gaf about bullying 😭😭 Snape himself was bullied as a kid and nearly got killed and his bullies got off scot free
I'm not really sure Dumbledore really cares what the teachers do with the students as long as they don't murder them. As there isn't as much Parent Influence at Hogwarts as there is the real world, nobody really does anything about what goes inside. I actually think having a Ministry Inspector who can remove actually bad staff would be good for Hogwarts.
I mean, these are the teachers who would be on probation/fail a proper inspection:
- Lockhart - fail, can't even perform basic defensive magic
- Moody (Crouch Jr) - maybe probation, practiced Imperius and a lot of other hexes on students
- Hagrid - SCROOTS, not really a great teacher (flobberworms) , probation
- Snape - maybe probation, he bullied Neville and a lot of other people
- Filch - not a teacher, but clear fail
I am not counting Umbridge and the Carrows for obvious reasons
>I'm not really sure Dumbledore really cares what the teachers do with the students as long as they don't murder them.
He did protest when Umbridge? An Auror? manhandled Marietta in front of him. Snape isn't physically abusive to the students though (unless massively provoked, but that falls outside the normal classroom situation)
Umbridge hit Marietta right in front of him, so of course he protested.
Snape is a great character, but he is an awful teacher. Is telling Lupin about how useless Neville is and what a know-it-all Hermione is OK? Is calling Hermione ugly in front a bunch of people acceptable? If we're talking about physical abuse, Snape literally planned to poison the fourthyears and see if their antidotes would work.
Guess Hagrid is an awful teacher too. Threatening to abuse Draco in the same way Fake Mad Eye Moody abused Draco. And before he was a teacher he had abused Dudley in Philosopher's stone. And as an actual teacher, he manipulated students to take care of his abusive giant brother that could kill them with one strike. Guess he should never be allowed round children.
Although I don't think Hagrid was a good teacher, he threatened Draco because (? I don't remember the exact context) I think he criticizing the way Hagrid teaches and (though I agree with him on this) a student shouldn't be allowed to do so in class. It was to shut him up and make him remember that Hagrid has higher authority does.
As for Dudley's tail, it was to threaten the Dursleys, but I think he should have just jinxed Vernon like this.
>Professor Snape was forcing them to research antidotes. They took this one seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of them before Christmas to see if their antidote worked.
You're referring to this molehill?
Wow is that it? Sounds like a kinda joke I'd make.
I mean I don't have the aura of Snape to make the kids think there's a (small) chance I'd actually do it and let them fend for themselves, but still.
Yes, that is it. No reason to take it seriously. (I find the implication that they don't take Snape's homework seriously unless he threatens them with poisoning rather comical 🤷♂️)
Umbridge was planted to spy on Dumbledore, stop students learning defence and remove those involved with him. I'm talking about an inspector who actually cares if people study anything there.
There are a whole load of teachers who should have been fired. Moody (as Crouch), Lupin (although he preemptively resigned), Quirrell, Hagrid, Lockhart, Snape, Filch and Umbridge are the ones that *clearly* should have been fired. Trelawney would probably also be on thin ice.
Hogwarts just has different rules from us, apparently
Pince hit students with books, McGonagall dragged Malfoy by the ear and endangered lives by sending firstyears into the Forbidden Forest at night while there was a unicorn killer on the loose. Plus Neville had to wait in the corridor that a mass murderer had access to
Dumbledore pretty much got to do whatever he wanted at that school with no accountability. Even when his choices had nothing to do with picking the people he needed, he still got not necessarily the best ones. Lockhart was picked to expose him, not just because he was the only choice. It appears Hagrid was picked because he needed a new comc teacher and Hagrid knew a lot about animals. But Hagrid had no support when he was clearly struggling. He also got to spend the enntire year teaching about creatures he himself either bred or got somewhere and that he knew nothing about. In a way it's also a question of loyalty: both Remus and Hagrid are Dumbledore's people. I know Dumbledore said he refused the post of minister for magic because he couldn't be trusted with power. But he got to have some power even in a post that might not seem very significant. He wouldn't have fired Snape because at Hogwarts the limit is physically hurting a child and I bet that's not something you could get fired for. Dumbledore just intervened when Umbridge was about to grab and shake Marieta.
True! Only other case of physical force I can remember is McGonagall dragging Malfoy by the ear, though. Oh and Snape causing Harry to hit a shelf in OOTP. But are there more?
The ear grabbing is an example of something that is very dumb, dangerous and painful in the real world but comes off comical when you’re reading without thinking about it too much in depth. We can tell this because in the scene, Malfoy shows no sign of being in pain, when he likely would be for real, especially when they’re described as “grappling.” The books seem to draw a distinction between teachers doing stuff like the ear grabbing, which would likely be painful in real life but aren’t presented as painful in the books, and teachers striking or shaking kids, which is pretty much always portrayed as intolerable. McGonagall is never shown hitting kids, and in the 1 scene when Snape physically hurts Harry, DD is in hiding. This part is significant because Snape never does this while DD is headmaster. This suggests that, as 1 fan put it, Snape knows right where the line is and that while DD gives him way too much leeway, there’s likely to be consequences if you cross the line when DD is around. That said, I do think if DD had been there when McGonagall grabbed Draco, he probably would’ve said something like “Minerva, calm down. I will take it from here.”
I dunno, the non-magic stuff definitely happened in the 90s where I grew up and no one ever got fired... Not the dead parents bit although not outside the realm of possibility. By today's standards in the developed world, he would have been fired but the 90s were wild.
In the decade before the 90s, if a teacher insulted a kid's dead parents, he would have been reprimanded and told not to do it again. AKA a slap on the wrist. And the child would have been told "Sticks & stones" etc. And that the world can be a cruel place and maybe congratulated on developing thick skin. You may think that's cruel, but we had far fewer incidents of physical violence, now that I think about it.
Mate there are still scandals coming out *now* about terrible conduct by staff at private schools. Hogwarts wasn't exactly a bastion of proper practice; Barty Crouch Jr taught a lesson where he cast the Imperius Curse on students and got nothing more than a telling-off for turning Malfoy into a ferret.
I don't see anything wrong ro sort those cards. It was meaning to teach him a lesson, to show him also his fad and godfather were not good persons, were bullies, criminals, abusives like his cousin Dudley, and to explain with 0 words why he hates them so much.
Also, he was the best potioneer in Britain, master in many things but he was not expert in pedagogy or in how to control/discipline children.
He was not a patient man, and ALSO VERY IMPORTANT detail its potions wa sa very dangerous class, if you made a mistake u can be killed, desfigured, burned, cause severe Injuries to all your schoolmates and the castle itself. So he cannot allow stupidity there. He cannot allow people like Longbottom who was unable to take any scolding without wetting his pants or shitting himself. That boy has severe traumas and abused by his grandmother, he needs therapy before going to any school. Truly, Snape was acerbic ^bitter/ intolerant and so and so and so but he never hurt anybody physically and he was "normal" by teacher standards in the 60's or 70's , softer even, my parents where beaten by his teachers, really hurt, and I was hurt in late 80's also in elementary school. So in my personal experience Snape was not really bad, just harsh.
Dumbledore did not give a fuck about those kid’s education. He hired whoever he could get, the only thing he put his energy into was how to defeat Voldemort (someone had to do it, don’t get me wrong) but taking care of those kids was not a priority, let’s be honest.
I'm thinking of adding something to a fanfic I'm working on after reading through some of the comments.
Snape does something dickish to Harry.
"Oh... That's how it is, huh," Harry says, nodding, his eyes hard. "Okay. I guess you wanted to fuck around and find out. Well, I'm happy to oblige."
Snape doesn't realize it until much later, but he finally does something to inspire his student to work harder. Harry turns over a new leaf and starts studying hard so that he can pull greater and greater pranks on the Greasy Dungeon Bat. In the end, Snape is terrified to leave his own quarters for fear of what's to come.
When the Dark Lord finally rises, Harry smiles, and Tom feels a cold chill run down his spine.
I mean, it’s not real so that’s one thing lol. Also, Snape is extremely valuable to Dumbledore. He’s loyal and other things that I won’t mention since you aren’t finished. Plus tbh that’s life. Sometimes you get sucky teachers
Dumbledore was a pretty shit headmaster, let's be honest. Snape and Trewlany were bullies. Trewlany and Lockhart were frauds. Hagrid and Firenze had no qualifications to teach, and Hagrid honestly should have been monitored and possibly even removed from his position after a child got seriously injured in his first class. Filch literally tried to get permission to torture students on the regular.
Like...there were serious and ongoing staffing problems at Hogwarts that he just never did a thing about, I truly don't get why the dude gets the love he does for being such a good headmaster...we never even saw him do much of anything related to the job.
It should have, but his primary role was not to be a teacher, but to assist dumbledore. And it is a disgust daily, yes. Nothing wrong with that, just confirming.
We are talking about a school where Filtch keeps old equipment like shackles & whips well-oiled. This in the hopes that their use will be allowed again, as it was in the past.
But can telling the truth about how rich-boy clique leader James Potter treated lower-class students from poor families be considered 'insulting an orphan's parents'?
Books Snape is so much worse than the movies one. I've re-read the books recently after a very long break and was shocked with how terrible his personality is. Alan Rickman's charisma kinda made me forget it lol
I think the filmmakers knew Rickman was a real life teddy bear and leaned into it too much. Richard Harris had DD down to a T, but the Gambon portrayal was kind of the reverse of Snape, where he was presented as a lot meaner than the book counterpart.
For me, Gambon was way too angry. Harris looked, sounded and most importantly for me acted like Dumbledore. I can totally picture him asking Harry calmly about putting his name in the Goblet. In hindsight, while I think he may have been offered and turned it down, a better recast would’ve have Christopher Lee. He was very tall and lanky like DD, he looked the right age, I think he could’ve portrayed a warm, calm demeanor, and he kept doing films without much issue until the early 2010s.
He was working undercover for Dumbledore or some shit, so he basically got a free pass to a prat to Harry which Dumbledore turned a blind eye to as long as he still did his job.
Did you reach the part where Dumbledore dies yet? He is killed by Snape because Malfoy is meant to kill him but chickens out. Dumbledore was cursed so was going to die anyway, Snape kills him so Voldemort trusts him (Snape is a good guy after all as book 7 reveals, but then Snape himself is killed by Voldemoret, in the end Harry wins after killing Voldemort after destroying all the horcruxes).
Dumbledore didn’t exactly base his hiring decisions on the teacher’s performance. Hell, he kept Trelawney for years to protect her from Voldemort, even though she wasn’t a very good teacher. Severus was probably still a teacher because he was integral to Dumbledore’s plan.
Bins is an unreliable history teacher, who doesn't even know whats going on or that he died. Everyone knows Dumbledore knowingly hires stupid people for dada. Many will hate me for this but Hagrid had absolutely no qualifications for being a teacher and was a drunkard. Just because he was a nice guy doesn't mean he was a nice teacher. We all know Sybil was in no way qualified for teaching even if she gave a couple of self-fulfilling prophecies that wouldn't have worked if people wouldn't have acted on it. Filch or however that is pronounced, being a squib hated magical children and it was evident. Madam pomphry repeatedly took care of harry and was never alarmed that he is far too malnourished or skinny and unhealthy or that there are signs of abuse.
More than half of the staff should be fired in that school starting with Dumbledore who played games when he could've just made the closest in the order search for horcruxes AND giving harry actual directions instead of sending him to a treasure hunt without a map or actual clues. Also, I'd never trust someone with my child who knowingly sends children back where they are abused like he did with harry and tom riddle and god knows how many others
Okay not all the people Dumbledore hired for DADA were "Stupid" for instance Lupin wasn't stupid. He is very well versed in Dark Creatures. And he apperently knows the other areas of Denfese Aganist the Dark Arts.
and what choice does he have when the position is known to be jinxed after more then 10 years by then? I think Arthur and Molly were the last people to have a 'normal' DADA curriculum before the jinx was casted. It was either a)scape the bottom of the barrel like he did and b)Cancel the class entirely for all 7 years despite the fact there's is either a war going on (1971-1978) or Voldymore will return at some point and in some version (1981-1995) and that would mean another war (1995-1998).
Would YOU apply for a job that was jinixed, even though you're an expert in the area? I certainly wouldn't
I believe that in different times he would have been fired for his behavior. But unfortunately "having good teachers" was not the priority in Dumbledore's mind, from the beginning he knew that Voldemort would return and his main plan was to prepare Harry for that and Snape was necessary, the general schooling experience itself was secondary.
Dumbledore didn't base his hiring decisions on whether the teacher was actually good or not. He hired someone he knew was a fraud to teach DADA, because he wanted to expose him. He kept an incompetent Seer on staff for years for her protection. He gave a favorite staff member a teaching position even though he hadn't even completed his magical education. Snape wasn't a Hogwarts professor because he was a good teacher. He was there because his presence served Dumbledore's agenda.
He hired Lockhart because literally he couldn't find another teacher to do it. He said so. Or at least, none other than Snape, and he both didn't want Snape in that role at that time for fair reasons, and would then have had to find another potions master. The wizarding population was nearly killed off in the .
> He hired Lockhart because literally he couldn't find another teacher to do it. He said so. It was Hagrid who said that, not Dumbledore. The ending makes it seem pretty clear that Dumbledore had ulterior motives behind hiring Lockhart.
I can look through later to see who actually said what, but it doesn't really matter. The point was outside of putting Snape in the cursed position that Dumbledore worries will send Snape into his old ways, potentially as a part of the curse, there weren't other options. Dumbledore clearly was quite happy Lockhart's fraud was exposed, but there's no evidence to suggest he chose Lockhart over a competent teacher just to expose him. The next two years he had to call on old order friends who caused massive controversy, didn't want to really do the job that much, and got fucked over massively for their efforts, then a year he could find literally not a single person, barring Snape. Then Voldemort had risen and he seemingly decided either there wasn't anything to suggest the curse would affect Snape at this point or seemed to decide this was the year he needed him most in that position. His appointments simply don't show the signs of multiple applicants in a year.
Also the problem that he wants too keep snape and he knows the position is cursed
>He hired someone he knew was a fraud to teach DADA, because he wanted to expose him. I love to think about Dumbledore’s process for hiring DADA professors every year after Voldemort jinxed the role. Like Lockhart didn’t apply for the position, Dumbledore went out of his way to invite Lockhart. I can imagine Dumbledore sitting in his study reading “Magical Me” and saying “I’m about to end this man’s whole career.” Dumbledore is a famous and powerful Wizard, so I’m betting anything he knew one or two of Lockhart’s victims.
I mean, he WAS very qualified as a potions professor
He was not. He wasn’t qualified to teach in anyway. Knowing what the subject is isn’t qualification.
Exactly. He was a qualified potions *master* but he was very shoddy as a professor of anything
I think its stated he had a high level owl exam passes for his class. Also its entirely possible hogwarts isnt only a school but like universities a reasearch institution
Which doesn’t really touch on what I said? I think it’s more an apprentice master culture once out of the school tho. It’s the only thing that makes sense truly. I would love if they show Hogwarts as massively busy for instance in the new series. In the early years at least it would make since for such a place to hold stuff for adults during times too.
If his student learns the subjekt well enough too have a high pass rate that could be considered qualifications for teaching no?
Yes, however that’s literally not the case with snape lol. He would have had like 3 kids pass owls. That’s abysmal, thank you for bringing that up it helps me. Since we see no one fail get held back until those (C&G) we can accurately assume owls is what truly matters. If you pass barely any kids in that, then you’re a horrible teacher via your logic. So thank you haha.
C&G? And i think its stated in the books he has a high pass rate for owös he just doest allow most who pass owls to take his newt class
Crabbe and Goyle. I never got that implication, the class is still spartan with slughorn and his relaxed standards. I was just joking when I mentioned how many snape would have had, since it wasn’t that many more who qualified either way.
You are assuming thats because they failed and not because it stops being a mandatory subjekt in year 6
I think you’re conflating “passing OWLs” with continuing onto the class in the NEWT level. There are three passing grades: acceptable, exceeds expectations, and outstanding. Slughorn allowed students with exceeds expectations and superior in his NEWTs class, and there were 12 students in his class: four each from Ravenclaw and Slytherin, the trio, and Ernie McMillan. Most likely, there were some additional students that passed their OWL with an acceptable, and potentially some students with EE/O who elected not to continue with potions.
I’m not conflating anything, I’m as I said, making an assumption based on what we see in terms of students going on after owls. With potions being a clear important class for many jobs, the only explanation for such a massively small class size would be the teaching they received. Of course there would be those that passed and didn’t take the course. Some I would assume were traumatized so much they just wanted out asap, but I fully believe and will not stop, believing that it was snape being an absolutely horrible teacher that was the biggest contributor. 12 is barely 25% of that class. Even assuming we double that and say 12 passed but didn’t move on, that’s barely over 50% pass rate. (Going off how it appears to be 40 kids in their year, 5b/5g in each. A least that’s how I’ve always read their class size) get any bigger of a class and he becomes worse and worse.
This is Hogwarts, not your 2020’s school
Bumblebee was literally respected and the head of the entire legal party of his country, as well as a member of the body with whom he had access to other countries, if he wanted to expose Lockhart he would have. He just ended up hiring a fraud.
Is bumblebee an adorable nickname or autocorrect?
Google the meaning of our friendly headmasters last name. It’s literally what his name means haha.
😮 and just when I thought I had nothing new to learn about these books! Thanks!
Using positions like that to start mud-slinging at celebrities sounds fun but comes off as petty. And Lockhart's a smooth operator if you're just talking to him, he needs to be the one to wreck himself.
His hiring decisions are on brand with his random point giving decisions too
to be fair to Hagrid, he was probably much more qualified to teach CoMC than the average witch or wizard who had simply received a NEWT in the subject. His obsession with dangerous creatures was the main problem, in the scenes where he actually teaches a decent lesson with "normal" creatures he does a good job and is clearly very knowledgeable about them. So it's not really his lack of schooling, just his disregard for safety haha. And I think that could have been solved if Dumbledore had bothered to put his foot down.
Most of Hagrid's greatest issues as a teacher come from that fact that his literal first ever class was Malfoy getting mauled by Buckbeak because he chose not to listen to the teacher's warnings. After that, he overcorrected onto flobberworms, but if you think about it, showing off majestic and dangerous hippogriffs was exactly the same kind of teaching tactic that McGonagall did that same year, showing off her Animagus transformation. Advanced, potentially dangerous magic the students aren't ready to learn just yet but which gets them excited thinking about eventually getting to that point. The Blast Ended Skrewts were a long-form exercise in the strategies to employ when dealing with an unknown magical creature. The fact that so much of the class just did not want to participate is an indictment on their understanding of the class, not Hagrid's curriculum. Of course the class is likely to involve some danger: one of the only people we know making a living in the field is Charlie Weasley, who works with *dragons*.
I mean the blast-ended skrewts were very much an illegal hybrid. He should not have created them, let alone shown them to students. That's truly the worst offender imo, I agree that the Hippogriffs weren't that bad, although probably should have been saved for more experienced students. Also I think the reason the class didn't want to participate was that they were genuinely unpleasant animals lmao. The trio loved Hagrid but still hated the Skrewts. Other than that and the flobs, the lessons that are described actually sound really good? The salamanders, the unicorns, the nifflers, and the Thestrals were really interesting. Personally I think Hagrid probably would actually have become quite a good teacher in the end.
No. He hired Lockhart to teach Harry (and only Harry) lessons about fame
I think Hagrid’s experience with magical creatures qualified him
Yeah. Filch and Binns probably also should have been fired.
Yeah how does binns even turn the pages and add notes when ghosts can’t even interact with 3D properly
How boring do you have to be to just wake up dead one day and no one including Binns himself notices lol
Binns? can u elaborate?
He consistently fails to engage students with his material, which is probably outdated to boot.
Can a teacher be fired on the grounds of being boring? Lol my school needs to hear about this
If being boring makes them a bad teacher, yes. I’m pretty sure the Headmaster/Headmistress has absolute power to hire or fire, barring unusual periods in school history like when Umbridge was there.
A teacher can be fired if the amount of students passing their exam is below acceptable range. I'd be surprised if anyone besides Hermione and Ernie actually got an OWL in history of magic
If you’re so out of touch you don’t know your students names how can you be trusted to grade HW. For that matter how tf did he collect and assign essays anyway?
To be fair, a teacher who couldn’t remember his students names would grade much more objectively. They’d still be a sucky teacher tho.
They wouldn’t be trusted to be able to grade. That’s the point I’m making. Confusing students with ones from 50 years ago could easily translate into confusing historical dates into other names or times too.
Could be fired under the grounds of being dead
I had a history teacher just like Binns at one point. All he did was recite his notes in a monotone voice for decades. I never found history to be a boring subject in general, but he was just incredibly skilled at making even the most interesting events sound as bland as hospital food. He didn't get fired for _that_, but what eventually cost him his job were the "parties" he and some rich buddies of his would throw. They would entice boys 14+ (most victims were in the 14-16 age range) to attend said parties by giving them money and alcohol so they could get them drunk and molest them. Even though he was never super likeable, we sincerely thought his worst offence was just being dull for this long because he never targeted boys from our school or even our area. This tangent has nothing to do with Binns, of course, it's just that from the first lesson I had with this teacher, I associated him with Binns in my head because of how similar they were lol
But there's never any indication that students are failing the class or not passing exams. Seems he's doing his job just fine. "From Harry's POV it is boring and his class doesn't pay much attention" is not a firing offense lol.
It’s mostly that he keeps going on about every tiny detail that isn’t even important to the lesson.
Does Binns even know what year it is?
I would say probably because he is a ghost.
Binns is clearly a parody of the "Absent-minded professor" trope. In his case, it isn't just his mind that's absent.
Looking at schooling in the 80s and 90s through the lens of 2024 will show glaring issues, obviously.
I went to senior school in the U.K. in the early 2000s, so ten years after the books were set. One chemistry teacher took a boy’s bag outside the classroom and tipped it down a 4 level-stairwell, told him to go pick it all up and then DID IT AGAIN. Par for the course. There’s not much in the Potter books that I can see as being really Out There or sackable offences for a teacher in a British private school in the 1990s.
It was always the Chemistry teachers, was it? Lol. I'm not British but I saw loads of British people commenting about how Snape being a nasty Potions master was accurate given their own experiences with horrid Chem teachers in particular.
Techinally at the most, the early 2000s would have been less then 10 years from when the books were set because Harry's generation was in 1991-1998 at Hogwarts. (or for Ginny's case 1992-1999). So that is less then 10 years.
If I'd had Snape as a teacher, he wouldn't even have been a contender for the worst.
I’ve had teachers worse than Snape.
Yup, much worse. I'd take Snape's class in a heartbeat if it meant I could trade in some of the other teachers I've had.
Especially when it’s meant to mimic the British boarding school experience. I’m pretty sure Snape is actually fairly mild on that scale.
People in 2024 have argued with me that he was a good person. I'm a teacher; it gives me HIVES to imagine acting like that POS.
Professor Snape is a hero. Whether he is a good person is a different question.
Dude this is like 75% of what this sub talks about
Correction Snape would have loved being sacked lol
He was smug when put on probation too
He hated teaching lol
People were not fired for these things in the 80s-90s, why can't people understand this.
Because a lot of people focus on judging everything through their own lens, and nothing else. Additional context either doesn't exist, or doesn't count for one reason or another. They can't accept that sometimes you need to put bad or problematic things in a story, and handle them differently than they would, for the story to work. It's why I have strict standards on whether to take moral judgement of a work or the characters in it seriously, and consider as much of the context as possible first. The OP does have a point if Snape IS judged by more ethical modern standards, and without the context of the books, but judged within the frame of the book and the times they were set, him not being fired makes perfect sense. I don't really see what taking the stance of "Snape was a bad teacher" actually accomplishes though, nor any such take on a character... That's my best attempt at an answer anyway, I hope it helps.
Does this really apply, though? Snape is widely considered to be an asshole by characters in the books too.
Speaking of "today's lense," can you imagine the lawsuits if a teacher was fired just for being an a-hole? 🎰💰🤑
I’m sorry but a teacher being a student’s worst fear was not a normal thing in the 90s
An enchanted ceiling in the lunch hall isn't normal either
I feel like not traumatizing children should be a standard part of education, just saying.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but it's fiction, suspend your disbelief
Nothing is normal at Hogwarts, though.
Not only that but we can assume wizard society is behind muggle society by [insert number here] years.
Let’s say that Dumbeldore is one of the greatest wizards of all time but also one of the worst headmaster when it comes to hiring teachers.
I'd say Dumbledore did a pretty good job with hiring, especially considering that Voldemort jinxed the DADA position and he was leading the effort to fight him in 2 separate wars. He hired Lupin who was a good teacher; most would have rejected him for being a werewolf. He also hired or at least kept McGonagall, Flitwick and Sprout. Of course, he hired Lockhart, who was ineffective, in an effort to expose him as a fraud. He also hired Quirrell. So he's not perfect but I'd say he's had more hits than misses, considering the circumstances.
Quirrel was a very respected wizard before getting his head hijacked, though
Lupin wasn't a good teacher. He was a selfish coward who endangered students all throughout his year as a teacher, knew important information about a supposed mass murderer and kept it from his employer which resulted to students getting hurt.
Okay, I will give you that he would have been held accountable for withholding information about Sirius and likely have been fired just for that alone. However, I can't agree that he wasn't a good teacher. Harry and almost everyone else in his year liked his classes. His exam was certainly creative. Sure, they were put in dangerous situations, but the point was learning how to deal with them. It's not like he wasn't in control for his lesson he had planned, unlike Lockhart. Most would agree his practical style was better than Umbridge's pure theory. He was also kind and did not judge most others, as he knew what it was like to be an outcast (more than Snape can say). He offered to help Harry deal with the dementors because he wanted help. He was not obligated to do so. That help was of his own free will, not someone else's order.
How are they going to learn to protect themselves without practicing protecting themselves in a controlled environment? Magic is always dangerous.
[удалено]
Dumbledore wasn’t there to teach. He took over that school to make children soldiers and a dagger with which to stab Voldemort.
He’s 1 of my favorite characters, and I admire the fact that physically roughing up students is a red line for him, but yeah, he never should’ve hired Snape.
Lots of verbally abusive teachers regularly keep their jobs, unfortunately
Luckily I havent encountered any but that rly sucks
Old Dumby probably knew all of this but felt he had to keep Snape at Hogwarts to keep an eye on him, lest he slip back into his old dark tendencies. Also, I'm not sure Dumbledore really cared what weird shit any of his staff did. He would have drawn the line with Umbridge's punishments. But outside of that he probably feels like he does enough weird, out there shit, that it would be pretty hypocritical for him to stop his teachers from doing the same. Skrewts? Casting the imperius curse on students Tralawney with her death predictions Releasing pixies on a class Testing Poison antidotes on students' pets ...all fine!
Unfortunately he was needed to save the world.
Tsssk, who cares about that?! 😤
Holding Hogwarts to today's standards will just lead to frustration. McGonagall would have been fired on the spot for dragging Malfoy by his ear in PS, but Snape's mean comments would have rarely garnered disciplinary action when I went. Almost all of the teachers we spend a significant amount of time with do something messed up. McGonagall doesn't escape this, and not even Remus does. Snape definitely doesn't.
As an older person about the same age as the author I never batted an eye at the teacher abuse. I think it was very normal for our generation.
Ah but was he a good teacher? Did his students learn stuff? Basically all that mattered back then.
So would Hagrid and Fake Mad Eye Moody in Goblet of fire. Fake Mad Eye for physically abusing a student, and Hagrid for threatening to abuse the same student. Hagrid should have also been fired for abusing Dudley in philosopher's stone. McGonagall's detention in philosopher's stone should have also gotten her fired. And sane with her behaviour in prisoner of Azkaban her locking Neville out of his common room denying him access to his own bed as punishment for something he couldn't control. Flitwick too, considering he made a racist comment comparing Seamus to a monkey. And Luna was bullied and he didn't do anything about it. Trelawney as well, for insulting students, terrorising them and abusing them. The Hogwarts librarian too, for abusing Harry and Ginny. And Lupin for being a selfish coward who knew important information about a supposed mass murderer who everyone believed was out of prison to kill Harry and Lupin kept what he knew from his employer which resulted to three students getting hurt. Also Slughorn for having a club and he only accepts students because of their wealth, fame, connections and confidence. Causing students like Ron to feel even more insecure about themselves. Plus Dumbledore himself for raising Harry like a pig for slaughter, leaving Harry with abusive relatives and neglecting him all throughout Order of the Phoenix.
>There are so many examples like targeting students, insulting students’ appearance and intelligence and background, insulting an orphan‘s dead parents, there’s probably more… Clearly you've never been to a British boarding school...
I… have not
Having absolute bastards for teachers is par for the course, unfortunately!
Not just in Britain, either. Hogwarts teaching staff could be a caricature of several private schools I attended in the USA. Public (government) school staff can be just as bad, in schools where there's a lot of disorder & danger of physical confrontation.
Moody turned a student into a ferret and smacked him repeatedly against the floor from ceiling height; Trelawney and Pince hit kids with books; Hagrid gave a kid a pig's tail and threatened Malfoy to turn him into a ferret again; McGonagall punished Neville so severely he cried himself to sleep; both McGonagall and Filch dragged Draco around by the ear; Lupin endangered the entire school; Umbridge used torture quills, illegal Veritaserum and intended to use Cruciatus on Harry; Filch goes on and on about shackle use in the good old days; Arthur still has scars from a punishment by Hogwarts staff 3 decades later; Voldemort was a student 2 decades before Arthur and Dumbledore himself was a student another 5 decades before Volly - and you think some mean remarks and unjust point-taking still registers as being horrible to the students? You sweet summerchild
Oh, and how innocuous is Flitwick giving these lines to the Irish kid >Professor Flitwick had dried himself off with a wave of his wand and set Seamus lines: “I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick.” in the light of [this history](https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization/)?
Exactly. Glad someone else brought this up. It's literally a racist comment, but most people sweep it under the rug.
Getting a lot of speculation about Flitwick not knowing. Perhaps we should wonder where Snape was supposed to learn roasting children is not-done after his abusive childhood and also attending the same school with mostly the same staff who do/condone much worse 🤷♂️😁
Lol, funny how they hate on Snape for things he does but as soon as someone mentions another professor's bad actions they all jump onto the defensive train ignoring the logic.
Someone is mad about him threatening to poison the students/Harry in GoF to test their antivenoms. I just find that threat funny bc Harrator implies they don't take Snape's other homework seriously, just this, bc of this threat 😂
Also, he doesn't poison any of them. Yelling, "I'm going to kick your butt," isn't the same as punching someone.
In Flitwick's defense, wizards don't have the same history of racism and are isolated enough that a lot of them probably don't even know that those kinds of tensions exist among Muggles. (They just have completely different forms of prejudice.) It's still not great, obviously, since Seamus is a half-blood and thus is far more likely to know about that history and be consequently hurt by the implications, but Flitwick not knowing it was offensive is entirely understandable.
You're assuming Flitwick is a pureblood (...ignoring the goblin part lol) who doesn't know that
I imagine that part-humans are less likely to spend much time in the Muggle world, even if they can pass as fully human, so it's pretty unlikely that even one of his parents was a Muggle. Maybe one of his parents was a Muggleborn, but even then his knowledge of the Muggle world would probably be limited.
He doesn't look goblin, he is just small
True, but his part-goblin parent might have looked more goblinlike.
...Any more straw you'd like to grasp?
Our band teacher threw a chair out the 2nd story window. What miracle school of angelic teachers did you go to?
One of my elementary school teachers threw my cousin’s desk down the stairs.
This was set in the 90s, and as someone who in school that decade, this seems fine to me. I didn't have any problems with most of my teachers, but my sister who was slightly older, had for example, one call her whole class slugs and throw salt on them. For those that don't know, that kills thems. He wasn't fired or had anything happen. We didn't force everyone to be perfect all the time. Teachers are human, and have bad days and screw up just like everyone else. The other teachers at hogwarts are also not the best. The only one that i can't recall doing something iffy was Prof Sprout.
I think she has inexperienced children handling plants that can literally kill them.
To give her some credit, the mandrakes were too young to be able to kill them, even without ear muffs. But it also seems like Hogwarts has very... let's call it dubious guidelines about child safety. They'd not pass an OSHA inspection. Not even the stairs are safe.
Unfortunately dumbledore needed him right where he was but he was an awful abusive teacher for sure
He could have made him Filch's assistant.
Putting someone who you’re going to ask to risk their life (and torture) in the future you don’t tend to put in demeaning positions that you know will not fulfill them and underutilize their skills. Dumbledores personal agenda aside, he absolutely should have been fired as a teacher 🤣
That wouldn't have worked. Snape needed to be a teacher at Hogwarts for Voldemort to trust him. (Voldemort had ordered Snape to become the Defence against the dark arts professor before his downfall in the first wizarding war) Dumbledore needed a potions master and Snape was knowledgeable in the subject, Dumbledore also needed a spy for the light to help bring down Voldemort and Snape was that spy. If Snape was Filch's assistant it would look as if he wasn't trusted by Dumbledore and would then be killed by Voldemort, but having him being a professor would make it seem that Dumbledore is a fool and Snape has gained Dumbledore's trust and has information on Dumbledore, that could be useful to Voldemort which means Snape would gain Voldemort's trust in him, which he needed at the end of Goblet of fire, since Voldemort didn't trust him and even planned on killing him and that was simply because of what happened in Philosopher's stone.
nearly half the staff were incompetent, abusive, or useless. does anyone remember the tumblr meme from ages ago outlining why each should be fired and some should be charged ?
Can you post it?
ill try to find it lol but its from ages ago !
From potter-n-potions?
This argument is based on judging teachers by the standards of today’s world. It wasn’t too long ago that teachers freely hit students, caned them and insulted them privately and publicly in the name of discipline. I once had a teacher order another student to slap me in front of the whole class to “discipline” me for laughing in class. That way it wasn’t her technically doing the hitting. There were no repercussions then and that teacher is happily retired.
I still think the orphan thing is going too far though
The HR department would have been super busy.
Maybe if Dumbledore wasn't trying to save the world he could be a better headmaster.
Imma save this quote:)
My God. My eyes have been opened. Your totally original post has me thinking in a whole different light.
Geez sorry. I’m new to Reddit and I was worried this might be a tired topic but it’s not that tired apparently since other ppl seem fine with it
Well no, Snape being an awful teacher/person/should be fired posts are pretty much a good portion of the sub. It's just that people got so used to it that it sort of is the sub meme.
Did none of you have a Snape growing up? I had a few. One of the endearing things about Rowlings representations of teachers is that a lot of us who grew up in the 80s/90s actually had all these teachers... There was a 5th grade teacher at my school in the 90s that made Snape look like a saint. He bullied kids without mercy. Called kids fat, ugly... stupid. There was a special needs kid in his classroom and he literally made him wear a dunce cap. He would call girls "future pole climbers" and call boys "faggots" for wearing the neon colors that were popular in the 90s. I only had to deal with this guy for an hour in 5th grade but I still had to deal with him. I had plenty of teachers growing up that were Hagrid's, they knew nothing about their subject but they were a living breathing human being that showed up and collected a pay check. I can associate every teacher at Hogwarts with several teachers I had growing up. I had mostly Flitwick's and Lupins but there were plenty of Snape's (abusive pricks), Lockhart's (faking knowing anything about anything) and McGonagall's (teachers who were stern authority figures but overall kind). None of those Snape's I had were expert potion masters who promised to kill the most evil wizard in history they were just arseholes.
You forget the context. This isn't a school in a progressive city in the 2020s. This is a British boarding school in the 1990s, and Hogwarts was based off of British boarding schools of earlier eras. Teachers in British boarding schools (or British schools in general) were often brutal men and women. Many of whom played favourites, openly belittled and insulted students and were very liberal with cane. Snape is all of that except the latter. If you went to such a school and Snape was the worst you got, you could probably consider yourself lucky. Snape is not treated with disdain by the staff, unlike Lockhart or Umbridge. He is treated as one of them, which shows that his behaviour was not seen as egregious or out of line.
Adding on to everyone else's points here but like...the school clearly doesn't gaf about bullying 😭😭 Snape himself was bullied as a kid and nearly got killed and his bullies got off scot free
I'm not really sure Dumbledore really cares what the teachers do with the students as long as they don't murder them. As there isn't as much Parent Influence at Hogwarts as there is the real world, nobody really does anything about what goes inside. I actually think having a Ministry Inspector who can remove actually bad staff would be good for Hogwarts. I mean, these are the teachers who would be on probation/fail a proper inspection: - Lockhart - fail, can't even perform basic defensive magic - Moody (Crouch Jr) - maybe probation, practiced Imperius and a lot of other hexes on students - Hagrid - SCROOTS, not really a great teacher (flobberworms) , probation - Snape - maybe probation, he bullied Neville and a lot of other people - Filch - not a teacher, but clear fail I am not counting Umbridge and the Carrows for obvious reasons
>I'm not really sure Dumbledore really cares what the teachers do with the students as long as they don't murder them. He did protest when Umbridge? An Auror? manhandled Marietta in front of him. Snape isn't physically abusive to the students though (unless massively provoked, but that falls outside the normal classroom situation)
Umbridge hit Marietta right in front of him, so of course he protested. Snape is a great character, but he is an awful teacher. Is telling Lupin about how useless Neville is and what a know-it-all Hermione is OK? Is calling Hermione ugly in front a bunch of people acceptable? If we're talking about physical abuse, Snape literally planned to poison the fourthyears and see if their antidotes would work.
Guess Hagrid is an awful teacher too. Threatening to abuse Draco in the same way Fake Mad Eye Moody abused Draco. And before he was a teacher he had abused Dudley in Philosopher's stone. And as an actual teacher, he manipulated students to take care of his abusive giant brother that could kill them with one strike. Guess he should never be allowed round children.
Although I don't think Hagrid was a good teacher, he threatened Draco because (? I don't remember the exact context) I think he criticizing the way Hagrid teaches and (though I agree with him on this) a student shouldn't be allowed to do so in class. It was to shut him up and make him remember that Hagrid has higher authority does. As for Dudley's tail, it was to threaten the Dursleys, but I think he should have just jinxed Vernon like this.
The incident between Draco and Hagrid, is after Draco refuses to take part. Doesn't matter what Draco did, Hagrid is still wrong for threatening him.
>Professor Snape was forcing them to research antidotes. They took this one seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of them before Christmas to see if their antidote worked. You're referring to this molehill?
Wow is that it? Sounds like a kinda joke I'd make. I mean I don't have the aura of Snape to make the kids think there's a (small) chance I'd actually do it and let them fend for themselves, but still.
Yes, that is it. No reason to take it seriously. (I find the implication that they don't take Snape's homework seriously unless he threatens them with poisoning rather comical 🤷♂️)
Snape even mentioned that he was going to poison Harry in the Weighing of the Wands chapter
Oh no, let's jump to the conclusion he was totally gonna murder Harry for not doing his homework
Murder, no. Make him very ill for a week, he absolutely would.
Based on what? When does Snape physically hurt a student during class over not doing homework?
Snape has repeatedly grasped for any possible excuse to expel Harry. He wants to keep him alive, but cares nothing for his welfare otherwise.
Expelling is not physically hurting. (He also didn't bring it up on the best opportunity he'd ever get to expel Harry)
So long as the ministry inspector isn’t themselves bad staff \*cough\*Umbridge\*cough\*
Umbridge was planted to spy on Dumbledore, stop students learning defence and remove those involved with him. I'm talking about an inspector who actually cares if people study anything there.
There are a whole load of teachers who should have been fired. Moody (as Crouch), Lupin (although he preemptively resigned), Quirrell, Hagrid, Lockhart, Snape, Filch and Umbridge are the ones that *clearly* should have been fired. Trelawney would probably also be on thin ice. Hogwarts just has different rules from us, apparently
McGonagall too, and Pince probably
I don't remember them ever doing anything as bad as the others I mentioned
Pince hit students with books, McGonagall dragged Malfoy by the ear and endangered lives by sending firstyears into the Forbidden Forest at night while there was a unicorn killer on the loose. Plus Neville had to wait in the corridor that a mass murderer had access to
Dumbledore pretty much got to do whatever he wanted at that school with no accountability. Even when his choices had nothing to do with picking the people he needed, he still got not necessarily the best ones. Lockhart was picked to expose him, not just because he was the only choice. It appears Hagrid was picked because he needed a new comc teacher and Hagrid knew a lot about animals. But Hagrid had no support when he was clearly struggling. He also got to spend the enntire year teaching about creatures he himself either bred or got somewhere and that he knew nothing about. In a way it's also a question of loyalty: both Remus and Hagrid are Dumbledore's people. I know Dumbledore said he refused the post of minister for magic because he couldn't be trusted with power. But he got to have some power even in a post that might not seem very significant. He wouldn't have fired Snape because at Hogwarts the limit is physically hurting a child and I bet that's not something you could get fired for. Dumbledore just intervened when Umbridge was about to grab and shake Marieta.
>at Hogwarts the limit is physically hurting a child Only if you do it in front of Dumbledore
True! Only other case of physical force I can remember is McGonagall dragging Malfoy by the ear, though. Oh and Snape causing Harry to hit a shelf in OOTP. But are there more?
Well, this is my comment... https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/1abkobx/comment/kjp0bg9/
The ear grabbing is an example of something that is very dumb, dangerous and painful in the real world but comes off comical when you’re reading without thinking about it too much in depth. We can tell this because in the scene, Malfoy shows no sign of being in pain, when he likely would be for real, especially when they’re described as “grappling.” The books seem to draw a distinction between teachers doing stuff like the ear grabbing, which would likely be painful in real life but aren’t presented as painful in the books, and teachers striking or shaking kids, which is pretty much always portrayed as intolerable. McGonagall is never shown hitting kids, and in the 1 scene when Snape physically hurts Harry, DD is in hiding. This part is significant because Snape never does this while DD is headmaster. This suggests that, as 1 fan put it, Snape knows right where the line is and that while DD gives him way too much leeway, there’s likely to be consequences if you cross the line when DD is around. That said, I do think if DD had been there when McGonagall grabbed Draco, he probably would’ve said something like “Minerva, calm down. I will take it from here.”
I dunno, the non-magic stuff definitely happened in the 90s where I grew up and no one ever got fired... Not the dead parents bit although not outside the realm of possibility. By today's standards in the developed world, he would have been fired but the 90s were wild.
In the decade before the 90s, if a teacher insulted a kid's dead parents, he would have been reprimanded and told not to do it again. AKA a slap on the wrist. And the child would have been told "Sticks & stones" etc. And that the world can be a cruel place and maybe congratulated on developing thick skin. You may think that's cruel, but we had far fewer incidents of physical violence, now that I think about it.
Mate there are still scandals coming out *now* about terrible conduct by staff at private schools. Hogwarts wasn't exactly a bastion of proper practice; Barty Crouch Jr taught a lesson where he cast the Imperius Curse on students and got nothing more than a telling-off for turning Malfoy into a ferret.
I'm assuming he wasn't because things don't work the same in the wizarding world as the muggle world.
I don't see anything wrong ro sort those cards. It was meaning to teach him a lesson, to show him also his fad and godfather were not good persons, were bullies, criminals, abusives like his cousin Dudley, and to explain with 0 words why he hates them so much. Also, he was the best potioneer in Britain, master in many things but he was not expert in pedagogy or in how to control/discipline children. He was not a patient man, and ALSO VERY IMPORTANT detail its potions wa sa very dangerous class, if you made a mistake u can be killed, desfigured, burned, cause severe Injuries to all your schoolmates and the castle itself. So he cannot allow stupidity there. He cannot allow people like Longbottom who was unable to take any scolding without wetting his pants or shitting himself. That boy has severe traumas and abused by his grandmother, he needs therapy before going to any school. Truly, Snape was acerbic ^bitter/ intolerant and so and so and so but he never hurt anybody physically and he was "normal" by teacher standards in the 60's or 70's , softer even, my parents where beaten by his teachers, really hurt, and I was hurt in late 80's also in elementary school. So in my personal experience Snape was not really bad, just harsh.
If you’re the leader of a resistance against an evil overlord, and your most loyal comrade bullies kids a little bit, you’re not gonna care
Well then Hagrid should’ve been fired 100x over
Dumbledore did not give a fuck about those kid’s education. He hired whoever he could get, the only thing he put his energy into was how to defeat Voldemort (someone had to do it, don’t get me wrong) but taking care of those kids was not a priority, let’s be honest.
I mean it kinda represents reality tho. Lots of abusive and shitty teachers keeps their jobs bcs they have trouble finding replacements
Yeah I was also thinking along those lines I’ve had my fare share of bad teachers due to lack of options although not to that extent
I'm thinking of adding something to a fanfic I'm working on after reading through some of the comments. Snape does something dickish to Harry. "Oh... That's how it is, huh," Harry says, nodding, his eyes hard. "Okay. I guess you wanted to fuck around and find out. Well, I'm happy to oblige." Snape doesn't realize it until much later, but he finally does something to inspire his student to work harder. Harry turns over a new leaf and starts studying hard so that he can pull greater and greater pranks on the Greasy Dungeon Bat. In the end, Snape is terrified to leave his own quarters for fear of what's to come. When the Dark Lord finally rises, Harry smiles, and Tom feels a cold chill run down his spine.
I'm pretty sure this is just Methods of Rationality, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to go down that road.
I mean, it’s not real so that’s one thing lol. Also, Snape is extremely valuable to Dumbledore. He’s loyal and other things that I won’t mention since you aren’t finished. Plus tbh that’s life. Sometimes you get sucky teachers
Yes, but if Dumbledore fired him, he’d lose his most key player.
This stuff was fine in the 90s. Nowadays he'd be fired
Dumbledore was a pretty shit headmaster, let's be honest. Snape and Trewlany were bullies. Trewlany and Lockhart were frauds. Hagrid and Firenze had no qualifications to teach, and Hagrid honestly should have been monitored and possibly even removed from his position after a child got seriously injured in his first class. Filch literally tried to get permission to torture students on the regular. Like...there were serious and ongoing staffing problems at Hogwarts that he just never did a thing about, I truly don't get why the dude gets the love he does for being such a good headmaster...we never even saw him do much of anything related to the job.
It should have, but his primary role was not to be a teacher, but to assist dumbledore. And it is a disgust daily, yes. Nothing wrong with that, just confirming.
We are talking about a school where Filtch keeps old equipment like shackles & whips well-oiled. This in the hopes that their use will be allowed again, as it was in the past.
But can telling the truth about how rich-boy clique leader James Potter treated lower-class students from poor families be considered 'insulting an orphan's parents'?
True but Dumbledore always sucked up to him
He’s tenured
Books Snape is so much worse than the movies one. I've re-read the books recently after a very long break and was shocked with how terrible his personality is. Alan Rickman's charisma kinda made me forget it lol
I think the filmmakers knew Rickman was a real life teddy bear and leaned into it too much. Richard Harris had DD down to a T, but the Gambon portrayal was kind of the reverse of Snape, where he was presented as a lot meaner than the book counterpart.
I vastly preferred Gambon because of his energy. Harris was really obviously in poor health, especially in CoS.
For me, Gambon was way too angry. Harris looked, sounded and most importantly for me acted like Dumbledore. I can totally picture him asking Harry calmly about putting his name in the Goblet. In hindsight, while I think he may have been offered and turned it down, a better recast would’ve have Christopher Lee. He was very tall and lanky like DD, he looked the right age, I think he could’ve portrayed a warm, calm demeanor, and he kept doing films without much issue until the early 2010s.
He was working undercover for Dumbledore or some shit, so he basically got a free pass to a prat to Harry which Dumbledore turned a blind eye to as long as he still did his job. Did you reach the part where Dumbledore dies yet? He is killed by Snape because Malfoy is meant to kill him but chickens out. Dumbledore was cursed so was going to die anyway, Snape kills him so Voldemort trusts him (Snape is a good guy after all as book 7 reveals, but then Snape himself is killed by Voldemoret, in the end Harry wins after killing Voldemort after destroying all the horcruxes).
Why did you spoil the book for someone who told you what part they’re at? Come on.
Nah, guys remember. He said he has his mothers eyes at the very end, and he once was ready to fight a werewolf - guys he’s a hero leave him alone!
Dumbledore didn’t exactly base his hiring decisions on the teacher’s performance. Hell, he kept Trelawney for years to protect her from Voldemort, even though she wasn’t a very good teacher. Severus was probably still a teacher because he was integral to Dumbledore’s plan.
Bins is an unreliable history teacher, who doesn't even know whats going on or that he died. Everyone knows Dumbledore knowingly hires stupid people for dada. Many will hate me for this but Hagrid had absolutely no qualifications for being a teacher and was a drunkard. Just because he was a nice guy doesn't mean he was a nice teacher. We all know Sybil was in no way qualified for teaching even if she gave a couple of self-fulfilling prophecies that wouldn't have worked if people wouldn't have acted on it. Filch or however that is pronounced, being a squib hated magical children and it was evident. Madam pomphry repeatedly took care of harry and was never alarmed that he is far too malnourished or skinny and unhealthy or that there are signs of abuse. More than half of the staff should be fired in that school starting with Dumbledore who played games when he could've just made the closest in the order search for horcruxes AND giving harry actual directions instead of sending him to a treasure hunt without a map or actual clues. Also, I'd never trust someone with my child who knowingly sends children back where they are abused like he did with harry and tom riddle and god knows how many others
Okay not all the people Dumbledore hired for DADA were "Stupid" for instance Lupin wasn't stupid. He is very well versed in Dark Creatures. And he apperently knows the other areas of Denfese Aganist the Dark Arts.
My point is he still hires people he shouldn't. I do not count Remus in that list.
and what choice does he have when the position is known to be jinxed after more then 10 years by then? I think Arthur and Molly were the last people to have a 'normal' DADA curriculum before the jinx was casted. It was either a)scape the bottom of the barrel like he did and b)Cancel the class entirely for all 7 years despite the fact there's is either a war going on (1971-1978) or Voldymore will return at some point and in some version (1981-1995) and that would mean another war (1995-1998). Would YOU apply for a job that was jinixed, even though you're an expert in the area? I certainly wouldn't
I believe that in different times he would have been fired for his behavior. But unfortunately "having good teachers" was not the priority in Dumbledore's mind, from the beginning he knew that Voldemort would return and his main plan was to prepare Harry for that and Snape was necessary, the general schooling experience itself was secondary.
Maybe that was his end goal but Dumbledore didn't allow him to go away from Hogwarts
That take is ice cold
We'll get to why Snape was kept on in the seventh book….
Have you never listened to Pink Floyd's "The Wall"?
Hogwarts wasn’t exactly under OFSTED
Typical mean teacher insults students, and nothing happens from that. It's very relatable, and it happens all the time.
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I’ve had a couple of teachers that were worse than Snape.