Login

Witch Weekly · July 5, 2020 – 6:23 PM

Opinion: The Flaws Hogwarts Boarding

When our children go off to Hogwarts, we expect them to be fully protected from degeneracy and impropriety. The headmaster has employed matrons to keep young ladies and their male counterparts in line, and etiquette class ensures all children, regardless of gender or background, knows their manners. Our sons are precious and our daughters fragile, so why then do they insist on forcing them to share a room with their social lessers?

Proponents of shared dormitories speak of tolerance and understanding those from less fortunate situations. It’s not untrue; I’ve seen my son develop a penchant for charity after spending four years in a dorm with both a farmer and a shopkeeper’s son. Still, there are mays to open our children’s minds to the misfortune of others without placing them directly under their influence. Why should my daughter, a girl of sound breeding and good sense, be forced to share a dormitory with a daughter whose mother is nothing short of a disgrace? Aren’t we trying to prepare our children for their futures?

Hogwarts is great. Its boarding system is not. The school should go to greater efforts to protect our children’s innocence and the values we’ve spent years attempting to cultivate in their young minds. No girl should come out of Hogwarts with a hefty dowry and believe her sole purpose in life is to work at the Ministry like poor Miss Petra Sleptova.

What can be done? I propose a new system:

(1) Overhaul the dormitory system. Keep a handful of dormitories for each sex in each year, and sort the children based off their background.

Girls from less fortunate households should not be forced to live their Hogwarts years in envy of their peers’ privileges, and a gentleman’s daughter should not be placed with girls that encourage deviance or degeneracy.

(2) Give the poor children jobs. Along with their Charms coursework and Potions lessons, children who will one day work in their fields or the shops should be given firsthand experience with employment. Allow them to work the kitchens or the grounds alongside the groundskeeper. It builds character and offer the chance to earn a good reference early in life.

(3) Change the focus of NEWTS. Unless they intend to become healers, girls from good households have no need for the rigorous coursework that most boys undergo in their final years of school. For the girls who desire to complete their school years, turn their sixth and seventh year into a finishing school of sorts. Expand the etiquette curriculum and ensure they remain far away from the radical minds of the lower classes.

The natural way of things is not enough to keep our sons and daughters safe from the radical minds of their less fortunate peers. We must demand that Hogwarts take the initiative to protect them from things they ought not to know at their age, which in practice means removing them from an environment where less savory facts might regularly come up in conversation. Hogwarts needs to focus less on just the academics, but on building character and protecting the leaders of tomorrow.

The following 1 user Likes Witch Weekly's post:
Aldous Crouch

Get Featured in Witch Weekly! | Submit an article!

PMs on this account will not be checked.
Please contact a member of the Wench team for more information:
MJ | Lynn | Olive | Kit | Dante

Welcome to Charming

Issue #237 - Five Simple Ways To Raise Better Children