Author: Octavia Alabaster
If the images of teachers in popular culture follow us into the classroom, Harry Potter, the latest school-centred book/movie craze, cannot be ignored. Indeed, the Harry Potter books are the fastest selling children's books of all time, and they have been followed by three hit movies and a host of accompanying toys, posters, backpacks and other products. It can almost be guaranteed that the upcoming generation of high school students will have spent their "tweens" feeding this phenomenon, and it is also likely that some of them will have preconceived ideas about teachers and education based on what they have read in the books and seen on screen.
What they have encountered, in my opinion, are a great deal of teacher stereotypes. There is the lovable, though quirky, headmaster, Dumbledore. He is, in many ways, a stock character: the all-knowing principal. The only other option for a principal in most school-based tales is the cruel tyrant. In Harry Potter's case, it is his Potions professor fills this role. Severus Snape, his very name suggesting his cruelty, is the quintessential mean teacher who seems to be out to get his students for no particular reason. Lastly, Professor McGonagall embodies another beloved teaching stereotype: the stern teacher with a heart of gold. Harry's first impression of McGonagall is that she is "not someone to cross" (Rowling 85) yet the first time she has an opportunity to punish Harry - after a broom-flying incident - she does not. Instead, she recognizes his flying abilities and signs him up for the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
Perhaps worse than these stereotyped characters is the way the books and films perpetuate other common stereotypes and misconceptions concerning teachers and school. Many young children have a misguided belief that their teachers live at the school. The Harry Potter series does little to dispute this myth. All of the instructors live at Hogwarts and there is little indication that any of them have a life beyond their classrooms. This implication might suggest a central role for teaching in the novel, but that is not the case. Classroom learning and the teachers themselves are more of a subplot. The majority of Harry's adventures take place outside the classroom suggesting that real learning often takes place in informal settings and that, for many students, school does not revolve around their teachers and their lessons, but around their friends, their sports teams and their other extracurricular activities, which is certainly the view many of my students have of school.
In fact, when I posted a query about this topic on the Pensieve, one respondent observed that "the HP world is faithful to the student's perspective of education." Students do not sit and think about their teachers the way those of us in a teaching program sit and think about our students and our role in the classroom. No one seemed to agree that they were a bit stereotypical, but then none of those who responded will ever have to worry about living up to (or living down) these teacher images the way I do.
Yet I have become enraptured with the magical world of Harry Potter. I have read the books voraciously and have anxiously awaited each new book and film. But in recent months, I have begun to see these texts through the eyes of a new teacher and cannot escape thoughts about how teachers are represented in the book and my own reactions to their representations. For example, my favourite character is the seemingly heartless Snape who belittles and harasses his students. I certainly do not have malicious fantasies about making my students' lives miserable, so what does my interest in Snape say about me as a teacher? Upon reflection, I realized this interest in Snape has more to do with the subject I teach and my motivations for becoming a teacher than the kind of teacher I want to be. As an English teacher I find it hard to read a book without analyzing the characters, looking for symbols, exploring the themes, etc. Snape's character, in my opinion, is one of the more complex and interesting to read. He comes across as cold-blooded and cruel on the surface, but with each novel Rowling suggests that there is much more going on underneath. I believe that literacy is about more than just decoding the words on the page; readers have to think critically and read between the lines whether they are reading Harry Potter or the Sunday Times. I was drawn to teaching because I wanted to help young people learn these skills. And maybe, though it may sound corny, because there is something about teaching (and learning) that is a little bit magic.
Posted by Madmaxime at March 14, 2005 01:22 AM