Harry Potter in the Classroom
What the J.K. Rowling's Boy Wizard Teaches Readers about Education
Jun 30, 2008
Unless you have a classroom where 100% of the kids love Harry Potter, it's unlikely you'll be able to turn your whole classroom experience into a Muggle version of Hogwarts, with houses and all, without making some of the students feel like they're on the outside. But the stories themselves contain valuable insights into education that translate from Hogwarts right into everyday classroom activities.
No Witch or Wizard Left Behind: Umbridge's Standards-Based Curriculum
Delores Umbridge comes to Hogwarts in Harry's fifth year [Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Scholastic, 2003], ostensibly to fix Hogwarts and its falling standards. In reality, she's there to spy on Dumbledore and so to preserve Fudge's power; but the two concerns are one and the same. A ruler obsessed with his own power will want to seize control of education for the purpose of producing followers and limiting rebellion. Umbridge shows up with a Ministry-approved, standards-based, theory-centered, and exam-driven curriculum that is not unlike the standards-based emphasis on education in the U.S. under No Child Left Behind over the past several years. In Umbridge's classroom, there are no wands and no questions. Just reading and writing.
Umbridge's curriculum drains the life out of the classroom experience. Many teachers feel the same way about their own classrooms, even though they're not bad teachers like Umbridge. The pressure of the tests has become a dominating factor, and it can produce absolute drudgery.
Learning as Participation: Dumbledore's Army
Most students know that education should actually be relevant to real life. Most teachers know this as well. But rote repetition outside of any meaningful context is the emphasis these days, and it's what many adminstrators want to see. Work on the skills; those will be on the test. Rowling confronts this idea head on with Dumbledore's Army. Harry and his friends knew that Umbridge's curriculum would not prepare them for real life, so they begin their own study group, practicing Defense Against the Dark Arts. Most of the members of Dumbledore's Army do better on the tests than their peers, and they are ready to fight the Death Eaters at the end of the book.
What is the difference? Under Harry's teaching, the members of Dumbledore's Army aren't just learning theory and mechanics. They're actually participating in the work of using defensive spells, and there is an urgency about it: Voldemort is out there, and they need to be ready! Muggle classrooms can be the same. Surely, there are real life issues "out there" in the real world, and children and teens are aware of them. Linking educational practices to real life, and even creating assignments that participate in real life, can create a new energy and desire for learning.
What's more exciting for students: grammar worksheets, or learning grammar while in the process of writing a letter to a congressman about an authentic issue affecting their community - one which has consequences for the students' lives?
If you need some fresh ideas for the classroom, read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and see how Harry teaches compared to Umbridge. There might just be some real world parallels you can introduce into your own classroom.
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