← Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
Prof Responds: Hogwarts & the Pedagogy of Wartime Education
01:10:09
In this Prof Responds episode, Professor Wamble reflects on listener responses to the “Best & Worst Teachers at Hogwarts” discussion and steps back to ask a larger question: What does it mean to teach in the shadow of war? Drawing on Hogwarts...
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- [00:01]
Grainger Commercial Voice
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- [00:30]
Geico Commercial Voice
Hello, I'm here during the lunch rush with Janice who owns her own food truck.
- [00:34]
Professor Julian Womble
Best cheesesteaks in town.
- [00:35]
Geico Commercial Voice
Janice traded up to Geico Commercial Auto Insurance for her food truck business. We're here where she needs us most.
- [00:41]
Professor Julian Womble
They sure are.
- [00:41]
Geico Commercial Voice
We make it so easy for her to save with customised coverage that grows with her business. Sorry, I just get so emotional talking about saving folks money.
- [00:50]
Professor Julian Womble
Not this onion I'm chopping.
- [00:52]
Geico Commercial Voice
Just so beautiful. Oh yeah, nice.
- [00:55]
Professor Julian Womble
The onion. Get a commercial auto insurance quote today@geico.com and see how much you could save. It feels good to Geico if you're.
- [01:01]
Grainger Commercial Voice
An H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:35]
Professor Julian Womble
Welcome to Critical Magic Theory where we deconstruct the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Because loving something doesn't mean we can't be critical of it. I'm Professor Julian Womble and today we is our Prof. Response episode on our best and worst teachers at Hogwarts, y'. All. I first of all as always have to thank you all so much for those of you who participated in the post episode chat. It's gonna make for a really good episode today and also I have to remind you because we're back. We've been out of practice but now we're back and there is a survey on Fleur de la Cor that is available for you on the Patreon. I posted it. You should be able to search for it and find it. It is also available in my link tree if you follow me on social Media and it is also available on the website criticalmagictheory.com click the link for survey and it will pop up for you if you are on the listserv. I will also have that for you in the coming days. I've been shoveling snow and I don't like it. I also built a snowblower, which, if you know anything about me, which is to say how bougie I am, you know, me and manual labor do not go together. And yet somehow, some way, I built it and I used it multiple times. And I also shoveled snow. I'm sore. I'm very sore. And I don't like it. But I did it. And as I was getting ready for this episode, I was outside, like, just beating the ice and the snow back from my car. And I got excited. Cause I was like, oh, this is gonna be a really good episode. Because I think that there's a lot of things for us to unpack and think through as we finish and round out our discussion on the teachers at Hogwarts. And so I am so excited and I am ready for us to kind of move on to other people. And so I am also anxiously anticipating what you all are going to bring to bear for Fleur. So I have to say, because I know that many of you want to know when the deadline is for the survey. Not that it matters, because you all will wait till the last possible minute and then I'll. I'll be like, it's over. And you'll say, I never got a chance to do it. So I'm telling you now, February 1st in the year of our Lord 2026 is when the server is coming down because I will need to record the episode the next day. So you have until the first to give me all of your thoughts on Fleur Delacour. And I don't want to hear that you didn't know because I'm telling you now. Speaking of also simultaneously and the merch, we're going to do another merch drop for February, which means that the merch shop that we did for January is going to go. So if you want the my therapist will hear about this ferret shirt. If you want the King Neville Long May he reign shirt. If you want the this is not a Dumbledore episode shirt or hoodie or sweatshirt or stickers or whatever, all of which are going towards our donating to three causes. Now the time. Because we're going to do another drop for February and it's going to be new stuff. And so if that's your vibe and you want those things. Please take the time if you are in the position to be able to do so and get them because they are not going to be up forever. And so I'm also talking to myself because I need to get all of them. So I will be getting them, but you should too. And so don't forget that. And also don't forget what we all are up to right now. Bopping. We've got to get to it. It's time for the bop. And so get yourselves prepared, get yourselves ready because we're going to be bopping in three. In two, in one. Let's bop. We need some co, Sam.
- [06:18]
Grainger Commercial Voice
If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [06:47]
Geico Commercial Voice
I'm here on a job site with Tim, who owns his own electrical contracting business.
- [06:51]
Professor Julian Womble
Three employees and two work trucks.
- [06:53]
Geico Commercial Voice
Tim traded up to Geico Commercial Auto Insurance. We're positively here where he needs us most.
- [06:58]
Professor Julian Womble
They sure are.
- [06:59]
Geico Commercial Voice
With step by step help on all his insurance needs. All for shockingly low rates.
- [07:04]
Professor Julian Womble
Shockingly low, huh?
- [07:06]
Geico Commercial Voice
Just a little bit of electrician humour.
- [07:07]
Professor Julian Womble
Do you get it? I got it.
- [07:09]
Geico Commercial Voice
You know, it feels like we have a real connection.
- [07:11]
Professor Julian Womble
All right, I'll stop. Get a commercial auto insurance quote today@geico.com and see how much you could save. It feels good to Geico.
- [07:18]
Grainger Commercial Voice
If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [07:47]
Professor Julian Womble
I hope you danced, y'. All. I'm sore. Shoveling snow is not what it used to be. And it's so crazy because you all know I'm only 13 years old, and yet my body is treating me like someone who is 36. And that's insane. And I think that that's why I'm such a stickler for stretching before the bop, because the body needs that time. The body needs it because without it, you too could be a teenager whose body is wracked with pain and you don't know what to do because you didn't think it was necessary to prepare your body for such strenuous activity as lifting ice. But here we are. I want to take a moment of personal privilege, as if we're in some sort of body where I have to do, where I have to make such declarations. But during the Chronic Overthinkers meeting that we had on Saturday, I think it was Amanda who asked if I thought when I started Critical Magic Theory that we would, you know, be going into our third year and if I had had any, any of the expectations for, for where we would be, what this podcast would be doing, who this podcast would be reaching. And I laughed and I said, absolutely not. And you know, at the end of the last episode where we were celebrating our second birthday, I said, thank you. And it's interesting because I didn't really take a moment to reflect on the podcast itself and how much we've grown and, and the things that we do and the work that is being done by us in terms of critical thinking. I think part of this next merch drop is going to be a shirt that says make critical thinking great again. So, look, be on the lookout for that. But I am so proud of us and so grateful for you all who continually push me to not only produce something that is very meaningful to me, but also to. To take a break when necessary, to take it easy on myself when I'm pushing myself too hard or being harder on myself than I need to do, need to be for holding me accountable for things like, I don't know, applying for the Webby Awards. I'm putting this on the episode so that it is clear that it is on my mind. This is an amazing community and I'm so grateful for us and I'm so excited for the work that we will continue to do together. And I could not have even begun to imagine what an incredible group of people would be here sharing this experience and listening to the rants and raves of a 13 year old person who is obsessed with Harry Potter. That's me, if you didn't know. And so I am so grateful and excited and overwhelmed for those of you who have been with us from the beginning. You know that this podcast was created because people asked for it, but also because my therapist was like, well, if you're going to do it, then just do it and shout out to him. But it's fulfilled so many things that I didn't know needed to be fulfilled. It's offered me the ability to reach out to people and connect with people that I obviously never would have if not for this space. And I'm very humbled by the fact that you all choose to listen to this podcast. Listen to some, like, millennial dude in front of a microphone, which, like, in this day and age is really never it. And you never really know what you're going to get. And it could be blasphemy and buffoonery. And yet you all are here week in and week out with me, helping me be better, helping us as a community to grow and to learn about the world that we live in through a world that we love. And. And I do not take that for granted. And I am so, so, so grateful for you all. And I wanted to be clear about that because I know that some of us may not make it always to the end of the episode, but I did want to highlight that. And again, I'm thankful to Amanda for asking that question because it really prompted me to have to reflect on the last two years and what my hopes and goals are for us moving into the third. The biggest goal, hope that I have to try to facilitate, and I'm saying this for the sake of accountability, is I would love to do a live episode where those of you who can, we can come together as a community and do like a live situation. It's been on my, like, bucket list for what, two years, I guess. And so I think this might be the year we can try to finally make it happen. There are a lot of logistical things that have to go, but I'm just putting it out there for us to think about. And yeah, there's a lot of other things that. And opportunities that I'm sure will come up as we continue. But in the meantime, between time, thank you. And let's get into this episode. The first thing that came up from our discussion in the post episode chat was one that I thought was really fascinating because it opened us up to really thinking about what is the kind of foundation that we understand as teaching and what does that then mean for our understanding of teaching at Hogwarts? Nadia wrote, on the question of what makes a good teacher, I think we discussed this quite a lot in Snape's episodes, but my view is still a combination of passing on knowledge and creating a safe learning environment. Examples that spring to mind are how Harry rushed to find McGonagall in grubbly plank when Hedwig was injured. They had proven themselves to be safe people he could trust. In contrast, when in Fear for Sirius Life, it didn't occur to him to seek out Snape despite him being a member of the Order of the Phoenix. I also want to shout out Flitwick because when students make mistakes in his class, his version of punishment is to tell them to practice, which can only help them improve. Likewise, Sprouts points out Sprout points out that other students are focused and almost finished. When students are too busy talking and not doing what they are meant to be doing, which seems like a much more sensible approach. There are no pointless detentions or additional essays, no missed Quidditch matches, no deducted points. Seems like a much more sensible approach. Erica wrote, I teach third grade and it is abundantly clear to me that there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to this teaching thing. I think many adults are not aware of how closely children watch us. Words rarely register to them, but what we do and how we make them feel is gonna stick every time I see it every day. If you wanna know what adults are modeling, just watch children at recess and you will get a play by play. It may be good or bad, but it's definitely a mirror. My goodness. And Kylie wrote what upsets me most about the statement. The statement, not the snapement, but the statement that Snape didn't want to be a teacher, which is absolutely true, is that he ruined it for Lupin, who genuinely wanted to teach and help guide students. It's my turn. I think we're figuring out a right moment for that. One of the things that feels really clear after sitting with these responses is that when we talk about good teaching, we are almost never talking about the content that is being taught. On average. We are talking about safety. And not safety as in comfort or ease, but safety as in predictability. Safety as in knowing how an authority figure will respond when you are afraid or wrong or something you love is at risk. What's being surfaced here is that students don't decide who is safe based on credentials or brilliance or even alignment. They decide based on patterns, history, whether vulnerability has been met with care or punishment in the past. And that's why the question of who students run to matters so much. Because in moments of panic, people don't workshop their Options. They are not looking or weighing resumes. They move towards whoever has already proven that fear won't be weaponized against them. To the point that was made from Erica. Children may not always say what you say, but they see what you do and they remember that. And I think that that is really important here. There is a lyric from a song, Children Will Listen by Stephen Sondheim from Into the woods. And it says, careful the things you say, Children will listen. Careful the things you do. Children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. And children will look to you for which way to turn to learn what to be. And the last line of that particular stanza, careful before you say, listen to me, Children will listen. And I think that what we recognize here is that what the children at Hogwarts are listening and doing and replicating is such a clear indictment for some of the teachers at Hogwarts. When we look at the teachers who function well, the ones whose classrooms don't spiral into chaos or cruelty, they tend to share something important in common. They don't confuse discipline with domination. Correction isn't humiliation, and mistakes aren't treated as moral failures. The goal in those classrooms is not to assert power, but to keep students inside the learning process. And that matters because so much of what Hogwarts models as rigorous is actually removal. Removal from community, joy, trust. The tensions and losing points and the public shaming. Those are not tools of neutrality. They teach the children what authority is for and who it protects. One of the first things that we learn about Snape is that he wants to teach Defense against the Dark Arts and that he gives preferential treatment to Slytherins. The teachers who do things differently understand something subtle but crucial. Punishment interrupts learning, practice deepens it. Redirection preserves dignity and humiliation destroys curiosity. And I hate to say it, but I think that, like the people that we are conjuring in our minds, obviously Snape, obviously Umbridge. But there are also some moments where we see McGonagall falling into this as well. And I think that the way that she does it is the byproduct of and the byproduct and the recognition of how dangerous transfiguration can be. But I also think that there's a way in which sometimes she doesn't necessarily have the kind of patience that other teachers have. And I'm not faulting her. I can't imagine what it is to have to teach a class like transfiguration. And I think one of the things that I've learned a lot from my friends who are parents and guardians and other people who are not only teaching them, but also in charge of their wellbeing, is that fear dictates a lot of the way that guardian figures operate. Right. So many times we hear people, you know, lashing out at children because they are afraid. Right? So many times. When. And not in all cases, not nearly all, but in some cases, right, Parents are terrified of their kids to come out of the closet because they're afraid of how the world is going to treat them. And so the recourse that they take then is to, like, scare them from coming out, not because they wouldn't love them if they did, but because they don't want the world to treat their kid negatively. Right. Fear dictates so much of the way that so many people operate and move and think about the world. And when you have a subject like transfiguration, which is extremely dangerous, and I can't imagine the things that she's seen. There's a way in which you have to operate with a level of strictness in order to make sure that your students take it seriously. There's also a way in which, though sometimes I think it can be a little bit problematic, and I think that's a hard line to balance. And I know that some people won't like that, but what I just said. And I think that Minerva McGonagall is an amazing teacher, but I also think that, like, pedagogically, if we're thinking about the notion of feeling safe and feeling comfortable making mistakes, one, transfiguration is just a hard class for that to be a thing that you can do and do it safely. But also when you do make that mistake, I think that she's not always the kindest in terms of helping you figure out what you've done wrong. And again, it's a very high burden that she has to navigate. And I completely appreciate that. But I want us to also, you know, keep it a hundred and keep that same energy that we have for some of these other teachers. She's not doing anything similar to Umbridge or Snape, don't get me wrong. But pedagogically, there are some moments where I'm like, okay, girl, is this helpful? And do your students feel safe? And I think that that matters, because what becomes clear is that in every classroom, someone is learning something, whether the lesson is written down or not. Students are watching how power behaves. They are learning what happens when they speak up, when they fail, when they're scared, they are absorbing the emotional rules of the space long before they master the material. One of the things that I've learned as a teacher in a college classroom is that you will always have students who try to test the boundaries of a space. I'm a liberal person. I sometimes have students who do not have my ideological beliefs. And those are the students who tend to look to me and see just how biased I'm going to be. And they test me, they test the class. They want to see just how far I'm willing to go, if I'm going to correct them, if I'm going to be antagonistic towards them for disagreeing with me on ideological or political grounds. And I have to create a space where they can say what they believe and feel comfortable doing it. And I remember I was telling a story to an older gentleman about this and he was like, I would correct them immediately and I would let them know in no uncertain terms. And I said, I can't correct what students don't feel comfortable saying or doing in my presence. And if I create a classroom where they don't feel comfortable giving voice to their own experiences, their own beliefs, then we can't have a conversation about that. Which means that there's no room for change. Because if the space feels volatile, you just won't speak. And I think that there are some places and spaces in Hogwarts where that is very much the case. And that's why intent doesn't matter nearly as much as impact. A teacher can believe that they are doing what is necessary. They can believe that they are serving the greater good. But if students cannot predict safety, learning becomes a risk and people do not learn well under threat. I think this helps clarify a quieter form of harm that came up in the conversations in the post episode chat. The harm of occupying space where you don't belong. Because sometimes the damage isn't only what a teacher does to students. Sometimes it's a teacher who never gets to exist because someone else was holding a position without care. In this case Snape and Lupin. That kind of harm is harder to name because it's indirect. But it is also real. When someone who doesn't want to teach or cannot teach safely occupies that role. It doesn't just fail students, it blocks the possibility of something better. And I think this is where Hogwarts failure becomes systemic rather than individual. Because the school does not lack brilliant minds. It lacks emotional stewardship. It lacks a commitment to relational safety as a prerequisite for learning. And we talked a lot about this in the last episode. We talked about it even more in the conversation I had with the chronic overthinkers this past weekend about prerequisites for teaching. And I believe it was Dylan who brought up all of the things that he had to do in order to be, be a teacher and how none of that is found in anything that we see at Hogwarts. And the result of that lack of preparation on the part of people who are literally molding the minds of the young. Magical community is a place where extraordinary knowledge is transmitted, but that trust is fragile, where power is abundant, but the care is inconsistent. Students learn how to defend themselves magically but don't always know how to exist without fear under certain kinds of authority. So when we ask who the best teachers at Hogwarts are, the answer isn't the most powerful or the most feared. To me, it's the ones who make it possible for students to be wrong, to be scared, to be kids who are learning about a world and themselves while also harnessing immense power. And that distinction between preparation and control, safety and obedience becomes even more important when we think about certain subjects, whether it be transfiguration or even defense against the dark arts. It's in those spaces and places where you want students to feel safe, where they feel that they can make mistakes, but also that if they make them, they won't be castigated, they won't be shamed. Because what I think is true and I, and I teach a subject, it's obviously not transfiguration or defense against the dark arts, but it is one that is very sensitive in the current climate that we are in. I teach about race and I teach about politics and I teach about identity. And my big pedagogical goal is always to have people feel more comfortable using that language, using identity based language, using racial language. If I start yelling and castigating students for not doing it correctly or the way that I would do it, or a way that isn't offensive at the onset because you don't know any better, they simply won't use it. And that is everything that I've been trying to get them to not do. I want them to use the language. And that means you have to leave room for mistakes. That means you have to leave room for error. Because everyone is human and everyone is learning and that is the process of learning. No matter what it is, everyone is going to make mistakes. And I think that the hardest part of being, being a teacher is figuring out how you are going to navigate the inevitability of error. And some of the teachers at Hogwarts. They don't leave that room for themselves or for their students. The next thing that we will be talking about is going to be looking at Defense against the Dark Arts and how we understand it as a class, as a concept, and what we think it's offering us. I think this theme does a lot of really important analytical work because it moves us beyond the question of bad teacher versus good teacher and into the notion of ideology and designing what students learn and how all of that connects to the broader institutional power. Britt Defense against the Dark Arts requires more than skill. You've got to believe in what you're teaching. You've got to believe that the danger is real. You have to believe that students need to be prepared, and you have to believe that the protection is not the same as control. Could this not be said about divination and arithmancy? I feel like the only reason why, or one of the main reasons why we don't liken Faux Moody to Umbridge is potentially the sexism of it all. Well, okay. But also because he's got more charisma than Umbridge. She's just sickeningly sweet and just detestable. And I know a lot of people will throw out the whole torture and detention of it all and trying to grab power. And while Moody didn't try to grab power, I mean, you could say that having the unforgivable curses performed in class and on students and transfiguring a student even though Malfoy even though it's Malfoy into a ferret and bouncing them around and thinking it's funny could put his actions up there with Umbridge, but he's got more suave and charisma on a level of 1 to 10. 10. Being the most paranoid Being the most how paranoid or traumatized do you think the students were by the time they left Hogwarts just due to all of their Defense against the Dark Arts professors not being what they seem? A bumbling guy with a Dark Lord under his turban, A hero that is really an idiot who steals people's jobs and memories, A werewolf, a double agent, slash death eater and evil rap in pink wrapped in pink. Think anyone gained trust issues due to their Defense against the Dark Arts professors? Or do you think the trio and the props were the only ones wise to this and everyone just didn't notice? We don't really talk about Umbridge's curriculum, and it's one of the most problematic aspects of her tenure as Defense against the Dark Arts professor in Order of the Phoenix. Not only is her curriculum handed down from the Ministry of Magic, but it's deliberately taught at the lowest order of rote, memorization, deference, and obedience. Umbridge does not just fail to teach practical magic. She teaches strict obedience to authority. While the general attitude toward it in the series is that the curriculum is boring and unpractical, in all seriousness, it's designed specifically to prevent students from developing the sharp eye and critical thinking that allegedly define how students recognize the Dark Arts and defend themselves against it in the first place. Of course, a corrupt ministry benefits from students not learning critical thought. Sounds familiar. Why else do they so desperately want to control Defense against the Dark Arts, but not care that a ghost is teaching History of Magic without updating the curriculum since Dumbledore was a kid? Well, well, well, it's my turn. You know, what really crystallizes in this conversation is that Defense against the Dark Arts is not just a class about danger. It's a class about how institutions imagine their responsibility to people who are not yet powerful. And once you start looking at it that way, it completely changes the game. In the bonus episode that I had for the Deep Divers and Chronicle for Thinkers on Patreon, I spent a lot of time talking about the Defense against the Dark Arts because I think that there's a way in which we inherently understand what the class is about without asking any questions. And I think that there's a way that that class feels important to us because it is a class in the moment in which we are experiencing Hogwarts, where we are living in a world that is rife with the Dark Arts left and right and center. And so it feels so important, but at the end of the day, it's really only as important as the context in which they find themselves. Defense against the Dark Arts in any other context is not important because you're not dealing with the Dark Arts until you are. And I also think that once you start looking at Defense against the Dark Arts as this kind of institutional proxy for indoctrination, then there's a third figure that becomes quietly important here. And it's interesting because this person is not a. A Defense Against Dark Arts professor. He is a Potions Master. And that person is Horace Slughorn, who someone brought up. This person wrote on a com. They wrote a comment on Spotify about how they were upset that Slughorn didn't get mentioned. And so now he's getting mentioned because Slughorn shows us something different. He is neither preparing students to confront the danger that is in their face directly. Nor is he trying to control them through obedience. He's doing something else. He's curating safety through proximity to power. At one end of the spectrum, you have preparation, teaching students to recognize threat, to respond to it and act when authority is either absent or compromised. On the other end, you have control, teaching students that safety comes from compliance, from deference and trusting institutions, even when those institutions are lying to you. But Slughorn doesn't really fit on either end. He offers what I think of as, like, selective protection. He believes and understands that danger exists. He lived through the first war. He knows how bad things can get. It's why he's on the run. Right? But his response to that knowledge is not to democratize preparation. It's to identify who is worth investing in and pulling them closer to him. And that's what the slug club is. It's not about teaching everyone how to survive. It's about ensuring that some people will always land on their feet. And the gag is, is that Slughorn's not the only person who does this. Right. Like, we know that Snape does this. Again, we learned very early on that he has a large and very pronounced preference for Slytherins. Right? He doesn't necessarily have a club, but, like, at the end of the day, it's the same sort of preferential treatment that he is being given or that he is giving to Slytherins. And I think that this is a really important pedagogical thing that we have to understand because it reflects a very real logic in how institutions, broadly construed, function, which is, not everyone needs to be protected. If the right people are my God today, if that doesn't feel so real, particularly for those of us who are in the States, I'm sorry, for those of you who are not and are not necessarily feeling as struck by that particular statement. Right. That there's an institutional understanding, although I think there's a global understanding of the kind of preferential nature of governments in general. Right? Like across the board, no matter where you are, there's always a preferred party, whether it be men, whether it be cisgendered individuals, whether it be white people, whether it be rich people, whether it be anyone who's at the top of any specific social hierarchy. Right? Like we all understand that there is a very clearly defined and understood space in which certain populations, certain individuals, certain people, certain communities are given preferential treatment over others. Slughorn doesn't deny danger in the same way that Umbridge does. He doesn't insist it's exaggerated or inappropriate to discuss. But he also doesn't equip students broadly to face it. He creates networks, nepotism, favoritism, insulation, and he frames it as benevolence. And I think this is the line between preparation and control. And I think this is where it gets more complicated. Because Slughorn isn't asking for obedience in the same way that Umbrage or even Snape is. He's asking for likability, charm, promise. He wants a certain kind of performance that tells him that you are worthy in his model. Safety is something that just happens to you. You're invited into it. And I think that when we think about how to connect that to our discussion of Defense against the Dark Arts, and we think about, you know, the people who are traumatized, I think that certain people are traumatized. I think that there's a way in which even in all of these classes, right? Like the gag is, is that Harry Potter generally makes it out of those classes doing fine, right? Like, it's the only O he gets from Lupin. He's even favored by Faux Moody, and that might have just been because he needed to get close to him, but still, right? Like, there's a way in which Slughorn, the way that Slughorn operates is not unique to him. He went a little bit further with the Slug Club. But at the end of the day, when we think about the way that we understand Defense against the Dark Arts and the way that we understand the institutionalization of Defense against the Dark Arts by the Ministry, and when we think about even History of Magic, right, it all tells us a very particular kind of story. Who gets to be protected, who needs to be protected, and who has been protected. And all of those things come together because it tells us a very particular kind of story. When we think about the fact that the Ministry of Magic made a concerted effort to put someone in the position of Defense Against a Dark Arts teacher and not other classes, because they want to control that. They want to control the narrative about not only who needs to be defended, but who you're defending those people from. Because in many ways, it undermines control by encouraging a certain kind of independent judgment. And I think that when we think about Umbridge's curriculum, it's not just anti magic, it's anti critical thinking. It trains students not to trust their own assessments of risk. And it teaches them that safety comes from waiting, not from acting, from letting authority decide when danger is real enough to respond to. Right? And when we think about Slughorn and his own understanding and the understanding that he gives individuals that he has hand selected. It's like danger doesn't apply to you, it only applies to those other people. And we're living in a moment right now, particularly again, those of us in the United States where we are watching. People have to grapple with the changing face of who is endangered. And I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more in the reflection, in my big reflection. But I think that there's a way that when you are taught. We obviously don't take defense against the dark arts in our schools, but we are taught who the bad guys are, who the good guys are, who the victims are, who the villains are, who the victors are. And when those people tend to look like you, when they tend to hold beliefs like you do, when they tend to look like people that you know, you begin to embody the belief that they are you. And what happens when you realize that at any given moment that may or may not be the case? And what happens when the Slug club of any given moment is no longer given that preferential treatment anymore? When the privilege is bestowed on you based on your connections are not privileging the way that they used to? When you, because of an ideological belief that you have, are no longer seen as the preferred population anymore? What do you do? And this is the danger that comes along with defining danger, defining darkness or dark arts or evil in specific ways. Because then when evil looks you in the face but it has a uniform on, or it looks a certain way, or it's being performed by someone who lives in a certain kind of body, it's harder to recognize. And then you don't realize that just as quickly as evil can change its face, so can victimization, so can villainization. And when we think about the role that institutions play in all of that, when we think about the role that teachers play in all of that, it becomes so clear to us how it is that so many students and so many of the citizens at Hogwarts in the magical world rather operate from a space of naivete in a world where the face of evil is so specific that you aren't looking for people like, I don't know, say, Barty Crouch Sr. Who put his kid under the imperious curse for a decade, who used a memory charm so powerful that it rattled the mind of one of his employees, who he then moved to a different department and let her amble around the magical world to the point where it cost her her life. Because he wasn't the dark arts that people thought needed to be defended against because he was a good guy. And there are moments and times where people use their institutional power to redefine things that we intuitively know as true. But we are taught to believe those people, and that's messed up. The third theme is engaging with the question of how we understand those authority figures who aren't overly cruel but are passive or absent or potentially disengaged. Bear writes, was Dumbledore a good teacher? Because this was not a Dumbledore episode. I don't want to bring this up, but as you described, what makes a teacher great, particularly in the Hogwarts sense, I found myself thinking of all the ways that competent teachers Sprout, Flitwick, McGonagall, even Trelawney are rather unlike Dumbledore. The bar is so low, it's in hell. But it feels like a quote, unquote, competent Hogwarts teacher is in part one, in whose class students would not be out of control. I don't know how Dumbledore would have approached pedagogy, but he's awfully passive as headmaster. So much malarkey is permitted under his nose that I'd almost wonder if his classroom, if his class would be a maelstrom. I don't know, and I'm curious to discuss it. Fenty wrote he wasn't an official teacher, but do we think Harry was a good teacher of Defense against the Dark Arts? Some. Part of me feels he could have. He could be included in the list. Mm. This is really fascinating to think about because I think these are people who are teachers, but also not teachers and people who are creating the context. Like Dumbledore creates the context into which Harry responds. Right. Like the space in which Dumbledore allows to exist in Order of the Phoenix is this very space that then prompts Harry to become the head of Dumbledore's army. Right. And so I think that there is a world in which, like these two things are very much connected. If theme one was about safety and theme two was about preparation versus control, then this theme forces us to sit with a much harder thing to name, which I think is the harm of passivity. Not cruelty or malice or even incompetence, but the decision repeated over time, to allow harm to continue in the name of balance, patience or trust in the system or the growth of a character or a person who you need to reach a certain milestone in order for them to mature into what you need them to be. Because one of the most uncomfortable realizations that emerges here is that some of the greatest damage at Hogwarts is done not by the worst teachers, but by. By those who are the most powerful. There's a tendency to treat inaction as neutrality, to frame stepping back as wisdom. Right. And I think we are kind of programmed to see Dumbledore through that particular lens, right? To confuse his restraint with care. But authority doesn't disappear just because it isn't exercised. When someone has the power to intervene and chooses not to, that choice still shapes outcomes. And I don't think that there's anywhere clearer than Hogwarts to see this in real life. Right? The school is full of moments where chaos and cruelty, institutional failure, are visible publicly and yet allowed to persist. Not because no one sees it, but because intervention is perpetually deferred. Problems are treated as temporary and harm is framed as an unfortunate but necessary aspect of what it means to be earning a magical education. Children are expected to endure instability because it is assumed they will emerge stronger on the other side. And those assumptions, those beliefs, the faith that people have in magic to just fix everything is doing a lot of work. What it really says is that the cost of harm is acceptable as long as it produces the right outcome, which in many ways encapsulates the idea and understanding of what doing something for the greater good actually means. And once that particular logic takes hold, the question is no longer whether something or someone is damaging, it's whether the damage done is useful. This, to me, is where passive authority becomes very dangerous. This isn't a Dumbledore episode, but we will kind of dip our toe in because Dumbledore is so often read as this benevolent, wise and deeply committed character to the greater good. And many of those things may be true, but benevolence without accountability still has consequences, which is something we spent a lot of time talking about in his episodes. Wisdom without intervention can still enable harm. And belief in the greater good doesn't absolve you of the responsibility for the damage you cause. And what's striking here is how often Hogwarts and its worst failures are framed as an unfortunate side effect. Just a thing that happened. It's like just a crazy little moment, right? And I spend a lot of time talking about Madame Pomfrey because I think it's only really through her that we get a sense of, like, what is kind of expected and what isn't and what is acceptable and what isn't. And I think that we tend to just be so enamored with the magical nature of Hogwarts, how it differs from our own institutions of Learning that we're willing to forgive a lot of the mess, madness, absurdity and foolishness that occurs, Right? The fact that bad teachers aren't removed, they just have to be endured. Harmful dynamics aren't dismantled, they're managed. The system remains intact even when it repeatedly proves it cannot protect its most vulnerable members. And when the harm is normalized long enough, it becomes invisible. And I think that that's why the distinction between active and passive authority matters. Because active authority makes choices, while passive authority allows patterns to calcify. It creates an environment where students learn that survival is their responsibility and not the institutions and not its leaders. And that particular lesson shows up everywhere in this series in which teachers are allowed to remain, in which subjects are left stagnate. History of magic, anyone? In which dangers are minimized until they no longer can be ignored. Care for magical creatures, anyone. And in the expectation is that children will adapt to the instability rather than demand to be protected from it. I keep thinking about those screws. And what's especially troubling is that the kind of leadership that often looks reasonable on the outside, it sounds like trust and giving people autonomy and letting everything kind of self correct in this very like, laissez faire way. But when power imbalances exist, and they always do in schools, all of that stuff, all of that lack of intervention preserves hierarchy. And I think this is where we can kind of connect the dots between themes 1, 2, and 3. If safety is the foundation of learning, then passivity erodes it. And if preparation empowers people, then delay disarms them. And if control restricts agency, then neglect abandons it entirely. Passive authority teaches students something. So you're on your own, not in an empowering way, but in a way that forces them to navigate danger without reliable support while still being subject to the rules and regulations of a space that they didn't create and they don't have the power to challenge. Institutions often rely on that endurance. They survive by asking the least powerful to absorb the most harm, but do it quietly. And as long as the system continues to function, as long as the castle doesn't fall, and as long as the newts and the owls continue, and as long as the story reaches its intended end, then the suffering along the way is what it is. It's expected, it's necessary, it's acceptable. The question that we have to kind of contend with but don't really get any answers with is acceptable to whom? Because when no one is held responsible for the harm, the harm becomes ubiquitous. Part of the environment and students are expected to tolerate, adopt, and eventually replicate harm when they inherit the power themselves. And that may be the most insidious lesson that Hogwarts teaches the students and us as readers. It's not that danger exists or that authority can fail, but that when those things happen, we just have to manage. We have to just be grateful that we made it through. So that when we interrogate Dumbledore's role in all of this, the question isn't whether he meant well. It's whether good intentions are enough. When you have the power to actively intervene and you decide not to. Because leadership is not defined by what you believe. It's defined by what you allow. And once we start naming that, it becomes much harder to treat Hogwarts failures as isolated incidents or its headmaster as a merely flawed genius rather than a person who just is never held accountable. We have now reached the point in the episode where I am going to reflect on the understanding of what it must have been like to teach at Hogwarts at the time where Harry was a student. And I think we've spent a considerable amount of time talking about the context of war during the Dumbledore episodes, during the Snape episodes. And I think that we would be remiss to not remember that that is the context in which we find ourselves as we assess these teachers. And one of the things that has really stayed with me as we wrap up this conversation about the teachers at Hogwarts is how much our judgments are shaped by that context, whether we name it explicitly or not. Hogwarts is not a school operating in a stable world. It's a school led by someone who knows long before anyone else is willing to admit that war is not over. It's still happening. Even after Voldemort is vanquished for the first time, the war is still raging in people's minds, in their bodies, in their instincts, and that fundamentally shaped so much of the way that they conduct themselves as teachers. I think that there tends to be this idea that somehow instructors are supposed to be impartial enough to not let what is happening to them as citizens of whatever nation in which they live, affect the way that they instruct. And I think people who are not teachers don't recognize what a high bar and what an impossibility that is to ask these individuals to ask us to set aside our own experiences as citizens for the sake of doing our jobs effectively, when our jobs are actively to be teaching students about the world that we are living in. Because in my mind, teaching in the shadow of a war is fundamentally different than teaching in peacetime. Even when the danger feels dormant, even when people desperately want to believe that the threat is past, war changes what feels urgent and what feels real. It changes what feels irresponsible in what feels like a luxury. And once you start to look at Hogwarts through that lens, a lot of things that feel incoherent suddenly start to feel sensical, even when they remain deeply flawed. If we look at Defense against the Dark Arts as readers, we are much harsher on Defense against the Dark Arts teachers than almost any other teacher at Hogwarts. And I don't think that that's a mistake. I don't think it's wrong. But it is contextual. As I said before, Defense against the Dark Arts is one subject where the stakes are explicitly about survival. It's a class where the gap between theory and reality can actually get you killed in a world where Voldemort never returns. Many of these pedagogical failures would read so differently. The instability of the position would feel unfortunate rather than catastrophic, and the lack of coherence would be more annoying than anything else, and our expectations would be lower. But war raises the bar. And that doesn't just apply to Defense against the Dark Arts. It applies to how we understand teaching at Hogwarts more broadly, because the faculty are not just educators. They are adults responsible for children in a world that is proving itself willing to use children as collateral damage. What complicates this even further is that there are multiple ways to teach under these conditions, and none of them are neutral. One option is to pretend that the war isn't happening, to insist on normalcy at all costs, to treat the curriculum as something that exists independent of context. To me, this is something that I think communicates. I think something often unintentionally, that engaging with the reality students are living in is inappropriate, disruptive, or dangerous. The lesson students learn isn't calm. It's complete disassociation and disengagement. Another option is to treat the war as something that only matters when it becomes unavoidable, to teach reactively rather than integratively, to frame danger as a unit instead of a condition. The problem with that approach is that it teaches students that preparedness is temporary, that these lessons only matter during crisis, rather than shaping how you move through the world more broadly. And then there's the approach that assumes that war never ends. I think this is where Dumbledore lives. This is where Faux Moody lives. This is not a Dumbledore episode. But Dumbledore leads and teaches as though danger is always imminent, even when others don't know it or can't handle it or refuse to see it. His pedagogy as a headmaster, his belief structure that guides the castle, is shaped by foresight and secrecy and sacrifice. He prepares some students for realities he refuses to fully name. He turns children into soldiers without ever quite telling them what's happening. And that's where the ethical tension sits. Because on one hand, his instincts aren't wrong. The danger is real. The institutions are compromised, and waiting for permission would be disastrous. But on the other hand, preparation without transparency, especially when you're dealing with children, is still a form of control. It denies students the ability to consent to the role that they are being trained to play. And this is what makes Dumbledore such a difficult figure to assess pedagogically. He doesn't deny reality. He doesn't ignore the war. But he does not fully invite students into the truth of their situation. He decides unilaterally what they need to know, when they need to know it, and what they must be protected from understanding. And the result is a school where readiness is unevenly distributed, where harm is justified retroactively by outcome, and where students are asked to absorb the cost of adult decisions they were never allowed. The question. I've been thinking a lot about this lately because we're not having this conversation in a vacuum again. Those of us who are living in the United States or watching what's happening in the United States are living through a moment where violence is being narrated in real time by the institutions that we were conditioned and socialized and taught to trust. People are being killed and then retroactively transformed into threats in order to justify their own deaths. And when something like that happens, the question for me, as a teacher, as a professor, as an instructor, as someone who has to show up to class and look young people in the eyes and talk to them about what's happening in our world. As a person who teaches on politics and identity, these are not abstract questions for me. I have to ask myself, do I talk about it in class? Do I name this? Do I truly name it? Do I give it the name that I, as an American citizen, absent my profession, do I give it that name? Or do I pretend that what's happening outside the classroom has nothing to do with what we're talking about inside of it? And there's a way in which I was taught. And then there's the reality of what it means to be living in this time, because I think silence teaches someone, too. I think my students learn about me. And I think in the age that we live in now, with social media and all of these things, there's a way in which silence is louder. One of the most disheartening and familiar things about the wizarding world is how much silence does the work of power, how often people convince themselves that what's happening is either new or temporary or not their responsibility. And as I, as a black man in America, sit and watch what's happening across the country right now in Minneapolis and have experienced, both professionally and also interpersonally, the idea of people now realizing the world that I was taught to see, that what we are now calling a fascist authoritarian state is the only state that I've ever known. It's the only thing that I've ever understood. Because in my life, in my body, no matter my education, my socioeconomic background, any of those things, I have always understood that I was never safe, that I always had to be on guard, that I always had to view the world in a very specific way, a very truthful way, a very not idealized way, in order to survive. It was never cynicism. It was always about survival. It was never fantasy. It was always the unfortunate reality of what I, and people who look like me and who are not even as privileged as I am, have had to learn to navigate. And so that when I hear people kind of navigating this space for the first time and realizing a truth that I've only ever known and saying things along the lines of, oh, my God, this is so crazy and feels so unfamiliar, or this is not the country that I know, I find myself struggling because this is the only country I've ever known. And it's not new. It's a tale as old as time. What is new is who is being forced to see it and who is being forced to endure it. And my perspective, my understanding of the world in this context matters because part of teaching in moments like this is holding two truths at the same time. It's recognizing that for some students, this is a rupture, something that is outlandishly destabilizing and frightening. And for others, it's simply continuity. It's the world as it has always been. And good teaching doesn't collapse those experiences into one another. But it also doesn't center innocence at the expense of reality. This is where Hogwarts fails in ways that feels painfully familiar. There's a strong impulse among the faculty to preserve innocence, to, say, focus on your Owls and your ewts. What happens outside these walls is unfortunate, but at this moment, it's not your concern. And part of me understands that instinct, wanting to protect the young people from the full weight of the world. I don't think that that's inherently wrong. But I think when it requires a denial of reality, when it requires the denial of other people's experiences for the sake of feeling safe, that's when it's dangerous. And especially now, in a world where information is ambient and unavoidable, refusing to engage reality doesn't shield students from it. It leaves them alone with. With it and their thoughts and all the things that they brought to bear before and all of their inability to potentially reconcile and navigate it in a way that is meaningful. What Harry Potter shows us over and over and over again is the danger of absolutism in education. When schools operate as though there are only two options. Either we ignore what's happening entirely or. Or we teach nothing but war. We fail students in both directions. Ignoring reality teaches disengagement. Totalizing war teaches despair. And in both cases, it is marginalized students who pay the cost. Muggle born students, Muggle raised students. Students who don't have the luxury of pretending that politics, power and violence are abstractions. They are the ones who must learn how to navigate a world adults refuse to explain honestly. They are the ones who absorb risk. They are the ones who are forced to grow up much faster than their privileged counterparts. And when adults fail to create space for honest engagement with reality, the students fill the gaps themselves. And that's how you end up with Dumbledore's army. Not because the students are reckless or want to be soldiers, but because when institutions refuse to teach people how to live in the world that they are actually in, people will teach themselves. People will turn to social media. They will turn to the Internet. And that is a throughline that connects Hogwarts to our own classrooms. Because teaching is never neutral. Silence is never neutral. Choosing not to engage with the moment is itself a political act and one that communicates who the institution is designed to protect and privilege and who it is willing to sacrifice for the appearance of stability. The tragedy of Hogwarts is not that it fails to produce competent, magical people. The tragedy is that it asks them to survive a war it refuses to fully explain. And the people who suffer most under that arrangement are always the ones who never had the option of looking away from it in the first place. Foreign. This has been another episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and if you liked today's episode, first of all, thank you. Please feel free to like rate, subscribe and do all the things that one does where pods are cast y'. All. Oh we did it. Thank you so much. For those of you who participated in the post episode chat. I really appreciate it. I thought this conversation was fantastic and very apropos to what we are experiencing. 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