Why are Magic Schools LIKE THAT?

Why are Magic Schools in Fantasy always modelled after 20th Century British Boarding Schools? Is it Rowling or Le Guinn's fault? Or is there a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of magic and worldbuilding occurring? Let's discuss.

#fantasyworldbuilding #fantasy #worldbuilding #magic #magicschool

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[PeekABeeGaming]

The convenience of a boarding school for storytelling is that there are no parents around. Sometimes it is the simple things. That is one of the main difference between stories like harry potter compared to the bureau of magical things. Lockwood and co is an example of another way to do it but it has a more narrow focus on the storytelling (which is a strength for that story type).

[twelfthknight]

I think Rowling's universe is really lacking in making the adult Magical World feel particularly substantive, that the fantasy kind of ends when you hit 18 and everything after that is sort of vague and confusing. There's no magic university, nor a scholarly discourse to dig further into, and most adult professions wizards & witches are expected to transition into are thinly sketched concepts. Throw in her lamentably shallow concept of schooling applies to the entire world and it gets even worse.

That's not an issue when you're writing about that escapist school life fantasy, but see how well it lasted when you got into the Fantastic Beasts franchise starring full-fledged adults.

[KynMites]

I'm stealing a second comment here. Mass education *should* be about standardization.

"Everyone who graduates from this school should have this base line of knowledge."

I will grant you our modern system could use work, but that is still a valuable thing.

If your society operates on writing, then everyone better have the same opportunity to learn writing. If you are relying on people working it out as they grow, you will end up with people who are overly specialized in one area and incompetent in others.

With Harry Potter, I think part of what it gets right is that every student needs to have a chance at learning all the basic disciplines. After 5th year, they can choose to drop classes to specialize in those that might go towards their career.

Those lower grades need to provide a baseline for both real-world day to day activities everyone uses (see reading writing and basic maths) as well as the foundations that will eventually lead to specialization.

Not everyone needs to learn high-level herbology, but they do need to know the common types of plants that they might interact with day to day. Those children who will eventually go on to be herbalists also need a chance to find out if they are interested in the subject before they dedicate higher educational time to it.

For young children, learning should be formal enough to prepare them for the level of formality they will be expected to have as an adult, as broad enough as to be play-acting their possible future professions.

[lonjohnson]

I think the most obvious use of a magic school is a compulsory school for kids with magic. They need to learn how to control their powers and, more importantly, be instilled with the belief that there is someone more powerful who can ruin their day. It doesn't even matter if it is one person who is more powerful, a group who collectively is more powerful or even a sufficient uncertainty as to who is more powerful.

[TheAnalyticalEngine]

At the risk of going "um, actually" - whilst apparition tests are held at Hogwarts, they aren't administered by the school, nor are licences to apparate issued by the school. A government-approved instructor goes to the school and gives lessons to students if they are old enough - the Ministry of Magic then issues licences to those who have passed their apparition tests

And (in the United States anyway) there are schools where pupils take driving lessons (plus, they start learning earlier than here in the UK)

[ronjaj.addams-ramstedt]

12:30 Many high schools in the US teach driving to their students. Not all, and I couldn't find a current percentage, but definitely many.

[Primalmoon]

One advantage of the mass magic education system is it helps preserve one of the traits of magic users of them being wise old people that know about everything that end up talking over the lay person's head without realizing it. In a world where the random lay person doesn't go off to school, but wizards do... You don't go to the weird old wizard who lives in the woods only when it comes to specifically magic potion making because that's all he studied in school... No, you expect the wizard to make potions, predict the future, know the properties of all manner of nasty beasts that might go bump in the night, know some special cures, break enchantments, act as a king's advisor, possibly cast curses, give cryptic clues to adventurers, and invoke powerful spells that make you believe in miracles.

Isn't that what a modern generalist education is all about? I took chemistry classes (potions), learned some world history (so I can make predictions about how other events might play out), biology classes (so I know a bit about animals and general health stuff), health classes (eat this fruit and that scurvy will go away...)... Some economics classes that I only vaguely remember so I may mumble a lot and be cryptic about it...

[NotreDameKoor]

What I miss here is a discussion on mage schools as a means of controlling magic. Many schools go out into the world to find people with magical talent to take them to the school to be trained. The Council of Sorcerers in the Witcher tv-series does this, the Aes Sedai does this, the Jedi Academy does this. All of them are also powerful organisations with their own political and often military influence. Taking the pupils away from their parents serves the purpose to cut them off from outside influence, to better mold them into loyal members of the organisation. Hogwarts is special, because in the HP world the wizarding world is its own thing that exists parallel to the real world. Mage schools in HP serve as entryway to be allowed to be part of this wizarding world, at least for talented muggles.

[Dreamfox-dfbg]

There is another question to be asked. Why is Magic being taught at a school to begin with?
The existence of Hogwarts pretty much cements the Ministry of Magic's authority over all things Magic in the UK.
It might not have been like that in the beginning, but somewhere along the way it became that way. Also, the Ministry needs skilled Wizards to keep itself running.

[rhisands]

I always liked the approach taken by Terry Pratchett's Unseen University in his Discworld books. Taking students from the time their magical ability first manifests, which can be any time from nine-twenty ish, and their strategy for making sure all students get through their education intact is... they don't. It is to hand a bucket of ooze back to the grieving parents with the statement "well, we warned them not to do it". And if the parents want to sue, well, the University has a whole frog pond full of lawyers who thought they could sue the school.

[georgethompson]

You seem to forget that universities originated in the middle ages, and these taught students everything from philosophy to astrology (and occasionally nevromancy).

[kovi]

I think you put the cart before the horse again.

Magical boarding school is not a convenient setting for a fantasy story. It's an escapist fantasy about your arguably most... intense and chaotic part of life being, quite fraknly, less boring and mundane.
That's why they are so popular: It's not familiarity in an otherwise alien setting, it's the "upgrade" of an already familiar setting. Just a little dip in fantasy, not full-on immersion.

[majesticgothitelle]

If the magic school also taught written, history, math, philosophy, creativity tactics, magic language that Separate from regular language, and so with specialized spellcasting class

We can do the same way how medieval knight did from page, squire than knight

[GriffonSpade]

Hogwarts makes more sense if people coming out of it with NEWTs are basically interns.

So, senior apprentices that are expected to have the basic skills already that can then be adapted by masters/business owners to produce basic for-profit goods and services with minimal supervision and guidance while they are taught further practical skills and mastery.

It cuts out the need for masters/business owners to deal with unproductive junior apprentices. Or to have to deal with teaching general skills.

Of course, Hogwarts doesn't seem to teach general skills besides basic magic!

[maaderllin]

You talked a bit about medieval education.

If magic is a craft, then there must be a guild in which master have a bunch of students of varied levels of competence, all working with him in his shop until they get a recognition. Potion brewers, charms makers would all work under the supervision of a master who would reap the biggest share of the profits of his shop, while craftmen and craftwomen would get a decent salary fixed by the rules of the guild, and while students would mostly work as intern, housed and fed by the master but not much more until they can be recognized by their peers.

If magic is an art, then there would be schools like medieval universities, with liberal art degrees following the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic) and the Quadrivium (Astronomy, Arithmetics, Geometry and Music). There could be an added part where magic is found in each of these arts. (Arts here means a practice, and liberal arts in medieval education meant the arts that allowed one to better understand the world).
Medieval Universities would be students uniting around masters of this art, many of those would have been run by the church.

[finisterre]

I think, one of my favourite types of 'Magic Schools' is the Prequel-Era Jedi Order from Star Wars. an interesting mix of english-style monasteries, and trade schools - along with the ability to work for high school drama-like stories to take place.

[joelkreissman]

There’s a number of real world magical traditions that refuse to teach hormonal teenagers anything and only start “apprenticeships” after they’ve gotten some mileage under them.

Don’t take my word on this, but I think it was Kabbalah that used to be restricted to middle-aged and older married men.

[douglasphillips]

Unseen University is really an allegory for academia. As a center of magic knowledge and research it fits with the skill based wizardry that was talked about. But, it also addresses the prestige of academic achievement making wizard a social class as much as a job

[Primalmoon]

My U.S. schooling went the route of everyone getting the same general education for the first 8 years (with some minor "choice" of "electives" in middle school but really you didn't have a choice and it was just random assignment with a requirement that you had to get at least 1 gym class and 1 health class over the course of the year...), and finally in high school (4 years) there was a split and some specialization could happen. There was still some general education, but there was also the ability to take classes focusing on "College Prep" vs "Vocational" (going to immediately go into working after high school, or even going to drop out and this will be the last schooling you get before going to work). Maybe take an art class or an extra chemistry class. Or try out one of the vocational classes where you learned tradeskills like wood working / metal working / architecture drafting and CAD software / agriscience. Which could lead into work-training programs and off-campus jobs if you went far enough. Or other "arts" like football practice or band. Or pre-military education via the ROTC program.

The choices here were up to the student, but even if you were going for the College prep route, the exact mix of elective opportunities and scheduling subtly encouraged you to at least try out some of these vocational classes as some of them still tended to be useful skills to learn as part of basic home maintenance. And this gave some opportunities for networking and social mobility in that there would be "college" kids and "vocational" kids in the same classes. A woodworker might see how useful it is to pay attention to that trigonometry class when a college route kid figures out the angles for a cut much more quickly, and college route kids learn to respect the people that actually stick with those trades.

[wereguy]

I'm kinda disappointed. You want to discuss magic schools, but you don't mention Unseen University or Strixhaven, or the multiple teaching methods discussed for the various Traditions and Conventions in Mage: the Ascension. You also don't discuss the centuries-old European university system, which would seem to address many of your criticisms of the British boarding school system.