Why won't Dumbledore let Snape teach DADA?
leslie
clearly wants to, and Dumbledore does seem to have difficulty filling
the position. It's a fairly important course, and he was willing to
let 2 complete incompetents (Quirrell and Lockhart) teach the course
rather than let Snape do it. Snape clearly has the knowledge to do it.
The end of GoF, when Dumbledore brought Snape to save Harry, made it
clear to me that Dumbledore clearly trusts Snape a great deal. Snape
may not be the greatest teacher, but he knows his stuff and Dumbledore
lets him teach Potions. So why not let him teach DADA?
Just wondering.
Richard Eney
Snape has a history with the Dark Arts. Right now, nobody has objected
enough to Snape's being at Hogwarts to make Dumbledore send him away.
There were complaints about Lupin, and Lupin left so that Dumbledore
wouldn't have to fight for him. Dumbledore wants Snape there. Teaching
potions is a relatively safe position, and one that Snape has had for some
years. If he were suddenly to shift to the DADA position, no doubt it
would be in the news and the kind of people who make complaints would
notice. It couldn't be kept secret - if announced, it would be
official, and if not announced, it would get out by way of gossip and then
it would be a perfect tabloid opportunity as a "secret appointment".
Further speculation: Also, the frequent introduction of new teachers lets
Dumbledore bring in new incompetents, so the students have a chance to
learn that there are different ways to recognize incompetence. For
instance, Trelawney believes her own foolishness and manipulates with
generalizations. In the DADA job, Quirrel taught by the book but had no
practical advice to offer. Lockhart didn't actually teach anything
useful, but kept everyone distracted by talking about what he claimed to
know without ever actually giving any details of the spells. Lupin was
actually competent for once, but had a weakness. Hagrid knew his material
but lacked teaching skills - he misjudged his students and couldn't tell
what would be of interest to _them_. "Moody" was competent in ways that
were a bit darker than Dumbledore had planned.
Meanwhile, theoretically the students are reading their textbooks and
doing research for their papers in the library, so they are learning as
much as they can from books anyway, regardless of who's teaching the
class. That's as much as they would have learned from Quirrel before he
was taken over, so they're not missing anything that wasn't missed by
previous years of students.
=Tamar
Joseph Romagnano
lesli...@starband.net (leslie) wrote:
Snape doesn't "clearly want the position." If so, then why was
Lockheart the only one who applied for the position in CoS?
Joe :-)>
meteor man
want the position. Everyone says he does, but what do they know? In
CoS, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione talk to Hagrid about Lockhart,
Hagrid says, " 'e was the on'y man for the job." This implies that
Snape was not going for it.
John
another spot then you are in the same boat trying to find a new potions
teacher.
"leslie" <lesli...@starband.net> wrote in message
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Frank Wustner
> I've been wondering why Dumbledore won't let Snape teach DADA?
Who says he doesn't?
> Snape clearly wants to,
It's not so clear as you say. That's just a rumor that has been thrown
about by students.
> and Dumbledore does seem to have difficulty filling
> the position. It's a fairly important course, and he was willing to
> let 2 complete incompetents (Quirrell and Lockhart) teach the course
> rather than let Snape do it. Snape clearly has the knowledge to do it.
> The end of GoF, when Dumbledore brought Snape to save Harry, made it
> clear to me that Dumbledore clearly trusts Snape a great deal. Snape
> may not be the greatest teacher, but he knows his stuff and Dumbledore
> lets him teach Potions. So why not let him teach DADA?
He "lets" Snape teach potions because Snape is the potions master. In
fact, Snape is somewhat protective of his position. When Lockhart
offered to brew the mandrake potion, Snape cut him off and asserted his
tenure as the school's potion master. We've never seen Snape make a
similar claim to the Dark Arts position.
Personally, I think Snape really does not want the job at all.
--
The Deadly Nightshade
http://deadly_nightshade.tripod.com/
http://members.tripod.com/~deadly_nightshade/
|-----------------------------------|
|"I, too, believe in fate... |
|the fate a man makes for himself." |
|Lord Soth ("Time of the Twins") |
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| above and email me from there. |
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Dave Doty
> Further speculation: Also, the frequent introduction of new teachers lets
> Dumbledore bring in new incompetents, so the students have a chance to
> learn that there are different ways to recognize incompetence.
The class that is supposed to teach the students the things they need to
know to stay alive is probably not the best class for such a policy. A
little like having a gun safety instructor who shows up to lessons drunk
off his ass.
Dave Doty
Dave Doty
> He "lets" Snape teach potions because Snape is the potions master.
And he lets Snape be potions master. Do you really think a former Death
Eater would be able to hold a position at Hogwarts without the Headmaster's
backing?
Dave Doty
ashad majeed
"OrionCA" <ori...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:kvtpcu4kasianltjj...@4ax.com...
> On 28 Apr 2002 14:12:54 -0700, lesli...@starband.net (leslie)
> wrote:
>
> >I've been wondering why Dumbledore won't let Snape teach DADA?
>
> him very well - he was the first and only professor who ever screamed
> at me in class saying, "MY GOD YOU'RE HOPELESS!!!" On my first test
> I got a B and he called me in and told me, in no uncertain terms, to
> drop the course because I was going to fail and he didn't feel like
> wasting his time on me. Out of a class of 27 there was exactly one
> student he passed and one he failed; the others all dropped out.
>
> I always was a little stubborn. >;)
>
> The student who passed was a pre-law student taking the course on a
> whim (I'd known him since high school; he earned that grade and wasn't
> sleeping with the guy). But all the math majors quit in disgust. The
> math majors the PREVIOUS year quit in disgust. And the year before
> that. In fact, he drove every math major out for 4-5 years and most
> of the other students as well. The Math Department was just ga-ga
> over the guy because he was such a *brilliant researcher* and gave him
> that class every year because he said he loved it so much. They were
> perfectly happy with him - until the next year when the state pulled
> their funding. Seems there was this Silly Little Rule that based the
> state universities' funding on the percentage of graduating seniors by
> department and because Advanced Cal was a required course exactly 0%
> of the math majors graduated for 5 years running.
>
> Anyway, next year he WASN'T teaching the class - in fact, I don't
> think he was working there anymore [big happy grin] - and I repeated
> and earned a solid B. I think back to him when I think of Snape
> teaching Defense against the Dark Arts and suspect thet not only would
> non-Slythrin students not pass the course, they'd be carried out in
> body bags. The parts they could find, anyway.
> --
> "For all the days of your life prepare,
> And meet them ever alike.
> When you are the anvil bear,
> And when the hammer strike."
hi
boy! sounds like your teacher was a bit of a nightmare.
with regards to snape i think you guys are being a bit harsh. i mean in cos
malfoy is whining to his father about hermoine getting top marks in all
subjects, including snapes. so while we all think he is a jerk, he would at
least appear to mark fairly
as to which of the 2 (dada vs potions) is the more powerful and important
bit of magic to learn, clearly it is potions. potions can stopper death and
does not involve any silly wand wavving. voldy is back because of a potion.
bye
Lisa Hicks
ashad majeed wrote:
>
(snip)
> with regards to snape i think you guys are being a bit harsh. i mean in cos
> malfoy is whining to his father about hermoine getting top marks in all
> subjects, including snapes. so while we all think he is a jerk, he would at
> least appear to mark fairly
> as to which of the 2 (dada vs potions) is the more powerful and important
> bit of magic to learn, clearly it is potions. potions can stopper death and
> does not involve any silly wand wavving. voldy is back because of a potion.
I don't know that I'd call it a potion, exactly. A Dark spell, I'd
say--not the kind of thing that would fall under any of the subjects
that Hogwarts teaches.
And Harry is alive because his "silly wand-waving" Summoned the
Portkey/Cup to him so he could get away. Does that make Charms a "more
powerful and important" subject since it saved Harry's life, and Potions
didn't? No. It just means that skill at Charms, like skill at Potions
or skill at DADA, can serve you well when the circumstances are right.
To fix some problems, you need a potion. To fix others, you need a
Charm. To fix still others, you need DADA skills, and so on. (And, for
some problems, you can use skills from one of several disciplines--for
instance, in the second task, Harry used Herbology resources, Fleur and
Cedric used Charms resources, and Krum used Transfiguration resources.
More than one way to skin a cat, and all that. [But only one way, that
we know of, to Summon a Portkey.])
Lisa H
ashad majeed
"Lisa Hicks" <lhh...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:3CCD769D...@midway.uchicago.edu...
hi
well naturally if you put it like that you are correct.
bye
Frank Wustner
Don't take a single sentence out of context like that; pay attention to
the entire paragraph. I did not say that Dumbledore did not back Snape,
now did I? I was merely responding to Leslie's musing about why Snape
was never given the DADA job.