My chief excuse is that my undergraduate degree was in both English and History. Only rarely can I read anything without analyzing it after that experience. Which does not help when reading children's literature. Her world is an interesting take on English boarding school life and the epic battle between good and evil--something generally not seen in a boarding school. However, I had extreme problems with her school system.
To be really blunt about it her educational curriculum is awful. She has people from the magical world, which is not completely separate from the mundane world, know nothing about their own world and its history or the mundane world around it. She plunges children from the mundane world into the magical world but gives them no reference points to ground themselves upon. Her restrictions on magical useage during the holidays are completely unfair and unenforceable in many areas.
J.K. Rowling doesn't even have the students in Hogwarts cover basic subjects that they'd need in both worlds. The students do not attend English classes, mathematics, science, or real history. She does have them attend a history class, but it doesn't give the breadth and depth achieved in any mundane school. They don't learn foreign languages with any fluency. And they don't have any extra-curricular activities except for Quidditch.
The troubles within the curriculum are compounded with problems within the teaching staff. Hogwarts has to have at least 300 students spread out over the four houses, and between 7 years. To cover all of that, they have a staff of 13, and only 9 of them are actually teachers. There is no way 9 teachers can cover classes for 7 different grades and 4 houses, not even with the houses doubling up for some of their classes. It's not physically possible for the teachers, not even with magic and time turners. And then you come to the problem of how the staff are paid, because Hogwarts doesn't seem to have a tuition, or any other form of funding.
All of these problems really got to me, and to my sister. As such we decided to redesign the school, and thus Druid's Circle was born.
This web page is the final assignment for my 708U class. I decided that with all the effort we were putting into designing the school, people should be able to see it. And I'm using the time and opportunity of the assignment to actually do it.
I hope you enjoy the page.
Arian
Copyright 2005