T H E R A D L E Y C O L L E G E CHRONICLE Vol. II No. 1 4 October 2005 HARRY POTTER and the HALF-HEARTED COMPARISON We are the chosen generation: a holy nation, a royal only we, can look at them as lovingly and objectively childhood… OK, that’s enough paraphrasing of St as such. Peter, but it’s true: no other year group will have They were nervous about starting at a new school, grown up with – in the sense of ‘alongside’ – the making friends and dealing with an array of bizarre teenage wizards Harry, Ron and Hermione exactly as teachers. We’ve been there too. They coped with the fast as they have grown up with us. They are, for most drive for popularity in the year group and the forming of us, a small but inextricable part of our adolescence. of friendship… Remember the complex ecosystems of In our Muggle world we have had to wait another year Social Hall? They made their mistakes, were put in for each instalment of the story, and since JK Rowling detention, earnt distinctions (sorry, ‘house points’), has planned each novel to chronicle a year’s worth of broke bounds, scurried around the castle corridors goings-on in our heroes’ school careers, they are illicitly at night, although there is little mention of the ageing at the same rate as us. classic teenage temptations of drinking and smoking. This Harry Potter experience has been a communal Some of the settings read almost as if JK Rowling one. We have read the books together, debated came to Radley seven or eight years ago to observe together what will happen next, shared the good bits and take notes from beneath an invisibility cloak. Then with fellow aficionados, and spoilt the surprises for again, probably every public school sees something of those who haven’t read them yet. No other generation, themselves in Hogwarts, and Hogwarts has freely not even those a year or two either side, has had quite borrowed from many of them. There is also a clear this experience, nor will anyone ever again. debt to the canon of public school stories, from Stalky In the future a precocious ten year old could read the & Co. to Bunter to Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers. whole set in a rainy fortnight, but probably would not Gryffindor House is F Social, and Slytherin is G (or, at be able to relate to the adolescent bits; it is also least, they share the same house colours); they are possible that a ‘Potter virgin’ could bitter adversaries. Hogwarts as a resist the temptation to read them ‘Quidditch practice most whole seems just as competitive as until 17, but he or she would then Radley – inter-house challenges at find the first few a little childish. afternoons – ‘muscular every turn, not to mention their Who will have the patience or the wizardry’, I suppose termly version of the Smale Casket opportunity to discover the books for accumulated house points. One one by one, in real time, in the right they would call it…’ might imagine that with our new order and at exactly the right age, in coloured gown ‘idents’ that it’s the way that we have been able to, simply through the probably the Sub-Warden who now has Radley’s own accident of being born at the right time, round about Marauder’s Map, tuning into radio signals from the 1988? tiny microchips sewn under the fabric. Indeed, it will have taken a very determined and As for the ‘professors’, each of you can relate to his reclusive Radleian to have avoided reading, watching own stern McGonagall, absent-minded Trelawney or or hearing about the adventures of Harry Potter at sarcastic Snape among the dons. To keep up the Hogwarts. They have been our ink-and-paper, comparisons, Hogsmeade, the village beyond the adolescent, magical brothers and sisters, and we, but castle grounds and source of ‘butterbeer’ and - - - I N S I D E - - - • Opinion Poll page 3 • ‘No Ordinary Place?’ page 4 • ‘Michaelmas Blues’ page 5 • Romania 2005 page 11 • ‘A Tutor’s Diary, Part III’ page 14 • Correspondence page 15 • Sport page 17 and much more… 4 October 2005 THE RADLEY COLLEGE CHRONICLE afternoons out, corresponds loosely to Oxford. brick, mock-gothic English campus. Look up in their Permission to leave campus – theirs and ours – Hall and you will see the sky; our Hall has a roof. depends, of course, on good behaviour. Their food magically appears on the table at the start Much of the delight of the books rests on of each meal, ours is obtained through a rather smart new cafeteria system; their letters are delivered by understanding and admiring the magical variants on owls… I could go on, but there does not see much of real life, and there is subtle humour, extraordinary substance that separates the institutional lives of the imagination and consistency in that self-referential young wizards there and the young stockbrokers here. parallel world. But for we who live in a traditional public school, the similarities of everyday life extend They don’t study ‘Potions’ and ‘Defence of the Dark much further – right into the castle, classrooms and Arts’ just for fun, though. The academic focus of dorms of Hogwarts. ‘But sir, it’s the [Quidditch] Hogwarts is on OWLs (Ordinary Wizarding Levels) – match tomorrow,’ Harry says to Professor Snape as he a broad base of nine or ten subjects – then NEWTs is set an impossibly long essay on werewolves. Does (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests), in which four this ring any bells? subjects are studied (unless you are as keen as Hermione, who gets caught using a ‘time-turning’ Quidditch occupies the same emotional and physical spell to attend two lessons at once). If only we had centrality to Hogwarts as rugby does to Radley. There seem to be practices most afternoons in that healthy such a convenient way round those option column clashes… mens sana public school way – muscular wizardry, I suppose they would call it – and the all-important Hogwarts does not, however, seem to be as obsessed game on Saturday. Only inter-house matches are with qualifications and league table positions as we played at Hogwarts, but International Quidditch has a are, perhaps because it caters for a rather special niche similar effect to the Six Nations in February. in the market, or because, on the extra-curricular side, Just like the situation at Radley, Harry and his friends have to save ‘not much separates the the world and defend themselves security at Hogwarts has become from the evil Lord Voldemort. an issue to watch, increasingly institutional lives of the over the last six years. In the most young wizards there and the Hogwarts is a secular school, recent book, an esoteric loophole although clearly not at all in the castle’s defences is young stockbrokers here’ aspiritual since the ghosts of exploited by Draco Malfoy so that he can spirit in the Harry’s parents are occasionally seen and the many Death Eaters (they are the bad guys, funnily enough). resident ghosts of the castle are ever present. Harry’s If we are well on the way to fingerprint readers and occasional and intense awareness of his parents, the retinal scans at the doors into socials (you heard it here presence of evil, and ‘an other’ being is spiritual, even first), then what will JK come up with for Hogwarts in though interpreted in terms of an ability to find those book seven, as the dark forces strengthen and the who loved him inside himself at times of stress. We, danger peaks? Pin codes for the Fat Lady? A wand however, are a Christian school that places good reader? An aura scanner? character above all things. The Warden’s letter to prospective parents in the prospectus starts with a We could interpret the increasingly dark tone to the Kenyan prayer: ‘From the cowardice that dare not face series as a reflection of our paranoid times. In The Half-Blood Prince the students have to pass through new truth, From the laziness that is contented with half truth, From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, sensors on their way into and out of Hogwarts. A Good Lord deliver me’. If you omit the final four curfew is enforced at the school and some kind of invasive search reference – that Rowling rather words, this seems totally in harmony both with Headmaster Dumbledore’s advice and Harry’s cleverly calls a ‘Probity Probe’ – is mentioned. There emerging personal creed. is even a minor character named Shunpike, last seen on the Knight Bus a few volumes ago, who, in being What started out a half-hearted and tongue-in-cheek locked up without fair trial by the Ministry of Magic, comparison has nevertheless unearthed, firstly, some has become a martyr to Guantanamo Bay-style parallels that show the Harry Potter books’ grounding preventive detention. in public school life, real and fictional, and, secondly, some specific shared ground between Radley and But how is Hogwarts clearly different from Radley? Hogwarts ‘School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’. Now, Well, there are girls, for a start, and in books five and I haven’t got the UCAS book of courses to hand, but six this co-education starts to impact romantically on does anyone know a reputable Bachelor of Magic our heroes (and some episodes of teenage love-angst course in Harry Potter Studies? are acutely observed). Then the location: they are running around a huge, granite, terribly Scottish castle, [A full review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood whereas we are spread over a green and pleasant red- Prince will appear in the next issue.] 2 THE RADLEY COLLEGE CHRONICLE 4 October 2005 A POLL ON SECURITY absolute, and one of those responding wanted the thieves to be ‘poked in the eye with a fondue stick In light of the recent trickle of thefts, amidst fears of a until aqueous humour trickled down their sinful faces.’ Great Train Robbery-like big ‘un, and concerned calls Theft in a social is a cancer attacking the heart of it, from Lloyds of London about spiralling insurance destroying trust between boys and precipitating claims, the Chronicle has conducted a poll to discover unpleasant measures, interrogations and traps from the the true scale of the security problem in socials, and management.