capricious nerd / nerd teacher [books] reviewed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter, #3)
Sometimes it makes no sense.
3 stars
Snape is the one continuing element of these books that I always severely question, particularly after having worked as a teacher for a number of years.
It's one thing to hold grudges against people (Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, in this instance) for things they've done, but it's an entire other thing when your teenage grudge continues to plague your life and your profession (and, as a result, the professionalism that you should be showing to students). And this is something that I can, from experience, discuss; in the international school circuit, you often work with the children of your colleagues (and while it's preferable that you like them, it sometimes happens that you don't). If I let my feelings for my students' parents cloud my judgement, I would be unprofessional; I'd hope that my boss would talk to me about this and set me straight (or straight up fire …
Snape is the one continuing element of these books that I always severely question, particularly after having worked as a teacher for a number of years.
It's one thing to hold grudges against people (Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, in this instance) for things they've done, but it's an entire other thing when your teenage grudge continues to plague your life and your profession (and, as a result, the professionalism that you should be showing to students). And this is something that I can, from experience, discuss; in the international school circuit, you often work with the children of your colleagues (and while it's preferable that you like them, it sometimes happens that you don't). If I let my feelings for my students' parents cloud my judgement, I would be unprofessional; I'd hope that my boss would talk to me about this and set me straight (or straight up fire me for too many transgressions).
The child of a person (or the godchild of a person) is not guilty of the crimes of the parent or guardian. The fact that a grown man is taking out his teenage feelings on the child of someone who he felt betrayed by is beyond disgusting. And it still leads right back to my constant question: What is happening in Hogwarts' management that they enable this behaviour?
It just perpetually frustrates me that no one seems to be actually managing the school, even in the background. Maybe it's just Minerva on her own, yelling at everyone to fix shit because they're all too busy holding grudges or acting mysterious while being over-well-informed but doing little else.
That said, the events of this book are a bit more interesting, though I'm still of the opinion that Quidditch scenes are beyond boring and provide further evidence that they care little about student welfare and are in desperate need of a child welfare check. (No, Harry, you can't go to Hogsmeade because your abusive aunt and uncle didn't sign the permission form, but it's entirely fine that you're up in a massive rainstorm with a near-tornado happening while on a broomstick because we're entirely incapable of postponing and moving intra-school games to different days of the week.)
The introduction of Lupin, Sirius, and the Marauder's Map is always one of my favourite things; I always enjoy the bit where Lupin describes how Sirius, James, and Peter just casually broke the law in order to become Animagus and keep him company during his turns. (Though, as for Peter, while this book fleshes out that part quite nicely for his existence as Scabbers, it's disappointing in review of the previous two because there was so little done to even hint at that other than to say he was passed down and missing a toe, so it feels like it wasn't originally mapped out nearly as well.)