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Possible Potter WMG for discussion.
06-12-2012, 12:43 PM
First, I'll apolgise for using a TVTropes term, but it is a useful shorthand.
Binns, the nortoriously boring history teacher.
Why does he keep his job (at least over the timeframe of the books)?
Because the political problem of replacing him. Should he be replaced, they'd be a lot of pressure from certain parties about who should replace him and what slant should be put on history lessons.
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I got the feeling that all the professors at Hogwarts had tenure - even more so than in the real world - and couldn't be removed short of death or resignation. (Which is why only the DADA professor changes...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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It's probably a representation of how every student has had that one teacher -- the one that's monotone and drones on the whole time about stuff the students don't care about. And the students don't care about it because the professor doesn't make it interesting. I've had several examples myself of terminally boring teachers from junior high up through graduate school. And if you're going to have a boring teacher for the kids to complain about, might as well make it something muggles complain about too, like history. That way all of the actual wizarding stuff can be cool and interesting.
Besides, if history had actually been taught well, our main characters wouldn't have been so continually clueless about the forces driving the wizarding world.
-- ∇×V
