Harry Potters crappy teachers: bad choices by Dumbledore or a reflection of reality
I’ve read (and enjoyed) many a fanfiction in which Dumbledore is criticized for making horrible choices in terms of who to hire as teachers.
Fair enough. With a ghost droning on for history, an ex-deatheater that bullies students teaching potions, a fraud constantly predicting student deaths for divination, and a string of DADA professors, the best of which have been a werewolf, which almost accidentally killed three students, it seems reasonable to question his hiring decisions.
While the attempted repeated near killing of a student is certainly outside most of our experiences of teachers growing up, the rest of these horrible teachers are (or at least used to be) sadly common.
Far too many of us can identify a Professor Snape, condescending, unfair, and bullying. or a Professor Binns, who reads the textbook, oblivious to students, or a fraud like Professor Trelawney, (language teachers who can’t speak it anyone?) or Lockheart, more common in higher education, who makes you pay an exorbitant amount for their book only for you to read three whole pages of it. Or even an Umbridge, who uses every inch of power she has over others unjustly hurting them to feel powerful.
These teachers are by all means horrible, but they are sadly also very relatable, as a student, having to deal with horrible teachers who have way too much power, and far too little teaching ability is a fact of life.
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