Well, we’ve finished looking at Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I know there are only a few of you reading this blog regularly, and that’s OK with me. My main motivation for beginning this blog was to keep myself interested and accountable as I read, think, and write through all the books. Your reading my blog is some pretty sweet icing on my cake! And knowing that there really are some people reading keeps me motivated to move on into the next book.

Before we start on Chamber of Secrets, I have a question for you: What do you think?

I’d love to read your comments, your questions, and your suggestions. If you’re a serious Harry Potter reader, and I know you are, I can bet you thought of more connections than I wrote about. Maybe they are relevant to teaching and learning, or maybe not. Maybe something I mentioned is especially meaningful to you. Maybe you have something to add. Maybe you disagree with something I wrote. Maybe you have some stories to tell from your own classrooms.

Let’s talk. What do you think?

Quirrell explains to Harry, “There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.” This is how Voldemort views the world, his paradigm. The events of this chapter show us that the Dark Lord is wrong— good and evil do exist, and so does power. In this case, the power of love and good is superior to the power of evil. A few points about this:

• Harry rejects the power of the Sorcerer’s Stone and is able to receive it from the mirror.
• Good and evil are so opposed that evil cannot survive the touch of one who has been so deeply loved.
• The Mirror of Erised provides a protection that is qualitatively different from the other six protections. The first six protections can be overcome by magical power or cleverness. The Mirror is not controlled by any kind of power but by the desires of the heart. In other words, for the Mirror, there is only good and evil, not power.

Another power that shows up in this chapter is the power of truth. Harry’s habit of lying has long been a problem with adult readers who fear that young readers will follow his example. Harry lies to Quirrell about what he sees in the Mirror. Voldemort lies to Harry about his parents’ deaths, but when Harry calls him on it, he tells a different story. When Harry asks Dumbledore for the truth, the Headmaster sighs, “The truth…It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution. However, I shall answer your questions unless I have a very good reason not to, in which case I beg you’ll forgive me. I shall not, of course, lie.”

Dumbledore encouraged Harry to tell the truth about Voldemort by calling him by name, “Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing himself.”

In the midst of this display of magical power, good, evil, love, and truth, I am reminded of the ridiculously arbitrary power that adults hold over children, particularly in a school setting. I love the description of Hagrid in the hospital wing: he “looked too big to be allowed.” That Hagrid wouldn’t be allowed is not only a hint of what will come later from Hogwarts’ High Inquisitor Dolores Umbridge, it echoes children’s unquestioning acceptance of adults’ power to declare something or someone to be not allowed. It also reflects Hagrid’s stance as a vulnerable child, stuck in his third year of school, expelled and not allowed, sobbing and being comforted by an eleven-year-old, once again.

At the closing feast, Dumbledore grants 50 points to Ron, 50 points to Hermione, and 60 points to Harry, which creates a tie for the house cup between Gryffindor and Slytherin—“if only Dumbledore had given Harry just one more point.” Fortunately, Neville earns 10 more points for standing up to his friends, making Gryffindor the definitive winner. Does this strike anyone as incredibly arbitrary? Yet everyone accepts Dumbledore’s declarations as somehow True, as if in a book somewhere it’s written that “courage to stand up to friends” is worth 10 house points. Granted, we don’t get any quotes from the Slytherin table, but we get the feeling that the overwhelming sentiment among all Hogwarts students is that the house point system, school rules, and orders from adults are True and are to be followed and obeyed. Only when Dolores Umbridge ramps up her reign of terror do students start to question the authority of adults.

And the nomination for anticlimax of the year? The academic final exam results. Harry, Ron, Neville, and even Goyle pass their classes. Hermione, we learn, makes the highest marks of all the first years. By now, we know that the Hogwarts saga is not about academics, even though the bizarre, ancient, exclusive British boarding school in is essential to the series. JKR dedicates a single paragraph to reporting academic results for the entire school year. All those hours working in class, studying in the library, cramming in the common room, the official reason for a school to exist—one paragraph.

After nine months of believing that Severus Snape is the servant of the Dark Lord, the puzzle pieces of Harry’s world view are dramatically rearranged. In real life, when we’re confronted by evidence that we have been wrong, it takes some time to rearrange not only that one belief but all the beliefs that it touches. Often, we simply discount contrary evidence because changing a belief we’re personally invested in is too difficult, and we’re not willing to accept such a huge change. Harry doesn’t really have a choice here, because here is Quirinus Quirrell with Lord Voldemort’s face stuck on the back of his head, trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone and kill Harry. Fortunately, for the sake of us readers who are not busy fighting for our lives, JKR has Quirrell take the time to explain to Harry and to us what has been going on over the past school year.

• What really happened at the Quidditch match with Slytherin
• Why Snape volunteered to referee the Quidditch match with Hufflepuff
• Who let in the troll at Halloween
• How Snape got bitten by Fluffy
• Why Snape threatened Quirrell in the forest
• Why Quirrell was sobbing in a classroom
• Who tried to steal the Stone from Gringotts
• What killed the unicorn

As Quirrell explains that he was punished by Voldemort for his failure to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone from Gringotts, the cognitive patterns in Harry’s mind pop into a different formation. Suddenly he wonders how he could have been so stupid. It was Quirrell all the time, obviously.

Perhaps “paradigm shift” is too deep for what happens to Harry here. Maybe it’s more akin to a Gestalt shift, you know, when at first the image looks like an old woman but then all of a sudden you see that it’s an image of a young woman, too. I am reminded of Harry in the hut on the rock, as Hagrid explains to him that he is a wizard, that the strange things that have happened are actually magic, not coincidences, that his parents were talented wizards, and that he’s about to go off to wizard school. Harry’s whole life is redefined in a matter of minutes.

Once Harry’s paradigm shifts (or Gestalt shifts), new information fits right in, and old information is ready to apply. He knows how and why the Sorcerer’s Stone appears in his pocket. He knows that he must lie to Quirrell. And oddly enough, Voldy’s face on the back of Quirrell’s head, though shocking, makes perfect sense. Harry knows that Voldemort is lying to him about his parents’ deaths, and he knows “by instinct” to grab Quirrell by the face.

Like Harry in the dungeons, teachers undergo a paradigm shift when they come to understand teaching and learning from a different perspective from that which they received in their experiences as students. At an education conference last spring, I watched a video of a high school teacher doing some masterful work making Romeo and Juliet meaningful for students in urban Los Angeles. One of my wise colleagues remarked that this kind of teaching becomes so much simpler and makes so much sense when a teacher’s paradigm of teaching and learning shifts from a transmission model to a constructivist model. Unlike Harry in the dungeons, teachers who grew up as students in a transmission model school culture usually need a long time to shift a paradigm of teaching and learning that has solidified over a lifetime.

Dumbledore appears at the very moment of Harry’s resurrection. He is obviously proud of his student. Later, Harry will tell Ron and Hermione that he believes that Dumbledore knew they would try to protect the Sorcerer’s Stone and made sure they were prepared. The Headmaster answers Harry’s questions, but not all of them. He knows that Harry isn’t ready yet to take in what he will have to take in over the next six years. He assures Harry, “when you are ready, you will know.” Dumbledore offers only a hint: “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” That he is to sacrifice himself to save his friends is a shift that is best accomplished gradually.

“Harry would never quite remember how he managed to get through his exams when he half expected Voldemort to come bursting through the door at any moment.” On top of that, it’s sweltering hot, and Harry’s stabbing headaches continue. On the written exams, students use special, new quills bewitched with an Anti-Cheating spell. Harry has to make a pineapple tap dance, change a mouse into a snuffbox, remember how to make a Forgetfulness potion, and answer “question about batty old wizards who’d invented self-stirring cauldrons.” (Remember self-stirring cauldrons from Harry’s first trip Diagon Alley?)

“They had practical exams as well.” I know that “practical exams” refers to what we call “performance assessment,” but these practical exams are practically impractical compared to the tests Harry, Ron, and Hermione face after their school exams are over. Fortunately, there is an entire week between the end of exams and the end of school for them to stop the Dark Lord and for Harry to recover. I suppose it takes a week for professors to complete the grading. (If they have Anti-Cheating quills, isn’t there a magical equivalent to Scantron? If Rita Skeeter has a Quick-Quotes Quill that writes for her, why can’t McGonagall have a magical tool that grades for her?)

Harry reasons that house points or even expulsion are meaningless punishments if Voldemort acquires the Sorcerer’s Stone. Winning the house cup will make no difference to Voldemort. There will be no Hogwarts left to be expelled from. Harry figures that he could succeed protecting the Stone, die in the attempt, or die later at the hand of Voldemort. I am reminded that some of our students face literal life-and-death situations in a manner and in a frequency that many adults have never had to face. I am reminded of how meaningless and irrelevant our school tasks must seem to students in crisis. “Harry would never quite remember how he managed to get through his exams when he half expected Voldemort to come bursting through the door at any moment.”

I wondered if the seven obstacles protecting the Sorcerer’s Stone corresponded in any way to what the kids learned in school, so I took notes.

1. Fluffy: They learn how to get past Fluffy from Hagrid.
2. Devil’s Snare: Hermione remembers about Devil’s Snare from Herbology.
3. Flying Keys: Everyone takes flying lessons from Madam Hooch, but flying lessons don’t seem to be a regular academic class. Hermione may have learned to fly from formal flying lessons, but Ron already knew how to fly, and Harry needed no instruction.
4. Troll: They’ve already passed the practical exam on How to Incapacitate a Troll on Halloween in the girls’ bathroom. It must have been a midterm. Charms class (Wingardium Leviosa!) was useful here. See the post “Below Basic in Charms” from the April archives.
5. Chess: Ron is a Wizard Chess master.
6. Potions Puzzle: They don’t need to know anything about potions here.
7. Mirror: Harry has had private tutoring on the Mirror of Erised from Dumbledore.

It looks like the only school subject that is useful in today’s adventure is Herbology. In her panic, Hermione remembers “it likes the dark and the damp,” but that’s as far as she can go. I suppose in the quiet of the library or the hushed tension of an exam, she could have put it all together. But she needs Harry to conclude, “So light a fire!” and Ron to remind her that she can do so (and has done so) with magic: “HAVE YOU GONE MAD? ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?” Hermione, Harry, and Ron pass this exam only by collaborating, the small group exam at its best.

If the purpose of the Hogwarts saga was to promote the value of academics as taught in schools, we may expect to see a little more of what the kids learn in their classes coming into play in this adventure. Instead of tricking Hagrid to tell them the secret of getting past Fluffy, they would have learned it in Care of Magical Creatures. Instead of catching a flying key, they would have to work a charm from Flitwick’s class to make the needed key fly down to them. Instead of playing chess, they would need to cast a spell from McGonagall’s class to make the chess pieces move. Instead of solving a logic puzzle about the position of potion bottles, they would need to remember these potions from class and identify which to drink and which to avoid.

Regarding values and learning, JKR speaks through Hermione:

“Harry—you’re a great wizard, you know.”

“I’m not as good as you,” said Harry, very embarrassed as she let go of him.

“Me!” said Hermione. “Books! And cleverness! There are more important things—friendship and bravery and—oh Harry—be careful!”