Types of Training

The training ground for battling evil takes place at the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes held at Hogwarts. In most of the films, so far, the teachers have been a mixed bag. Professor Quirrel had been twisted by Voldemort. Professor Lockhart was a vain, preening fraud. Good Professor Lupin taught by example and put the students through their paces. Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody was a demanding teacher (who turned out to be played by an imposter). But Dolores Umbridge represents, by far, the most damaging of the Professors for Defense Against the Dark Arts, not because of what she teaches, but because of the presuppositions she attempts to place in the heads of her students: primarily the belief that no enemy exists, therefore no practical training will be required.

Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, describes teachers like Umbridge as “Conditioners.” Unburdened by any obligation to universal principles, conditioner-style teachers are motivated solely by self-interest and their own impulses in determining the direction of their students’ studies. Harry knows that battle is coming and wants to be prepared to fight. Umbridge tells the students that there is no battle, and that theoretical knowledge will be sufficient. Soft knowledge is substituted for hard skills. After all, Umbridge tells the students, the purpose of education is to pass exams, not to train for action in a conflicted world. Her desire for a “risk-free education” only exposes her students to greater danger.

The reason C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia are so bracing is that when the children arrive in Narnia, they are thrown into situations in which they must learn what to do and then act. Lewis, despite being a professor himself, had a negative view of modern “educationalists.” By the time Umbridge is through “improving” Hogwarts, it begins to look suspiciously like Experiment House—the horrid school run by idiots and filled with cruel, bullying, children from which Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole escape in The Silver Chair. Umbridge turns Hogwarts from an academy designed to mature its students, into an institution of infantilism. Students must be managed, controlled, turned into informants, divided from one another—not in the interest of the students, but in the interest of the administrator. What they are carefully denied is an opportunity to grow up.

Similarly, how often is Christian “sword training” demoted to a strictly academic (in the worst sense of that word) exercise? People learn “about” God, but never truly know Him. They learn about the spiritual battles facing humankind, but lack the training to actually engage. They have the right answers, but rarely the right actions. They can pass the examination, but are losing the war.

Some of the students at Hogwarts take it upon themselves to learn. What happens at these private training sessions more closely approaches the idea of discipleship than anything Umbridge teaches. The students choose Harry Potter to conduct classes because he has been in battle and prevailed. Appropriately, Harry is also humble about his victories, so he is some safeguard against undue pride. Possessing knowledge and experience, Harry is a good and effective teacher.

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