| Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the fifth film adaptation based upon J.K. Rowling�s bestselling series of novels about a boy wizard who survived the wrath of the Dark Lord known as Voldemort. Before Harry is to begin his fifth year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he and his cousin are attacked by a pair of Dementors, the feared guards of the wizard prison know as Azkaban. In order to save them, he must use a magic charm that is forbidden to do for an underage wizard outside of school. Expelled from school for doing this, Harry is forced to appear before the Ministry of Magic to answer the charges against him. Through the intervention of the Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore, Harry is allowed to return to school. However, a new Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor comes to the school as well in the form of the Minister�s employee known as Delores Umbridge. Umbridge makes it her mission to bring reform to the school in what she sees as a lapse in the education for young witches and wizards at Hogwarts. In addition to the changes going on at Hogwarts, in the year since it became known that the Dark Lord had returned the secret society who opposed the Dark Lord during his first rise to power are reformed as the Order of the Phoenix. When it becomes plain that the students at Hogwarts are not going to be learning how to defend themselves from Voldemort or his Death Eaters, Harry and his friends form their own club known as Dumbledore�s Army to fight the return of the Dark Lord as they practice the skills that they are not learning in the classroom thanks to Umbridge�s changes in the curriculum. As all of this is going on the link between Harry and Voldemort becomes more clear and the confrontation between the boy who lived and the one-who-must-not-be-named draws closer. The original novel by Rowling that this installment of the series is based upon contained a lot of scenes that were left out of the film adaptation, but much of Umbridge�s importance to the story has been left intact for the movie. Professor Umbridge is shown in great detail during the movie as her actions are central to the plot of the story. Although her actions seem reprehensible to the students there seems to be nothing that anyone in the school administration can do about it since she is the Ministry�s woman. There isn�t much time spent showing the other teachers at the school in this movie, but they do make small appearances. However, it really isn�t enough exposure to get an idea of their philosophies in the classroom. The students are shown divided by their abilities and personalities. Hogwarts has the system that separates students into one of four different houses in accordance with those divisions. Depending on where they are placed they are known by the characteristics of that particular House. Students are not passive in their educations either but active participants. They are inquisitive individuals who must study through experiences. When they are not allowed to practice their skills in the classroom it becomes essential to how they view the value of their own education to teach themselves under the direction of Harry who has had real experience defending himself against the dark arts. Harry tells his peers that �real life is not like school� and this is what the belief of Dumbledore�s Army becomes. In the Room of Requirement where these secret lessons are being conducted, it is a very student-centered learning environment and this seems like a progressive philosophy of education. The students are allowed to learn on their own terms without a teacher to lead them. Harry acts more as a tutor to help when things become difficult such as Neville�s inability to flourish properly for a proper disarming spell to work with his wand. This film doesn�t show many other school personnel, but we do get to see a few of them. Dumbledore is the headmaster of the school and we see him often in the act of being an authority figure who advocates for the students and teachers. He is there at Harry�s hearing in the Ministry of Magic to defend his student�s actions and knows that in self defense the rule against underage wizardry in the presence of muggles, or non-magical people, is overruled. He also takes care of the teachers under his rule such as keeping Professor Trelawney on the school grounds after Umbridge formally dismisses her from her post as a teacher at Hogwarts. Hagrid is the gamekeeper at Hogwarts but he doesn�t get much screen time to see his role beyond running an errand for the headmaster of the school in trying to convince the giants to come to the aid of the Order of the Phoenix in the struggle between good and evil. Mr. Filch, who is something of a janitor at Hogwarts, does get to demonstrate his role in this installment of the film. Mostly we see him behaving as Umbridge�s personal servant to do her bidding in her take-over of Hogwarts. It is difficult to pinpoint a single educational philosophy in this movie for the school. Since we are only given a significant exposure to the practices of Professor Umbridge I am inclined to believe that her philosophies rely on perennialism and essentialism for the most part. When she first takes the vacant post for Defense Against the Dark Arts, Umbridge announces to the school the Ministry�s interests in seeing that their approved curriculum be implemented for the education of future generations of witches and wizards. Her statements about preserving what needs to be preserved reminded me of the perennialist�s views about preserving the great truths of the past. �Progress for the sake of progress� is not important in Umbridge�s philosophy and it becomes clear that the Ministry seeks to interfere with the educational system at Hogwarts. This feature kind of makes me think about the No Child Left Behind Act and other government interferences in education. Umbridge explains to her class that a theoretical knowledge base will be sufficient for her class as she passes out a Ministry-approved textbook to each student that does not mention anything about practicing spells in the classroom. This seems much like the view of reading books that are part of the perennialist view will make a student prepared for what is out there in real life. Her assignment to the class of copying the approved text four times in the belief that it will give maximum retention to the class is also a practice of the perennialists because rote memory is one of the methods used in this philosophy. However, she doesn�t particularly encourage the students to be thinking critically with this knowledge as Hermione Granger points out that Umbridge doesn�t want them to be thinking as they are supposed to be preparing to pass their standardized tests at the end of the year known as O.W.L.s. So in the respect of giving all the students the core knowledge of subjects with the expectation that they are supposed to sit as idle spectators to absorb what the teacher has to impart to them it resembles a bit of essentialism too. Still there�s another more sadistic aspect to Umbridge�s complex character and that would be her punishment methods. When Harry makes the claim that Lord Voldemort has returned, a bit of information that contradicts the Ministry of Magic�s claim to the contrary, Umbridge asks him to write sentences for her with a quill pen that causes the words marked on the paper to etch themselves into the skin of the other hand of the writer. This practice of discipline seems very much like behaviorism as Umbridge tries to alter how her classroom will operate in a way more fitting to her controlling personality. It�s not a method that other teachers approve of as Umbridge is confronted by the head of Gryffindor House for her barbaric ways in regards to disciplining the students. The portrayal of education in this movie is interesting because it transpires in a world of magical possibilities. However, if I was to give it a rating of apples between one and five I would give Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix four out of five apples. It shows that book learning is not a sufficient means of survival outside of a school environment and through the learning experiences of the students it becomes clear that �theoretical knowledge� is not the way that education is meant to go either in the magical world or the non-magical world. Harry and his friends who practiced the spells in their secret place away from prying eyes stand a chance against the Death Eaters in the escalating climax of the film�s finale are only able to do so because of their training. It proves that authentic learning has a real purpose in the classroom. If the students had not taken an active role in their studies, then it would become clear that the curriculum in the Ministry-approved approach that Umbridge was incorporating at Hogwarts did not prepare them to be efficient citizens of the magical world. The fifth installment in the Harry Potter series shows a startling contrast in the educational philosophies of Rowling�s magical universe. It shows that students need individual care and attention in how they learn what it is they need in a school�s curriculum. Harry Potter becomes for a short time the teacher that his classmates need, incorporating the lessons and care that he had been given by the previous instructors who helped him along before in prior years of coming to school. Not all students are created equal and it becomes important to see to their needs. School cannot be so caught up in conforming to a strict code that forgets the initial reason for a school is to see to the educational requirements of the students. Bibliography Agans, Lyndsay, & Music, Rusmir (2008). Harry Potter and the Theories of Education. Retrieved November 10, 2008, from The Leaky Cauldron Web site: http://www.the-leakycauldron.org/2008/1/18/theoriesofeducation/ |
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