Harry Potter and the Hatred of Teachers
By Stephen Marche
Warner Bros.
The release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 will be the final installment in the most popular story cycle since Jesus and the Escape from the Enchanted Tomb. Seven books and eight movies have somehow not sated the hunger for the bespectacled boy from Little Whinging [NO. 1]. Meanwhile, the final spasm of Pottermania is coinciding with an assault on teachers' unions by Republican governors in New Jersey and Wisconsin, who are forcing decreases in the benefits and pay of teachers at the exact moment when the changing nature of the economy has rendered it nearly impossible for anyone without an education to enter the middle class [NO. 2]. The governors believe, and they may well be right, that beating up on teachers is a political winner. So the same people who will rush out to Deathly Hallows to watch the completion of a magical education will rush out in November to make sure education is cheaper. The fantasy of school life and its reality have never been further apart [NO. 3].
Teachers have become weird symbols in our public imagination, repositories of our most extreme hopes and fears. The magic in the Harry Potter books is mostly borrowed tinsel and a distraction from the main thrust of the plots — the
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