{"id":347,"date":"2009-12-20T09:19:51","date_gmt":"2009-12-20T14:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=347"},"modified":"2009-12-20T09:25:38","modified_gmt":"2009-12-20T14:25:38","slug":"taking-the-magic-out-of-college-and-putting-it-back-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2009\/12\/20\/taking-the-magic-out-of-college-and-putting-it-back-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking the Magic out of College and Putting It Back In"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-348\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/files\/2009\/12\/art.harry.potter.wb1-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"art.harry.potter.wb\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Lauren Edelson worried last week about how college tour guides deliver condescending pitches about how their schools resemble Hogwarts.  Not a bad thing in my book, especially when you have seen schools that bear no resemblance at all to Hogwarts.  Still, she makes a good point about how high school students are longing to grow up and out of Hogwarts: <em>Leaving home and beginning life in a new place is a nerve-racking experience, and nothing seems more reassuring than imagining that college will be the realization of a fantasy world I\u2019ve been imagining since childhood. Obviously colleges have picked up on this. But they\u2019re trying too hard. They\u2019re selling the wrong thing. And my friends and I won\u2019t be fooled. After all, Harry Potter is frozen in high school, and we\u2019re growing up.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/12\/06\/opinion\/06edelson.html<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was sold on her argument until Dani Duggan (Weston High School) weighed in: <em>What I still don\u2019t understand is why Ms. Edelson thinks \u201cselling\u201d Harry Potter is a problem. As my dad says, you\u2019re old for a very long time. So what\u2019s the harm in a little magic?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And apropos Harry Potter in College, CNN.com has an interesting piece on Pottermania in the college classroom and interviews students who are taking a range of courses in which J.K. Rowling&#8217;s series is read.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2008\/SHOWBIZ\/books\/03\/25\/cnnu.potter\/index.html<\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lauren Edelson worried last week about how college tour guides deliver condescending pitches about how their schools resemble Hogwarts. Not a bad thing in my book, especially when you have seen schools that bear no resemblance at all to Hogwarts. Still, she makes a good point about how high school students are longing to grow [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26363],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-literature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}