Umbridge in the classroom
Rob Price

The new Harry Potter movie, which my wife and I rushed off to see as soon as it opened this week, is lots of fun, and possibly the best of the Harry Potter movies, and you should go see it right away.

Yes, that would be you. Especially if you are in the education business, a quirky world that has functioned as the principal setting for all of the Harry Potter movies and novels.

You know the premise: Boy wizard Harry Potter is enrolled in the elite wizarding school Hogwarts, with each of the (so far) six novels detailing his adventures through each successive school year. When the seventh and last Harry Potter novel is published next week, on July 21, we'll all get to learn how Harry's last year turns out.

At the close of Potter VI, there was some doubt in Harry's mind as to whether he would return to Hogwarts. But the creation of Hogwarts - and the many characters who teach and go to school there - is simply too rich to be abandoned by author J. K. Rowling. Take away Hogwarts and you take away the vital context for the extended adventure of Harry's growth from child into young man.

It's no surprise, then, that much of the Harry Potter story has been a meditation on education, its merits, its delights, its nightmares. Read a couple of Harry Potter novels and you have no doubt of what Rowling values in formal education and what she deplores.

Her educational hero is the headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, described by others as the greatest wizard of his age. Not only is Dumbledore a wizard of great powers, he is a wise administrator who knows everything that goes on inside the walls of his school, and a shrewd political infighter who always seems to stay one step ahead of the governing board of Hogwarts, a group of generally misguided individuals appointed to oversee the school by the Ministry of Magic.

Hogwarts may employ the occasional stinker for a teacher (Potions master Severus Snape reaches the heights of villainy in Potter VI), but Rowling appears to endorse the view that everybody has to endure a mean teacher at least once in their life, and it doesn't cause any lasting harm. It's the political and educational bureaucracy surrounding Hogwarts that receives her most scorching criticism.

And the latest Harry Potter movie carries that criticism to its great level. Here's the gist: The Minister of Magic, for self-serving political reasons of his own, decides to discredit both Dumbledore and Harry. He chooses as his weapon an educational bureaucrat named Delores Umbridge and forces Dumbledore to hire her as a Hogwarts teacher. Once ensconced as Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, Umbridge swiftly uses her bureaucratic leverage to undercut Dumbledore's authority and eventually replace him as headmaster.

Not surprisingly, the quality of Hogwarts' educational services degrades in the process, and the corrosive effect of Umbridge's bureaucratic meddling forms an especially sinister background for the various adventures that mark this Harry Potter movie. In fact, the movie handles the political/ bureaucratic background so well, it's possible to conclude the educational bureaucracy is as deadly a villain as Voldemort, the Dark Lord himself.

The funny thing is, Professor Umbridge is a hilarious reminder of a particular teacher we've probably all had at least once in our lives. She's a dreadful teacher, of course, draining her Defense against the Dark Arts classes of all the excitement the material naturally contains. Naturally, therefore, she's a gifted bureaucrat, her greatest talent being the acquisition of bureaucratic authority. At this she is ruthless, even as she smiles sweetly at her Hogwarts colleagues and students. That smile is a simple coverup for the absolute bottom line in her philosophy of teaching: "I'm in charge; you're not."

You know the type: the teacher who spends more time establishing his or her authority than teaching. Once, taking a photograph of a second grade class, I watched the second-grade teacher exert a terrifying amount of energy in just quieting the class down. It was immediately clear this teacher cared more about crowd control than basic arithmetic.

Thanks to J. K. Rowling and the makers of the new Harry Potter movie, we now have a word to describe that teacher. She is an Umbridge. Go watch the movie and have yourself a laugh at how stupid the educational bureaucrats can be. But be on the alert. The world is full of Umbridges.