Using the Harry Potter series to teach about special populations of gifted students

Using

r e t t

o P

y r to teach about r a H Special Populations A Presentation by Charles Sutton Galileo School for Gifted Learning Level 7 Learning

How do the characters and story-lines in the Harry Potter series reflect gifted special population issues?

Harry Potter is very much like the highly gifted student. He has extraordinary innate talent as evidenced by the inability of Voldemort to kill him as a baby. Both of his parents were gifted wizards, but Harry’s powers, while undeveloped, rival those of the most powerful wizard.

Like many highly gifted students, Harry, has some asynchronous development issues as his personal maturity issues often lag behind his natural abilities and intelligences. He is also highly sensitive to moral issues. Harry often finds internal struggles controlling his emotions and misusing his gifts and talents. Harry uses his gifts and talents in creative was often putting together diverse concepts to solve problems.

Hermione Granger is a complex character, who is also highly gifted. She experiences racial biases at Hogwarts and in the wizard world in general because she is a mixed-race wizard who has one mortal parent. As a result, Hermione has some cultural differences from her classmates. Furthermore, some treat her talents and gifts as inferior because of her family circumstances. Hermione is the one character who show tremendous task commitment, pouring through magic books to find solutions to homework and real world problems, though some of her commitment can be seen as perfectionism, which she is accused of by her friends and classmates.

Ron Weasley is a marginally talented wizard who fits the low SES gifted and talented group. At times, Ron is clumsy and has difficulty learning, so his admission into Hogwarts could also be considered Dominant Culture Privilege as other similarly gifted students may not be accepted and retained. Unlike many of his classmates, Ron is unable to afford good clothes, new books, or an adequate wand, all of which have a negative effect on his ability to develop his talents. While Ron’s family is warm, loving, and supportive, he suffers discrimination at school due to his poverty status. Additionally, Ron is often harassed because of his father’s fascination with and acceptance of another race of people called Muggles.

Neville Longbottom is a complex mixture of talents and disabilities. As such, he is the embodiment of the Twice-Exceptional child. While some students have overall gifts, like Hermione, Neville is much more limited in his area of talent, and even at that, some of his giftedness as a wizard is overshadowed by disability caused by physical and emotional trauma as a young child.

Luna Lovegood is also a complex character. She has different beliefs inherited from her father that equate with the kinds of cultural differences people from divergent religions experience in the dominant culture. Also, like Hermione, Luna is very much a feminist character, so she is sometimes discounted or discriminated against due to gender biases.

Fred and George Weasley are the classic underachievers.

They clearly have gifts in wizardry, they are athletic, and they have very high potential for greatness. However, they are bored and lack some of the task commitment necessary to succeed in traditional ways. Instead, they turn to creative endeavors involving practical jokes, which they commit to and turn into a career.

Draco Malfoy is the dominant culture gifted student who doesn’t understand the gifts that other cultures can bring to the school. His character exemplifies White, male privilege in that he is given more credit for his gifts and talents than he deserves.

No Image Available!

Of course, it wouldn’t be Harry Potter without the wonderful collections of teachers, each trying to work with students who have divergent gift sets. Some are all accepting and wise. Others have an agenda. Some cherish diversity, while others are looking for adherence to the dominant culture.

When one looks at Gifted and Talented programs, s/he can see many of the personalities represented in the Harry Potter series as well.

This black rectangle without a picture was included as a visual metaphor. It represents the countless racial and cultural groups that are conspicuously missing from the Hogwarts school and Harry Potter series, while White, European (English) children are overrepresented compared to the general populations. So, this section represents those who are unaccounted for in gifted populations.

The characters depicted in this review are the property of J.K. Rowling. All use of these characters and descriptions are for the purpose of education.

Likewise, the images that appear in this presentation were found on the Internet; they are the copyright property of their creators. The images were used for education purposes only.