Erica Jacobs: The Harry Potter experience
By: Erica Jacobs
Examiner Columnist
July 7, 2009
As Andy Roddick and Roger Federer prepared to take center court at Wimbledon, 21 George Mason University students arrived at Oxford University — primed for three weeks of intense scholarship and a bit of Harry Potter magic. Our opening dinner introduced students to a dining hall every bit as wondrous as Hogwarts’ hall — filmed just a few blocks away at Christ Church College.
This is the fourth time I’ve played a part in British study abroad (the other three times at Cambridge University), and student enthusiasm for the program has been broad-based and unwavering. Complaints are rare and small (“Where are the ice cubes?”), and praise lavish and continual (“We clap at the end of every class!”). They love being part of a tradition 700 years old, part of a lecture format that is refreshingly different from what they’re used to and part of an intellectual community that talks about books and politics at each meal.
The opening dinner was right out of a film script. Most students had flown to London overnight and were functioning on
very little sleep; the five-hour time difference was taking its toll. But as we entered the Exeter College dining hall, with its large, dignified portraits on the walls and stained glass windows shedding light on the long tables, we all exclaimed, “This is so Harry Potter!”
Once students and visiting faculty were in place, we all stood up as a long line of gowned Oxford tutors entered the room and took their spots at the high, elevated table illuminated by candles. I thought I glimpsed professors Snape, McGonagall and Mad-Eye Moody. (No one looked remotely like Hagrid.)
I don’t know whether it was the fading light, filtered by hundreds of stained glass panes, or the candles at the high table and lamps at student tables, but there was an otherworldly glow. Any moment I expected to hear a director shout, “That’s a wrap! You can go home now.”
Instead of wrapping up, however, our glasses were filled with water and wine, and multiple courses were served by local students: butternut squash soup, pink grapefruit sorbet, chicken breast with lemon pepper butter, fig and ginger trifle. The food didn’t appear all at once, as it does in Hogwarts, but the effect was no less magical.
The following morning at breakfast, the dining hall began to look more familiar, and the previous evening’s glow had faded. But as students attended their first lectures, seminars and book clubs, a different glow appeared.
I could see intellectual excitement and anticipation on their faces as they realized that the next three weeks would be formative. Whether their seminars are on Jane Austen, Shakespeare or “Human Rights in Perspective,” each student knows that this is different from anything at GMU.
Of course Mason has courses on Austen, Shakespeare and human rights — but students visiting Oxford are part of a different locale, a different tradition, small seminars of 14 students and new approaches to their chosen subjects.
There is no “Defence Against the Dark Arts” or “History of Magic,” but standard subjects take on a new aura — one more real and lasting than the magical world of Harry Potter.
What kids are reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre and data from booksellers.
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (Ages 8-Adult)
1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Books on Oxford University
8. The Student’s Handbook to the University and Colleges of Oxford by Edwin Hatch
9. University of Oxford by G. C. Brodrick
10. A History of the University of Oxford: From the Earliest Times to 1530 by H.C. Maxwell Lyte (written in 1886)
More from Erica Jacobs
- Erica Jacobs: What no teacher can prepare for
- Erica Jacobs: Horace's Hope: My educational journey
- Erica Jacobs: I am Horace: More thoughts on Theodore Sizer's progressive Educational Philosophy
- Erica Jacobs: I Am Horace: How Theodore Sizer nailed what really happens in high school
- Erica Jacobs: When words fail us
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