Academy of the arcane
Fantasy and the formal teaching of magic
Introduction: Education
I'll confess that I've never actually read the Harry Potter series. Of all the people in the world, you'd think the fantasy author who shares a last name with him would be, if not a fan, then at least acquainted with one of the most famous young adult series of our age.
They never appealed to me. I watched the movies with family members, mostly because there were times when I had no other viable option. (Think sharing a bedroom and TV with your little brother, with nowhere else to go at 1 AM.) Thus, I picked up a lot of plot details, character bios, and general setting info through sheer osmosis. Talking on the internet added to that, as has reading about writing.
One aspect of the series that did make an impact was the central location: Hogwarts. I'd read other fantasy fiction involving magical education, but this was my first real experience with a work that had it as the primary focus. And why shouldn't it? After all, the main characters are children. The novels and movies are all about those characters growing up, coming of age, with everything that entails. Despite my relative lack of familiarity, I used this as one inspiration for the first novel I wrote, Heirs of Divinity, which I started in 2012 and to this day continue to claim I'll edit and release eventually.
But how plausible is a whole school for wizards? What would it be like? To answer those questions, as ever, we need to contemplate the setting and the situation.
Back to school
The origins of our modern university, as an institution of academia expressly chartered to provide a general and robust education, date back to the Middle Ages. Many of those universities founded in the 12th and 13th centuries have even endured to present times, though often under different names. The curriculum, of course, would be wholly unrecognizable to a transplanted medieval student or professor, but the sentiment is about the same.
For younger students, what we think of as a common path for education is a very modern invention. Primary (or elementary) schools first, then one or more secondary schools, called middle and high schools in my part of America, make up most of a person's childhood, but it wasn't always this way. And it certainly wasn't compulsory. Indeed, for those who didn't intend to go into academia or a learned profession such as medicine or the law, vocational training would have been much more common after adolescence.
Still, schools of any kind are ancient, and they all share a few traits. You have, in whatever passes for a class, one teacher and a greater number of students, for example; the ideal of a one-to-one ratio is never truly achieved, because there are always going to be more who need to learn than can teach. A division of subjects is also common, as is some sort of chronological order, where easier lessons come before those that rely on them. You probably won't see seven-year-olds learning algebra (unless you knew me in 1990) or first-graders doing chemistry experiments. Finally, though the ceremony associated with graduation isn't universal, the notion of completing one's studies and then moving on to something larger pretty much is.
Some schools are public, paid for by taxes and open to all, though possibly with restrictions on which school in a city a child is allowed to attend. Others are private; these can be much more expensive and exclusive, but often provide a superior learning experience. A school might also be funded by a church or other religious organization, something that has been happening for centuries. Homeschooling is growing in popularity in the US for myriad reasons, and it's really an evolution of the oldest form of education there is: the direct transmission of knowledge from parent to child. (Also, note that the definitions of "public" and "private" I've used here are American. They tend to be called by different terms in different countries.)
Waving the wand
Schools, then, are something we know. We all attended one in some form. Yet that can lead authors down a false path, because we extrapolate our experiences onto an entire setting. Whether consciously or not, we assume our upbringing was normal. "Write what you know," they say. In this case, it can be a bit of a curse. None of us attended a school for magic.
The first step for your story, then, is to think about what kind of school you're dealing with. Hogwarts, to take the most notable example, is somewhat typical for its culture. Americans find it odd and a little exotic, as we're not really used to boarding schools, but English readers might view those same aspects with nostalgia. A version of Saved by the Bell or Degrassi with magic added would have a completely different feel.
Part of the problem is that you also need to think about the magic system. That's definitely a topic I could write about at length, but we can look at a few very important questions whose answers will determine much about what kind of school a setting could realistically support.
To start, how common is magic? If literally everyone can learn to work at least some kind of spell or effect, then it will likely be so integrated into society that a "magic school" is really just a school that happens to offer magical studies as subjects. They may even be mandatory classes, in the extreme case where learning magic is part of being a citizen. At the secondary or university level, elective courses—or their counterparts in other educational traditions—might delve into deeper or more theoretical matters. One could imagine, say, taking Thaumatology 201 as part of the requirements for a degree in wizardry.
From here, we descend to varying levels of magical prominence. The case where most people have some talent is interesting, as it implies a significant social dichotomy. There may be special "muggle" schools for those who can't use magic, and these could have positive or negative stereotypes attached. Alternatively, such students may still need to learn the underpinnings, the same way even those of us who can't draw or sing have to take some kind of art class nonetheless.
With magical ability in the minority, it no longer earns the priority of the above situations. Instead, you can get the Harry Potter example, with special schools dedicated to those who have talent. In modern times, it's perfectly fine to base these on private or parochial schools, especially if magic in your setting is supposed to be a secret. Without the incentive to support the magic-using minority, they won't have the same level of civic or financial backing as those schools open to all. The students still have to learn "mundane" subjects, though. Depending on your setting's specifics, the magical part might instead come in the form of summer school, camps, or private tutors.
Last, we can look at the case where magic is exceedingly rare. With only one talented individual in a city of, say, twenty thousand, only a larger metropolis realistically has enough people to form a school entirely devoted to magic. Even then, it would be something of an elite academy, the only one in its state or province. More likely, students would learn later in life, or through experimentation.
What we can learn
The preceding discussion makes two key assumptions. We'll get to one of them, the time period, in a moment, but I want to look at the other first. For that, we need to ask ourselves another question. Is magic teachable?
This is more complex than it looks upon first glance. Obviously, Harry Potter has his assortment of spells with their faux Latin incantations. These can be taught, although actually performing them still requires training and an effort of will. Not only can they be taught, but they can be studied. In that sense, they're not magical at all. They function more as a science than an art. Thus, classes are more like, well, classes. You have your potion-making, your defense against the dark arts, and so on.
That's not the only way to go. It is easier for us to consider, again due to analogy. Making potions is like chemistry. Not many high schools teach self-defense, but it's common for people to learn outside the school environment—think about all those who take lessons in karate or other martial arts as a hobby. The ethics of wizardry is no less fanciful a topic for a bunch of potential wizards than civics for American teens. (I'm definitely on the side that thinks we need more of that, by the way.)
We can imagine an alternative setting, one where magic itself is somewhat common, and it can be studied, but it's not something to be taught in a scientific manner. Actually, we don't have to imagine it at all. Bear with me on this one, but isn't the mutant school in the X-Men movies exactly that? Think about it. You have people with a superhuman talent and professors who can teach them about it, but not teach it to them directly. Because every mutant is unique, you can't design a general curriculum for them.
Magic might be more like that, something innate and personal. In cases where it's affected more by nature, spirits, or something to that effect, it could very easily appear in a "wild" form not amenable to our educational techniques. Classes, in this case, would focus much more on things like theory and proper usage than specific spells that don't really fit any of the students. Those with talent would instead be given the mental tools to understand their gift and the encouragement to experiment with it. (Or you could end up with a magical version of Common Core. Which could be a fun satire, if nothing else.)
We assume that magic follows rules, and that's one reason why it's so easy to consider it a science. If we don't understand those rules, however, we can't very well teach according to them. Arcane, er, arcana may end up more like art classes, where students can only really learn about techniques. Potions and enchantments could even be part of home ec and shop…if anybody still took those.
Timing
Again, we're all familiar with modern schools, so it's going to be easiest to write a story centered around one of them. Hogwarts, despite the trappings of a relatively modern English institution, has a sense of timelessness mostly from its solitude. It's isolated from the world of today, so it exists outside of time as much as possible. Your magical school doesn't have to be like that. Indeed, it doesn't have to be modern at all.
In older periods, a school for magic will still follow the same general rules I've outlined above. It'll just do so in a way that's appropriate to the period. Before compulsory education, children in a magic-heavy society would be more likely to learn the rudiments of the arcane from their parents, especially if talent is hereditary. Guilds and trade schools can also offer education for those who fit the bill. This latter situation would allow for the rise of specialized training, if magic tends to be general; the alchemists' guild probably wouldn't teach illusion spells, for example.
Church schools (or their counterparts in other religions) seem like a nonstarter at first. After all, magic is anathema. It's heresy. Why would a church teach that?
Well, magic is considered evil in Christianity for numerous reasons, but a big one is that it doesn't work. If it did, if everyone in town could perform the equivalent of a miracle at will, a religious prohibition on magic simply wouldn't exist. Indeed, it probably couldn't. (The interplay of the arcane and the divine is on my to-do list for Hardcore Worldbuilding, so I'll leave it as something for you to explore today. For now, I'll ask you to consider the possibility.)
A highly magical culture, then, will find a way to carry on its knowledge, the same as we do for literacy, history, science, and so much else. That will hold true at any point throughout the ages. In earlier times, education tended to be expensive. It was often reserved for the elite: nobles, citizens, men, believers, or whoever was considered worthy for the time and place. Compulsory, indeed ubiquitous, education is more a product of the Enlightenment in our Western world. There's no reason to think magic would change that, even if it would add to what is taught.
This one was hard, but fun. As I stated in the introduction, I've tried to do the "wizard school" thing in a novel before. I was younger, less experienced. Looking back, that story feels bland and trite when compared to my later works. Still, I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy reading over it now.
I hope you feel the same about this article. I'll be going back to the realm of science fiction with the next one, as I don't want to leave it out. Until then, make sure to leave your comments and share with your friends. And, as always, keep reading!