The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Wizard Academy
Rasins:
Also, don't forget that those who were at Camp Kaboom were already full wizards.
dspringer1:
--- Quote ---If we can assume a School would be a viable option at all, why are we assuming a single Master cannot adequately teach multiple Apprentices?
--- End quote ---
If you assume a master takes several apprentices at the same time, they certainly could. The problem with a single master is that when the apprentices skills begin to diverge, they start to need separate training. A single master with Molly and Harry as students would find their individual strengths to rapidly diverge, limiting the opportunities for co-training.
In a college setting, molly would move to the advanced class in veils while Harry stayed in the basic class. That is the strength of the college groups. You can cluster several students together on any one topic that have comparable skills.
Do not get me wrong, these classes might be only five students in size. I doubt any wizard class beyond general education lectures would have more than ten students. but that still means a given group of wizards can turn out 5X the apprentices of a single master.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: dspringer1 on July 11, 2017, 06:45:04 PM ---If you assume a master takes several apprentices at the same time, they certainly could. The problem with a single master is that when the apprentices skills begin to diverge, they start to need separate training. A single master with Molly and Harry as students would find their individual strengths to rapidly diverge, limiting the opportunities for co-training.
In a college setting, molly would move to the advanced class in veils while Harry stayed in the basic class. That is the strength of the college groups. You can cluster several students together on any one topic that have comparable skills.
Do not get me wrong, these classes might be only five students in size. I doubt any wizard class beyond general education lectures would have more than ten students. but that still means a given group of wizards can turn out 5X the apprentices of a single master.
--- End quote ---
The sense I get is that Harry, and by extension Molly, was unusually isolated as an Apprentice. I would have assumed a certain amount of collaboration with their peers (to the limits of the masters' individual personalities) when the issue is disparate skill sets. Homeschooling coalitions do this pretty often these days.
wyltok:
--- Quote from: dspringer1 on July 11, 2017, 06:45:04 PM ---Do not get me wrong, these classes might be only five students in size. I doubt any wizard class beyond general education lectures would have more than ten students. but that still means a given group of wizards can turn out 5X the apprentices of a single master.
--- End quote ---
We know two topics in which wizard tradition has been firmly entrenched: wards and defensive mental magic. In Summer Knight, an "old dame Warden" showed the whole council a list of newly-developed warding theories meant to incorporate additional protection against vampires. Similarly, the wards set up by corpsetaker in Ghost Story were identifiable by Harry as previous generations of the same principles he knows. Speaking of Corpsetaker, in Dead Beat, she recognize Harry's mental defenses as being part of the Council's standard doctrine, and she mentions they've been using it for a century.
I've always thought of the White Council as a Certification and Continuing Professional Education system more than anything else. Once the Council recognizes you as having the potential to be an apprentice, you are assigned a coach to help you develop your own style as well as make it compatible enough with the Council's generally accepted theories of magic until you are recognized as a Wizard. Once a Wizard, it is your responsibility to go to the Council Meetings to keep yourself up to date with whatever new theories they present to you.
--- Quote from: WOJ: 2009 Whisper radio interview @1:39:25 --- [...]I thought, well if the wizards are going to exist on this world then they are going to have some kind of organization of one kind or another, and the White Council ends up being kind of the Bar organization for the wizards you know. If you want to be someone who's taken seriously you have to show up, you have to pass their tests, you gota put in your time helping out, and then you are recognized as a full wizard.
--- End quote ---
Unfortunately, that's not good enough anymore. Wizards of the White Council are still too rare to catch everyone with the potential to hurt others before they go Sith. Which is why they have relied on their allies, organizations like the Venatori and the Paranet to do the flagging for them. But that's not going to be enough in the future, I don't think.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: wyltok on July 11, 2017, 08:43:10 PM ---We know two topics in which wizard tradition has been firmly entrenched: wards and defensive mental magic. In Summer Knight, an "old dame Warden" showed the whole council a list of newly-developed warding theories meant to incorporate additional protection against vampires. Similarly, the wards set up by corpsetaker in Ghost Story were identifiable by Harry as previous generations of the same principles he knows. Speaking of Corpsetaker, in Dead Beat, she recognize Harry's mental defenses as being part of the Council's standard doctrine, and she mentions they've been using it for a century.
I've always thought of the White Council as a Certification and Continuing Professional Education system more than anything else. Once the Council recognizes you as having the potential to be an apprentice, you are assigned a coach to help you develop your own style as well as make it compatible enough with the Council's generally accepted theories of magic until you are recognized as a Wizard. Once a Wizard, it is your responsibility to go to the Council Meetings to keep yourself up to date with whatever new theories they present to you.
Unfortunately, that's not good enough anymore. Wizards of the White Council are still too rare to catch everyone with the potential to hurt others before they go Sith. Which is why they have relied on their allies, organizations like the Venatori and the Paranet to do the flagging for them. But that's not going to be enough in the future, I don't think.
--- End quote ---
I agree with your assessment, though I'd submit that only the Venatori have played that role so far but that the much, MUCH wider and more well-attended Net of the Paranet will go a long way to mitigating the scale issues you see. They are just too new at this point, and as of I think it was TC where Harry and Luccio mention it, the paranet hadnt yet developed a huge amount of support in the Council beyond Harry himself.
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