snape could’ve been an awesome teacher if he wasn’t a disgusting waste of a human being. he knew from age 16 that the instuctions that the textbooks were giving weren’t as good as they could be. he improved the potions and recorded his methods at age 16. if he weren’t such a shitbag, he could’ve either written the damn textbooks himself, or taught his students his alternate methods. he could’ve revolutionized how potions were being brewed, teaching whole generations a superior method of potion brewing. instead, he spent his time bullying children.
Snape always wrote the instructions for brewing on the board; and if I recall correctly Hermione always succeeded in potions when Snape taught them. As soon as Slughorn took over and Hermione started using the textbook, she started to get some if her potions wrong. @snapedefender
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a) lmao this person has…. no idea…. how teachers do things? like okay hogwarts is a magic school but they have a school board that has a decent amount of power (they can get rid of teachers, fire the headmaster, etc) which says that they can’t be all that different regular schools which, you know, have regulated syllabi and mandated textbooks. you should see some of the textbooks that get assigned in the american education system - my god, some of them are basically fiction and yet, they’re still what a teacher has to use since it’s been assigned to them. most teachers (as far as i’m aware) don’t necessarily get to choose what textbooks they work with.
b) even taking that aside, it’s so far out of snape’s character to help students who don’t try that it’s kind of funny to think of him doing it. a lot of snape’s students just… don’t try, ron and harry don’t try. and don’t pretend to me that it’s just because snape is a bully - they don’t try in transfigurations either and they both like and respect mcgonagall.
c) setting THAT aside, snape never wanted to be a teacher, doesn’t have the temperment for being a teacher, and is only a teacher because hogwarts is literally the only safe place for him to be for much of the series and helps his cover as a spy for the rest. it’s not like he woke up one morning and decided he wanted to torture children for fun - he has to be there. it’s like forcing a cat into a tutu and then getting mad at the cat for biting and scratching you to get out of it.
d) no, snape’s treatment of the students is not okay.
e) BUT it’s his job to teach them how to make potions - a subject we see many of them not care about. we also see that most of the students manage to make them just fine when they actually pay attention and try. hermione does fine. draco does fine. if we assume they are using the textbook version of the recipe (back to that in a moment) then we have to assume that those methods work and snape’s notes are merely shortcuts to shorten brewing time, making a stronger potion, etc. why does he need to teach that to students who are only there to get their newt or owl and then get out of town? if they want to know, they’ll find it on their own - that’s how intellectual curiosity works, or, i assume, how snape thinks intellectual curiosity works. he figured out those shortcuts on his own (perhaps with lily’s help?) and as someone who was raised alone, who had to figure out everything alone, he probably thinks that’s just… how it works. no one helped him figure out how to revolutionize potions (except maybe lily!!!!) and i doubt it would even occur to him to do so because of that.
f) finally, as is rightfully pointed out, hermione’s potions don’t start to go wrong until after slughorn starts teaching. why is that? we see snape write the recipe on the board multiple times even though it’s already in the book. why is that? could it be… that he was giving them the shortcuts all the time? but then why would harry suck so much the first five years and excel the sixth? maybe harry just does better outside of snape’s influence. maybe the shortcuts in the book are even better improvements. maybe harry didn’t try that much in potions because he didn’t like it until he found a shiny new toy to play with.
g) putting the weight of revolutionizing potions on snape’s back is kind of ridiculous. snape’s primary focus for years was to stay alive,
