To get right to the point:

We all know that Snape is a horrible professor. The prevailing theories on why all have to do with a failing on his part:

A) He doesn't know how to teach.

B) He doesn't care.

But what if, for the sake of argument, a shortcoming wasn't the cause of this failure to teach.

Snape is a half-blood, but Voldemort wants purebloods to reign supreme, so why does he put up with a half-blood in his inner circle.

Apart from a spy, I theorize that he needs a Potions Master for reasons ranging from experiments to simply brewing complicated potions. (This is of course assuming that potions is something that you must have inborn talent for, so Voldemort cannot just do it himself.)

So as long as Dumbledore is living and Masters are in short supply, Snape is safe.

But Dumbledore is aging, and Snape knows this.

So in theory, he has been purposely been destroying every student he has. The Slytherins, by not requiring them to know anything, the rest by sabotaging their learning environment, and all of them by halting their understanding of potions making as an art.

So, does this hold water?

 

Are you saying Snape is purposefully sabotaging future potion masters so that he wouldn't be AKed by Voldermort?

Its a valid theory. I can see a very selfish Snape doing just that. But is it a guarantee that he will succeed. I mean there are other potion makers out there and while they may not be masters I'm sure they could teach.

There also the fact that certain people are good at certain aspects of magic to consider. For instance Snape is good in Potions, JP was good at tranfiguration, LP was good at charms and HP is good in DADA. That could be the case for potions as well. There could be people who find potions all too easy, even with a snaky Snape pissing over their shoulder. It worked for HP, who had 2 good DADA professors.

 

I'm not saying that it's foolproof, but that Snape is hedging his bets.

The way that I see it, Snape is in a very delicate place. All the paths that the future could take are slowly being blotted out by Voldemort on one side and Dumbledore one the other. Leaving a smaller and smaller amount of wiggle room for him. Add to this that Dumbledore is running out of time and that Harry 'Bloody Fool' Potter is that side's last hope.

Snape is just throwing in everything he can to prevent a future that is almost certainly, from his perspective, unavoidable. Sooner or later he will be replaceable (Potions Masters from other countries, as Voldemort expands), and he does not know of a way to assure his own safety.

I see it as an act of desperation.

 

as much as I despise Snape...

In all fairness the only perspective we have of his teaching abilities is Harry and the occasional comment from Ron - both of whom put zero effort into their studies. He's obviously biased, and the Slytherins (again, who seem to share a collective wit equivalent to Hagrid) use that to skate through the class, but is there really any evidence that he's a bad teacher besides Harry saying he is?

Personally, if I had to teach a class that used volatile substances between two groups that hated each other, and both groups had no desire to learn or study - I'd probably just tell the lot to piss off.

 

I always thought of Snape as the that one guy who took his profession to the max, and got pissed off when people who have no respect for what he does think they can master potions on only a few years.

Hermione is a perfect example of that. I'm willing to bet that all of her potions essays were the equivalent to text-book pages with her name written on the top, with no original thought. Harry and Ron are probably the same, except with no effort put into it.

I could see why Snape, someone who devoted his entire life to mastering potions, who invented new ways to create potions, who toiled and experimented to perfect hsi skills, would be incredibly irritated whenever someone hands in a potion or an essay with no original thought.

 

Voldemort doesn't want purebloods to reign surpreme.

He wants himself to reign surpreme.

Also, I agree with vlad and MC. We have never heard any objectively negative things about Snape, not even Hermione has said that he's a bad teacher (unfair, of course, but not necessarily bad).

 

I reckon his teaching style is tutorial in nature, sort of. He only has so much class time per class, and he has to concentrate on getting their practical up to scratch in that time, so the theory is done as homework. Of course, this falls down when you get lazy idiots who either don't do the homework, or don't put the effort in to learn any of the material they have to read.

 

I can't say I remember what occured in all the books but there has to have been some basis for the fanon idea of Snape being a favourising unfair asshole. The only thing I can specifically remember is the bullying he did on Harry's first day in potions. And that's what it was, bullying. Clearly educational standards are below lax when that's allowed to occur.


By the way, any monkey with half a brain can assign homework and be pissed off when students don't comply.

 

I kind of agree with Muttering Condolences, that, at least inpart Snape becomes pissed at a bunch of brats that dont respect the art he has dedicated his life to, but that does not change the fact that he activly picks on some students...

It could also be that he has no interest in teaching but he is not as trusted by Dumbledore as Dumbledore likes people to think and Dumbledore is forcing Snape to teach.

 

I would picture Snape more as a bitter man who was told to get a position by his master, got it, and hates children.

Honestly, we know nothing about his teaching skills, we just know he hates Harry and is unfairly biased towards those 'perfect pureblood' pricks in green uniforms.

I would think that he was originally put into Hogwarts to not only spy on Dumbledore...but to keep an eye out for worthy recruits.

Between hating on Harry and dumbing down the next generation of Slytherins who will bow before Voldemort...I can only picture Snape sitting at his desk, brooding.

I would wager the greasy haired git thinks putting up with students all day, almost every day...is far beneath him. Fuck teaching, right?

 

From what I recall, Snape actually wanted to teach Defense against the Dark Arts. Dealing with children probably didn't piss him off, but dealing with children in a Potions classroom may have.

For that matter, we have no knowledge of what his teaching style in DADA was during HBP, save for the one class we read where he was teaching nonverbal magic. He was an ass to Harry during that class, yes, but that's almost entirely because it was Harry. Who knows? He could have been a damn good DADA teacher.

 

I can actually see him being a better Defence teacher than Potions, because his method of teaching (if you can call it that) doesn't work when you need to concentrate on precise measurements and exact weights. His 'intimidate until they do it right' method could possibly work in an environment that requires repetition and and strength of will, such as Defence Against the Dark Arts, but would utterly fail in a potions classroom, where meticulousness is needed for any real success.

Aekiel

 

Exactly what you need to remember. Snape always wanted to be a Defence teacher, not a potions' master. Also, we never really get to see anyone else's views on his teaching methods. He hates Gryffindor's in general, probably because of James and the Marauders, so he's bound to hate Harry even more so. Given this, Harry and the Gryffindors aren't a reasonable basis to use for our analysis of Snape.

Actually, I remember someone in canon talking about Snape's attitude toward the other houses. I'll have to go look for that and see if I can find it. Something about how he was still a git, just not as big of one.

 

Another example of his blatant bullying that goes way over the line, IMO, is the canon instance in GoF where he grabs the magazine (Witch Weekly, I believe) and proceeds to read it out in front of the entire class, just to mock Hermione and get a few laughs from the Slytherins. Yes, bringing in extraneous reading material is usually against the rules in a class, but any teacher not looking to even a few old scores from the 1970s would likely just confiscate the magazine and decide whether to give it back then.

As for his teaching - I've known people who are brilliant at what they do, but they're hopeless at communicating it to people who may not necessarily be as interested as they are in the subject, such as students who are taking the class largely as a mandatory requirement. Incompetence (at teaching, to clarify) is bad enough, but combining it with deliberate vindictiveness is a recipe for some serious trouble, IMO.

(Edit to add the stuff in brackets)

 

Hogwarts is an old fashioned place, and in old schools they used to use humiliation as a method of censure. Its no leap of logic to think that Snape believes in that sort of discipline.

 

I think his character's characteristics have been exaggerated in fanon, twisting our view of canon Snape. Now I hate the greasy git as much as the other person here, but I have to respect the man's abilities. He is obviously a skilled wizard when it comes to potions and the dark arts.

As concerns his teaching abilities, remember we see things from Harry's perspective, who JKR unfortunately decided to make him a lazy bum. For all the criticism that JKR subtly puts out at the purebloods, without the imminent Voldemort confrontation, Harry acts just like a wealthy pureblood that is not going to have to work for his life. He does not study, messes around, and without Hermione would have failed from the first year.

Snape is probably a decent teacher, not as good as McGonagall, but good comparing to others. It is just that canon Harry and Won-Won are imbeciles and Hermione has an attitude that rubs Snape the wrong way. I don't think she truly understands Potions, since the subject probably requires some understanding and thinking things too. She probably reads all in advance and then repeats it like a parrot in class. If I were the teacher I would find that annoying and insulting too.

Actually the only subject that Hermione would be good in would be History of Magic. There she could repeat what she read at her leisure.

 

And it doesn't hurt that he's found a way to cover himself and give that little shite Draco Malfoy some more gush material to send to dear old daddy.

Honestly, didn't anyone put it to Hermione at some point that she doesn't need to fill her assignments up with proof that she inhaled the contents of half the Hogwarts library?

JKR seems to be very selective about what she believes is possible to change in a human being. Dumbledore can claim he's learned better, but as revealed in OotP and TDH he's still twiddling for "the greater good", and lamenting the fact that he came to care for Harry as a human being.

Hermione grows to understand boys romantically, but doesn't seem to ever learn that even people who like her can grow tired of nagging regurgitations from a textbook. Her nattering at Harry about Occlumency in TDH is an example. She doesn't seem to have any idea how complex the situation is for Harry. Rationally, it would be 100% logical sense for him to learn it out of a book and start trying to test the connection to see if he can manipulate it. However, as a human being, learning Occlumency on his own would force him to relive all the stuff he went through with Snape, and it wasn't a pleasant experience as described in OotP. Humans in general don't like reminding themselves of unpleasant experiences, and Hermione should have seen it and tried to work out a way around it.

Ron can grow up to be a bit less of a blockhead, but still storms off after he finds out trying to off Voldemort isn't all cool adventures.

Harry - sometimes he lacks subtlety, and it's a trait that has gotten him into trouble more than once. In a panic situation in OotP he didn't stop to think about Snape's half of the dialog between him and the professor after Harry dropped that clue about Sirius. What was he expecting - Snape to say something unintentionally revealing in front of Umbridge and the Slytherins who think he's in good with their Dads? Harry was halfway there, but not all the way, with understanding what a spy is capable of doing and not doing.

And of course, Snape - capable of changing his affiliations but JKR made him unable to get a full round of Maturity 101. Would it have killed the guy to quit mooning over his dead imaginary girlfriend and stop taking out his issues on her son, who never really knew her? We have words for people like that in real life and none of them are exactly complimentary.

 

My Math teacher being one such monkey...

But seriously, let's look at Snape's teaching:

~Gryffindors: They think he's a git. Fair enough, but do they learn stuff? No, not really.
~Slytherins: They think the sun shines out of Sevvie darling's ass. But do they actually learn anything? Other than that the world will bow down to them if they are cruel to everyone, except a select few who they favour, of course. Nope.

Even if he actually teaches the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, that's half the school with no real training in Potions. He may be selfish and petty, but he isn't stupid.

He knows he's ruining them, and this theory does make sense.

Kudos for sugesting it SP.

 

You know, these theories about deliberate sabotaging of peoples' Potions education irresistibly bring to mind people like Trofim Lysenko in the USSR, who basically strangled Soviet genetics for 20 some years because he was Stalin's pet scientist. Personal ambition actually explains quite a lot here.

 

While canon is centered around the Harry's POV, and includes Ron and Hermione by extension they are not the only one's to complain about Snape. While I agree Harry, Ron and Hermione are as you describe you have to consider the effect he has on others. There are instances in canon where Snape went out of his way to make the lives of some students miserable, while stroking the ego of the Slytherins.

Neville come to mind here. He is an absolute dudderhead and a menace in Potions but that does not give the right for a teacher to act as Snape had. Then there is the afore mentioned Magazine incident and the extreme bias with house points. Those aren't the works of a teacher, but a bully.

One of the interesting interpretations of his teaching style I've read was that he was sabotaging the Slytherins. By giving them a comfortable life in Hogwarts he ensures that they are unprepared for the hardships in real life and there by filling the Dark Lords minions with incompetent fools. I can't remember the fic but it was an interesting idea.